Crypto Makes History: Even though the market was falling apart and the industry was being attacked in the public eye over and over again, some of the officials dared to embrace change.
The year 2022 wasn't the best for crypto in terms of how regulators and policymakers felt about it. But even though the market was falling apart and the industry was being criticized over and over again in public, some of the officials dared to accept the new ideas. Some of the names on this list are not new, and others made enough progress to be on this list. The United Arab Emirates and El Salvador kept pushing their cryptocurrency plans, and the UK worked hard to lay the groundwork for regulation. Brazil and the Central African Republic, on the other hand, made it legal to use cryptocurrencies.
Brazil - Crypto Makes History
It's possible that 2021 was a big year for adoption in Brazil, but it wasn't until 2022 that the country got its rules in place. Before he left office, Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, signed a bill that made it legal for people in the country to use crypto as a way to pay. The bill doesn't make cryptocurrencies legal money as El Salvador did, but it does define them in the law and set up a licensing system for service providers of virtual assets.
The bill arrived at the right time. In Brazil, the number of companies holding cryptocurrency has reached a new record high. In August 2022, 12,053 different companies reported holding cryptocurrency on their balance sheets.
In May, the Brazilian Stock Exchange announced that it planned to offer Bitcoin futures trading, which would be the first official product aimed at the cryptocurrency market. On the Brazilian Exchange, investors trade 11 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have exposure to cryptocurrencies. This isn't like what goes on in the United States.
The United Kingdom - Crypto Makes History
Great Britain didn't have an easy year, that's for sure. In 2022, Queen Elizabeth II died after 70 years of service to the country. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, who were both Prime Ministers, quit their jobs. But when it came to regulating crypto, the government was always working on it. Even though the results of this work could be better, the UK still makes a strong case for a national regulatory framework.
The Financial Services and Markets Bill, which was passed in July, made it clear that the U.K. still wants to be a center for cryptocurrency around the world. It changed the rules for stablecoins and came up with a new name for them: Digital Settlement Assets (DSA). The bill will give the Treasury the power to regulate DSAs, which includes payments, service providers, and arrangements for when a DSA is about to go bankrupt. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill was introduced in May. It proposed "creating powers to more quickly and easily seize and recover crypto assets" to reduce risks for people who are the targets of ransomware attacks.
This year, the British Web3 community got together to celebrate a big change in the law. The High Court of Justice in London, which is the closest thing to the Supreme Court in the United States, has decided that nonfungible tokens (NFT) are "private property."
At a time when everyone is poking around in unhosted wallets, the Treasury lowered its requirements for collecting data from both the senders and recipients of crypto sent to unhosted wallets, unless the transaction poses "an elevated risk of illicit finance." And by the end of the year, it gave investors a great gift by letting transactions of "designated crypto assets" be exempt from the Investment Manager Exemption.
El Salvador - Crypto Makes History
El Salvador should be on this list, if only for the fact that it didn't give up. Its biggest breakthrough came in 2021. The government of Nayib Bukele has been trying to carry out its plan to sell "Bitcoin bonds" ever since it was made public. The first setback happened in March, and it happened again in September. In November, Maria Luisa Hayem Brevé, who is in charge of the economy, introduced a bill that confirmed the government's plan to raise $1 billion and spend it on building a "Bitcoin city." But since then, there has been no news about how well the bill did.
The country is still a very important test bed for Bitcoin. Morena Valdez, the minister of tourism in El Salvador, says that tourism has grown by more than 30% since the Bitcoin law was passed in September 2021. At the start of 2022, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) did a study that showed 20% of businesses were now accepting BTC as a form of payment.
In May, 44 central bankers from developing countries around the world met in El Salvador for a three-day conference to talk about financial inclusion and Bitcoin. Central bank representatives from Ghana to Burundi, Jordan to the Maldives, Pakistan to Costa Rica, and so on all went to the event.
The Central African Republic - Crypto Makes History
In April, the Central African Republic (CAR), which has a population of 5 million, became the first country on the continent to make it legal for people to use cryptocurrencies in the financial markets. The cryptocurrency bill was approved by all lawmakers unanimously. It made it possible for traders and businesses to pay in cryptocurrency and for tax payments to be made in cryptocurrency through authorized entities. The local central bank's (CBDC) digital currency, Sango Coin, was released in July to raise nearly $1 billion over the next year. So far, though, the coin has only brought in $1.66 million.
The country had also said that investors from other countries could buy citizenship for $60,000 worth of Sango Coins. But this plan was stopped by the CAR's highest court because it was against the country's constitution.
The Bank of Central African States (BEAC) didn't like the idea of adoption. It said that the law would have a "substantial negative effect" on the monetary union of Central Africa.
United Arab Emirates - Crypto Makes History
The United Arab Emirates took a strategic approach to cryptocurrencies and moved steadily to set up rules and attract investors from around the world. Maybe that's why the country is on the Cointelegraph list for the second time in a row.
Dubai set up a legal framework for crypto in March. The goal was to protect investors and "design much-needed international standards" for how the industry is run. The Dubai Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), which was just created, now has enforcement powers in the Emirate's special development and free zones, except for the Dubai International Financial Centre. One of the first companies to get this license was FTX, which has since gone out of business.
Abu Dhabi, which is also an emirate, came up with some ideas for NFT trading. They labeled NFTs as intellectual property instead of "specified investments or financial instruments" and let multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) and virtual asset custodians (VACs) run NFT marketplaces.
Dubai started the Dubai Metaverse Strategy in July. The goal was to make the Emirate one of the top 10 metaverse economies in the world. It includes working together on research and development (R&D) to improve the economic benefits of the metaverse, using accelerators and incubators to bring companies and projects from other countries, and helping developers, content creators, and users learn about the metaverse.
Even in Metaverse, the country opened its first city. It was called Sharjahverse and was said to be a "photorealistic, physics-accurate" metaverse that covered all 1,000 square miles of the emirate. The virtual city will help the tourism industry in the area and might even create new jobs in the metaverse.
Overall, 2022 wasn't too bad when it came to friendly rules. The next year will be even more exciting, with the race to create the first comprehensive crypto framework in the U.S. and the possibility that Hong Kong and South Korea will loosen their rules.
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