Cryptocurrencies are earning their due, and we can thank most of the world’s smaller nations for this.
Cryptocurrencies Are Growing in Stature
Many developed countries, such as the United States, see cryptocurrencies primarily as speculative tools; something to invest in for the sake of becoming rich five, ten or 20 years down the line. Other countries, however, see cryptocurrencies for what they really are – forms of payment.
It’s always been the goals of most major cryptocurrencies to be utilized for purchasing goods and services. However, their volatility and consistent price swings have made this very difficult. Many companies do not wish to allow cryptocurrencies as means of payment due to the potential of losing money in the future.
Think about this: you use $50 worth of bitcoin to make a purchase, but then the next day, the price goes down and that $50 turns into $30. You still walk off with all your merchandise, but the company has lost $20 in the process. Fair? Hardly, but it seems to be how crypto operates.
For this reason, many countries have sought to either reject or ban the notion of crypto being used to pay for everyday needs, but in some areas, crypto is the only hope for citizens. In third-world or developing nations, for example, where corruption runs rampant within the financial systems or where most people don’t have access to solid credit options like they would with standard institutions, crypto can solve a lot of problems. It moves quickly, for one thing. People can deposit or send money faster than it takes to send or receive fiat.
Prospects like these are beginning to garner notice in regions like Belarus of eastern Europe. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with cryptocurrency entrepreneur Viktor Prokopenya roughly two years ago to discuss regulating cryptocurrency activity within the nation’s borders. Belarus has since become one of the first nations on the planet to fully legalize and regulate cryptocurrency trades.
Citizens are now able to sell, trade and receive cryptocurrencies through a digital exchange managed by Prokopenya. In a recent interview, the entrepreneur stated:
The idea was to create everything from scratch. To make sure that it is free in some of the aspects it needs to be free, and very stringent in other aspects.
Since then, other regions – such as Malta and Bahrain – have studied Belarus’ ways of monitoring crypto and implemented similar systems. The idea among these nations (and others) is to create their own specific rulebooks and avoid general legislation that other countries have tried so hard (and failed) to implement.
Be Lenient and Tough at the Same Time
Jesse Overall, a crypto lawyer at Clifford Chance in New York, states:
There are jurisdictions in the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil camp. On the other end, there is the U.S., U.K. and the EU. In the middle, that’s the juicy part of the spectrum.
