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Checklist on the topic " Mining as an alternative investment fund?"

27 August 2018
Checklist on the topic " Mining as an alternative investment fund?"

Christian Piska and Oliver Völkel in the current issue of the legal journal ecolex with a checklist on the topic " Mining as an alternative investment fund?".

On 22 May 2018, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) published an update to an FAQ catalogue on the application of the Alternative Investment Fund Manager Act (AIFMG). In these FAQs, the FMA takes the legal view that business models in connection with the mining of cryptocurrencies could constitute an Alternative Investment Fund (AIF). This affects both the financing level of the company (e.g., the articles of association) and the product level of the company (e.g., the mining contracts concluded with customers). Thus, the FMA, which previously excluded cryptocurrencies, completely in conformity with the law, from its area of responsibility, has made a U-turn for mining. If you can, you can. However, it remains to be seen whether the FMA will ultimately assert itself with this view, as there are heavy arguments against its approach. This checklist offers practitioners guidance to determine whether a mining business model can be qualified as an AIF according to the current legal view of the FMA and how the legal consequences can be avoided".

The full text can be found here.

In his previous article "Mining of crypto currencies as alternative investment fund" in the Journal for Finance Law (Zeitschrift für FinanzmarktrechtI, ZFR), Oliver Völkel critically questions the current legal view of the Austrian regulator and offers solutions should this opinion also prevail at the European level.

Please find this article here.

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