LITHUANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Tadas Kuzminskas, APB “Leagus”
• a white paper and ongoing disclosure; and • stricter treatment for “significant” ARTs. 6.2.3 Backing Assets Under MiCAR (directly applicable in Lithuania), fiat‑backed stablecoins are electronic money tokens (EMTs). EMTs are essentially tokenised e‑money. EMTs must be fully backed by funds of the same official cur- rency as the reference currency. The total value of reserves must at least equal the outstanding EMTs. A CASP shall not grant interest when providing crypto- asset services related to EMTs. Backing assets must be: • held as deposits with credit institutions; and/or • invested in safe, low‑risk, highly liquid assets (eg, short‑term government debt that qualifies as high‑quality liquid assets). Assets must be segregated from the issuer’s own funds and protected against claims of other creditors. 6.2.4 Special Considerations Under MiCAR, “significant” stablecoins (ARTs and EMTs) face stricter requirements. The criteria for clas- sifying ARTs or EMTs as significant tokens are the fol- lowing: • very large user base (over 10 million holders); • large scale (over EUR5 billion in issuance, market cap or reserves); • high transactional activity (more than 2.5 million transactions and EUR500 million in value per day); • the issuer of the token is a provider of core plat- form services designated as a gatekeeper (a “gate- keeper” is a large digital platform that has been formally designated under the EU Digital Markets Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/1925)); • the significance of the activities of the issuer of the token on an international scale, including the use of the token for payments and remittances; • the interconnectedness of the token or its issuers with the financial system; and
• the fact that the same issuer issues at least one additional ART or EMT, and provides at least one crypto-asset service. Key extra requirements for “significant” ARTs/EMTs include: • having a remuneration policy that supports sound risk management and does not encourage exces- sive risk‑taking; • allowing custody of the tokens by multiple, unre- lated authorised CASPs on fair, reasonable and non‑discriminatory terms; • continuously assessing and managing liquidity for redemptions via a formal liquidity management policy, ensuring reserve assets remain highly liquid, including under stress scenarios; • performing regular liquidity stress tests; and • stricter own funds requirements for issuer of ARTs. 7. Tokenisation and Real-World Assets 7.1 Treatment In Lithuania, tokenised assets are regulated primarily by reference to the underlying asset, not the tech- nology used to record it. Blockchain is treated as a record‑keeping/settlement tool. Accordingly, the first step is to ask which legal regime would apply if the asset were not tokenised. If the token structure meets MiCAR’s definition of an asset‑referenced token (ART) referencing real‑world assets, it will fall under MiCAR and the issuer must comply with the MiCAR rules for ARTs. However, from the perspective of the underlying asset, tokenisation by itself does not change the applicable legal regime. Some assets are particularly difficult to tokenise in practice. For example, in Lithuania title to real estate must be registered in the Real Estate Register and related transactions must be notarised. In such cases, tokenisation of real estate is theoretically possible but practically challenging to implement.
408 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook