Estonia has moved to calm investor fears about tougher rules on cryptocurrency, a sector that has been a target of regulatory scrutiny for the Baltic nation since at least 2019.
The country is considering new rules that would enforce due diligence, audits and higher levels of capital for crypto firms ahead of a review of its policies to counter money laundering this quarter.
The proposed rules still need parliamentary approval.
Photo: Bloomberg
The Estonian Ministry of Finance issued a statement and a list of frequently asked questions after speculation that the new rules would shut down cryptowallets and ban trading in bitcoin.
Estonia “recently introduced draft legislation that would tighten regulation of virtual asset service providers,” the ministry said in a statement.
“However, Estonia has no plans to make owning cryptocurrencies illegal, as some misconceptions on social media claim,” it said.
The Baltic nation was one of the first countries to grant cryptocurrency licenses in 2017, attracting a surge in companies interesting in doing business in the sector.
It has since revoked about 2,000 of these and only about 400 licensed companies remain.
Estonia took a tougher stance on crypto after allegations that billions of dollars of illicit cash flowed through the local unit of Denmark’s largest lender Danske Bank A/S, in what was then Europe’s biggest ever dirty-money scandal.
Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit director Matis Maeker told local media in October that all cryptolicenses could be revoked and companies forced to reapply for accreditation.
His spokesman later said that this was not the official view of the agency and the government did not pursue it.
Separately, bitcoin is starting off the new year on a down note.
Bitcoin, which is the largest digital coin by market valuation, fell as much as 2.8 percent during Monday’s session to US$45,715.
That means it was trading below its average price over the past 200 days, which currently stands at US$47,923.
The session is setting bitcoin up for its seventh consecutive close below that threshold, which is watched closely by chartists.
“Bitcoin is acting just like another risk asset,” said Steve Sosnick, lead strategist at Interactive Brokers LLC. “In some ways, it’s a victim of its success, because so much risk capital has moved into bitcoin and to a certain extent other cryptos.”
Technicians are also watching bitcoin’s relative strength index, which is nearing oversold territory.
Strategists at Oppenheimer say that bitcoin’s heightened volatility makes it difficult for them to trade.
Still, if they use its 200-day moving average stat in the same way that they utilize it for stocks, then they foresee it could break above US$65,000 — as long as it maintains US$46,000, they said in a note.
Cryptocurrencies overall finished last year on a sour note. Bitcoin fell roughly 19 percent last month, one of its worst months of the year.
The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, which tracks a handful of some of the largest coins, lost nearly 23 percent in that period.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS