European banking regulator ‘concerned’ about finding staff to oversee crypto. EBA chair José Manuel Campa worried about getting ready for new rules by 2025.

A key regulator charged with overseeing Europe’s landmark bid to regulate cryptocurrencies views its ability to hire specialised staff as a “major concern”, highlighting worries over authorities’ capacity to supervise digital asset markets, according to the Financial Times.

José Manuel Campa, chair of the European Banking Authority, said his organisation was also worried about the logistics of planning for its new powers since it will not know which digital coins it has authority for supervising until very close to 2025, when Europe’s sweeping new crypto regulations are due to come into force.

Campa said in an interview that the retention of talent was already a “major concern . . . particularly in the areas of technology, anything related to crypto, digitisation [or artificial intelligence]. This is in high demand across society.”

Campa said the EBA was also concerned that, unlike bank supervision, the set of institutions it will have to supervise is not defined and could be changed at the last minute. “So I don’t know exactly what I would be confronted with in two years,” he said. He said the “very dynamic” nature of the crypto sector means that regulation “naturally tends to go behind the curve”.

Campa acknowledged that in three years crypto may have “moved and transformed into other uses that I cannot anticipate”. Still, Campa said he was not concerned about the reputational risk should the EBA get it wrong on a sector dubbed finance’s “wild west” by Gary Gensler, head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

“My concern is more about making sure the risk we have identified . . . [in the crypto market] is properly managed. If we don’t do as well as we should have, we’ll have to live with the consequences,” he said.