Riding on the wings of the success of the Paris Blockchain Week, members of the French Association for the Management of Cryptoassets have decided to set up a larger and more formal association to take their endeavor to the next level.
Today, the founding members of the association, investment firms Eiffel Investment Group and CACEIS, law firm Gide, cryptoexchange Paymium, market maker Woorton, and audit and consulting firm PwC announced the creation of the FD2A, the French Digital Asset Association.
The association’s ambition is to nurture the ecosystem of institutions, companies and individuals active in the field of digital assets, blockchain and DLT, to inform and train the public in these new technologies and business models, and to influence their regulation at European and International level.
Two Years of Activism
The founding team of the FD2A met during the creation of the French Association for the Management of Cryptoassets in 2017. (Crowdfund Insider was there, too!)
Although quite informal, the original association achieved a lot in its short existence. It gathered 64 companies and 268 contributors, and organized more than 104 events, including 40 well attended, and often downright crowded, CryptoMondays in Paris.
Multiplying meetings and discussions with politicians, industry, government representatives such as the Ministry of Economy and the Treasury, and regulatory bodies such as the Markets and Securities (Autorité des Marchés Financiers – AMF) regulator and the financial services regulator (L’Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution – APCR), the association in its previous form was instrumental in helping shape the progressive regulation of the 2019 Loi Pacte which, among others, recognized non-securities initial coin offerings (ICOs).
The influence of the association was successfully demonstrated during the Paris Blockchain Week Summit which gathered 3,000 international blockchain and digital asset professionals
The event was supported by the Ministry of Industry for the Economy and Finance. The Minister, Bruno Le Maire announced the government’s ambition to carry the progressive message embodied in the French digital asset regulation to its European counterparts.
A New Representative Body
Reaching beyond France’s borders is also on the FD2A’s agenda.
The founding members of the informal French cryptoassets association are now founding the FD2A.
The board includes Jean-Benoît Gambet (Eiffel Investment Group) as President, Zahreddine Touag (Woorton) as Spokesperson, Karim Sabba (Woorton) as Treasurer, and Charlie Meraud (Woorton) as Vice-President.
Members are invited to join working groups tackling four main issues:
- Law and regulation,
- Taxation and accounting of digital assets,
- Blockchain & DLT technology,
- Asset tokenization.
The FD2A is actively recruiting new members to form an association representative of the new digital asset-based business sector and promote its fast growth into a well-structured and sustainable sector.
In more detail, the association’s mission includes:
- Bringing together all the key bodies, firms and individuals in the sector, fostering synergies and partnerships.
- Supporting the structuring of the sector and ensuring that its positions are well understood.
- Contributing to legislative and regulatory debates, in France, Europe and globally, to favor laws and regulations suited to limiting risks, inspiring trust and fostering innovation.
- Promoting the attractiveness of the French and European sector.
- Supporting new and sustainable business models, including the tokenization of the economy.
- Fostering the sharing of knowledge and experience.
- Educating decision makers in politics and business.
- Training industry professionals and new talents.
Therese Torris, PhD, is a Senior Contributing Editor to Crowdfund Insider. She is an entrepreneur and consultant in eFinance and eCommerce based in Paris. She has covered crowdfunding and P2P lending since the early days when Zopa was created in the United Kingdom. She was a director of research and consulting at Gartner Group Europe, Senior VP at Forrester Research and Content VP at Twenga. She publishes a French personal finance blog, Le Blog Finance Pratique.
