International standards: FATF, BIS, FSB and IMF.

The Financial Action Task Force sets recommendations to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, and in recent years explicitly extended these to 'virtual assets' and 'virtual asset service providers'. Its best-known contribution to the crypto world is the so-called travel rule: for transfers above a certain threshold, providers must send identifying data of sender and recipient, similar to what is already standard for traditional bank transfers.

FATF has no legislative power; countries are not obliged to adopt the recommendations literally. Yet non-compliance carries practical consequences, since FATF can place countries on black and grey lists. Such listing makes it harder for local financial institutions to maintain international banking relationships, creating a strong incentive to adopt the recommendations anyway.

In the EU, the travel rule has since been converted into binding regulation that works alongside MiCA, specifically targeting transparency for crypto-asset transfers.

The Bank for International Settlements acts as a kind of knowledge and coordination centre for central banks worldwide. Through the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, BIS has developed rules for how banks must value and hold capital against crypto-asset exposures on their balance sheets, generally with stricter capital requirements as a crypto asset is more volatile or less regulated.

Through its Innovation Hub, BIS also plays a central role in research on central bank digital currencies, CBDCs, and in cross-border pilot projects where central banks jointly test how payments between countries can become faster and cheaper using new technology. These projects are not legislation, but they do shape how central banks design their own rules on digital currency.

The Financial Stability Board takes a broader view of systemic risk: how could a major shock in the crypto market spill over into the wider financial sector? The FSB publishes recommendations specifically targeting crypto assets and stablecoins, with attention to cross-border cooperation between supervisors, since crypto markets pay little heed to national borders.

The IMF approaches crypto from a macroeconomic angle: what does widespread crypto adoption mean for monetary policy, exchange rate stability and capital flows, especially in countries with weaker domestic currencies? The IMF regularly advises member states on national crypto policy and sometimes links that advice to broader financial support programmes, increasing the weight of these recommendations compared with purely technical advice.

MiCA did not emerge in a vacuum; when drafting it, EU lawmakers explicitly looked at FATF recommendations on the travel rule and at broader international discussions on stablecoins, partly driven by the FSB following earlier concerns about large-scale, globally usable coins. The attention MiCA pays to asset-referenced tokens partly stems from international concern about the impact of such coins on financial stability.

At the same time, the EU keeps charting its own course: MiCA goes further on some points than international standards strictly require, for example with a full licensing regime for providers rather than just anti-money-laundering obligations. International standards therefore form a floor and a shared language, not a ceiling for the rules a region like the EU introduces.