The European Parliament’s rapporteur on the MiCA Crypto Law Stefan Berger sells a pair of flip-flops as NFT

“Freedom in a wallet” is how Stefan Berger, Member of the European Parliament, describes the non-fungible token (NFT) he is currently selling on Opensea. The NFT represents a pair of shoes “Bergoletten“. The shoes symbolize the first step in every development, says Berger, who has invested efforts to ensure that the upcoming European crypto-currency legislation gets the support of his colleagues.

European lawmaker puts auction of tap dance NFT on Opensea

Stefan Berger, the German member of the European Parliament who has been tasked with facilitating the progress of the European Crypto Asset Market (MiCA) project, has launched a summer initiative to promote tokenization, a phenomenon “as revolutionary to the world as the introduction of the stock market in the 17th century“.

At the end of July, the member of the conservative European People’s Party group urged his Twitter followers to join an auction on the NFT marketplace Opensea. “My NFT is out now“, Berger announced in a post about the sale, which ends on Monday, August 15. “To me, this NFT is a piece of digital freedom in a wallet“, he wrote in the tweet.

News 📢: My #NFT is out now! Join the auction of
Bergoletten-NFT on #OpenSea.

Shoes were chosen as motif as every great development begins with a first #step. For me this NFT is a piece of digital #freedom in a wallet. More info here: https://t.co/yphSsayOCn pic.twitter.com/4B5rqP4ShG

– Stefan Berger (@DrStefanBerger) July 30, 2022

The NFT Bergoletten, that he claims to have conceived, represents the photo of a pair of flip-flops for men, one of which is marked “#bergo” and the other – “ropa“. The tap dance are the ultimate summer accessory and were chosen as the NFT motif because every great evolution begins with a first step, the seller explains on its website:

What was tradable yesterday is now tokenized on the blockchain. Yesterday, you wore flip-flops on your feet, today you carry them in your wallet – in the form of this NFT.

EU considers treatment of NFTs under MiCA regulation

Stefan Berger’s communication stunt on NFTs came on the heels of a significant breakthrough towards the adoption of pan-European crypto-currency regulation. In early July, the main participants in the Union’s complex legislative process – the Parliament, the Council and the Commission – reached an agreement to implement MiCA across the 27-member bloc.

Stefan Berger played a role in the decision to drop a controversial proposal to ban the provision of services for currencies based on the proof-of-work principle, which is very energy-intensive in the project’s mining algorithm. These texts, which would have amounted to an effective ban on crypto-currencies such as bitcoin, which require a lot of electrical energy to mine, drew negative reactions from the continent’s crypto space.

The agreement did not cover NFTs unless they fall under the “existing categories of crypto-assets“, officials in Brussels said at the time. European institutions must now decide whether separate regulations are needed for NFTs. This type of crypto-asset, also known as “digital collectibles“, has a variety of applications, including storing digital records on a blockchain and proving the authenticity and ownership of artworks, for example.

According to a recent statement by Peter Kerstens, the European Commission’s advisor on technology innovation and cybersecurity policy, European lawmakers “have a very narrow view of what an NFT is.“He suggested that many NFTs will be treated like other digital currencies.

Speaking at Korea Blockchain Week, Peter Kerstens clarified that if a token is issued as a collection or series, even though the issuer may call it an NFT and each individual token in that series may be unique, European regulators will not consider it a non-fungible token. This means that the requirements applicable to crypto-currencies will also apply to NFTs.