With Bitcoin's rapidly rising market cap and trading volumes, national governments have caught on to the fact that Bitcoin isn't going anywhere. As a result, major economies are taking a "if you can't beat them, join them" sort of approach. Now, with each passing month, regulation of cryptocurrencies is getting more clear.
As of May 2021,
34 countries have created regulatory frameworks which stipulate how tax, anti-money laundering (AML), and anti-terrorism financing (ATF) laws should be applied to cryptocurrency transactions. This list of countries includes most of the world's largest economies.
Countries with tax legislation for cryptocurrencies: - Argentina
- Austria
- Bulgaria
- Finland
- Israel
- Italy
- Norway
- Poland
- Romania
- Russia
- Slovakia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
Countries with crypto-specific AML+ATF laws - Cayman islands
- Costa Rica
- Czech Republic
- Estonia
- Gibraltar
- Hong Kong
- Isle of Man
- Jersey
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Luxembourg
- Singapore
- South Korea
Countries with both kinds of legislation - Australia
- Canada
- Denmark
- Japan
- Switzerland
What might be most interesting to investors, however, is what's happening in the world's largest economy - the United States. In April, the new SEC chairman under the Biden administration, Gary Gensler (an MIT professor who has taught classes
on blockchain technology and digital currencies),
announced that the commission is in the preliminary stages of establishing a framework for crypto regulation.
New Bitcoin ETFs and Retirement Plan Allocations Clarified regulation for cryptocurrencies is great news not just because it brings more retail and institutional investors into the market, but also because it opens the door to new opportunities. Perhaps the most exciting development, here, is the arrival of Bitcoin ETFs.
A fund recently launched in Canada
has been wildly successful so far and the Bitcoin price seems to be following the same positive trend that occurred with gold when precious metal ETFs started to appear in the early 2000s. Furthermore, like it occurred with gold, analysts don't expect it to be long before we start seeing Bitcoin and other digital assets included in pension funds.