The year 2022 was not the best in terms of the reputation of cryptocurrencies among regulators and policy makers. However, even amid the market collapse and repeated public attacks on the industry, some of the officials found the courage to embrace innovation. Some of the names are not new, while others showed significant enough progress to be included in this article. The United Arab Emirates and El Salvador continued to push their cryptocurrency agenda and the UK showed a strong effort to lay the regulatory groundwork, while Brazil and the Central African Republic legally recognized cryptocurrencies.
Brazil
2021 may have been a year of mass adoption in Brazil, but it was 2022 when the country finally got its own regulatory framework.. Before leaving office, Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, signed a bill legalizing the use of cryptocurrencies as a method of payment within the country. The bill does not make cryptocurrencies legal tender, as in El Salvador, but it still introduces the legal definition of digital currencies and establishes a licensing regime for virtual asset service providers.
The bill arrives on time. The number of companies holding cryptocurrencies in Brazil has reached a new record: the country’s tax authority registered 12,053 unique organizations declaring cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets in August 2022.
In May, the Brazilian Stock Exchange confirmed its intention to launch the first official product for the cryptocurrency market: Bitcoin (BTC) futures trading. Unlike in the United States, institutional and retail investors currently trade 11 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with cryptocurrency exposure on the Brazilian Stock Exchange.
The United Kingdom
Britain surely did not have an easy year. In 2022, Queen Elizabeth II passed away after serving the nation for 70 years. Two prime ministers – Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – resigned. But when it comes to cryptocurrencies, the turbulent government never stopped working on regulation.. And while the fruits of this labor could be more impressive, the UK remains a strong argument in favor of a national regulatory framework.
The Financial Services and Markets Act, introduced in July, reaffirmed the UK’s intention to become a global center for cryptocurrencies. It expands the regulation of stablecoins and coins a new term: Digital Settlement Assets (DSA). The bill will authorize the Treasury to regulate DSAs, including payments, service providers and insolvency agreements. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, introduced in May, proposed to “create powers to more quickly and easily seize and recover crypto assets” in order to mitigate risks to individuals targeted by ransomware attacks.
This year the British Web3 community celebrated an important legal precedent. The High Court of Justice in London, the closest analogue to the US Supreme Court, has ruled that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) represent “private property”.
In an age when everyone is poking non-custodial wallets, Treasury has lowered its requirements to collect data from both senders and recipients of cryptocurrency sent to non-hosted wallets, unless the transaction poses “high risk.” of illicit financing”. And, at the end of the year, he gave a great gift to all investors by qualifying the transactions as “designated crypto assets” for the Investment Manager Exemption.
The Savior
The nation of El Salvador, whose main breakthrough came in 2021, deserves to be included in this article, at least for its persistence. Once the plan to issue “Bitcoin bonds” was revealed, the government of Nayib Bukele has been trying to execute it ever since. The first delay occurred in March, and was repeated in September. In November, Economy Minister Maria Luisa Hayem Brevé introduced a bill confirming the government’s plan to raise $1 billion and invest it in building a “Bitcoin city.” However, since then there has been no news about the success of the bill.
Even so, the country remains a crucial laboratory for Bitcoin adoption. According to the Salvadoran Minister of Tourism, Morena Valdez, the tourism industry in El Salvador has grown by more than 30% since the adoption of the Bitcoin law in September 2021. As of early 2022, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) showed that 20% of businesses have started to accept BTC as a payment method.
In May, El Salvador hosted 44 central bankers from developing countries from around the world to discuss financial inclusion and discuss Bitcoin at a three-day conference. Central bank delegates from Ghana to Burundi, from Jordan to the Maldives and from Pakistan to Costa Rica attended.
Central African Republic
In April, The Central African Republic (CAR), with 5 million inhabitants, became the first nation on the continent to legalize the use of cryptocurrencies in financial markets. The cryptocurrency bill, unanimously approved by legislators, allowed traders and businesses to make cryptocurrency payments and also made way for cryptocurrency tax payments through authorized entities. In July, the local central bank digital currency (CBDC), Sango Coin, was launched to raise nearly $1 billion over the next year. So far, however, only $1.66 million of the coin has been sold.
The country had also announced a plan to allow foreign investors to purchase US$60,000 worth of citizenship in Sango Coins.. However, this initiative was blocked as unconstitutional by the highest court of the RCA.
The adoption drew rejection from the Bank of Central African States (BEAC), which warned of the “substantial negative impact” the legislation will have on the Central African monetary union.
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates took a strategic approach to cryptocurrencies and moved steadily to create a regulatory environment and attract global investors. Perhaps that is why the country makes it to the Cointelegraph list for the second time in a row.
In March, Dubai established a legal framework for cryptocurrencies with the aim of protecting investors and “designing much-needed international standards” for the governance of the sector. The newly created Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) has been granted enforcement powers in the emirate’s free and special development zones, with the exception of the Dubai International Financial Center. The now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX was one of the first to obtain the same license.
another emirate, Abu Dhabi, submitted draft recommendations for NFT trading. They characterized NFTs as intellectual property rather than “specific financial instruments or investments” and allowed Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTFs) and Virtual Asset Custodians (CAVs) to operate in NFT markets.
In July, Dubai launched the Dubai Metaverse Strategy, which aims to make the emirate one of the top 10 metaverse economies in the world. YoIncludes collaborations in research and development (R&D) to boost economic contributions from the metaverse, the use of accelerators and incubators to attract companies and projects from abroad, and support for metaverse education aimed at developers, content creators, and users .
The country even opened its first city in the metaverse. Dubbed the Sharjahverse, it is described as a “photorealistic and physically accurate” metaverse spanning the emirate’s 1,000 square kilometers. The virtual city will support the local tourism industry and potentially create new jobs in the metaverse.
On the whole, 2022 hasn’t been too bad in terms of friendly regulation. And next year is going to be even more interesting, with the rush to the first comprehensive cryptocurrency framework in the US and potential liberalization in Hong Kong and South Korea.
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