Breaking: Estonia is not banning cryptocurrencies; finance minister clarifies rumors

Estonia, a North European nation made headlines in the crypto world with its strict AML regulations a few days back. The strict regulatory policies introduced by the government were seen as regressive that led to rumors about a possible ban on cryptocurrencies. Earlier. today the Finance Minister of the country came out with an official response addressing and clearing all the rumors about a possible ban.

BREAKING:
🇪🇪 Estonia is NOT banning crypto.

Finance Ministry @rahandus just released a rebuttal to some ugly speculative rumors that started going around over New Years: https://t.co/WA4t6x2a2k

🧵👇

— Sten Tamkivi (@seikatsu) January 3, 2022

The official press release from the Finance Minister made it clear that the law people are referring to, is still a draft bill and needs to be passed in the parliament. Secondly, the draft bill proposes measures for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) and would not affect customers in any way, thus dismissing all rumors of a possible ban. The official press release read:

“The regulation is not applied to customers, but to VASPs who conduct activities for or on behalf of a natural or legal persons as a permanent business. This means that the legislation does not contain any measures to ban customers from owning and trading virtual assets and does not in any way require customers to share their private keys to wallets. The regulation does not affect individuals who own virtual currency through a private wallet not provided by a VASP. However, accounts opened with Estonian VASPs cannot be anonymous and Estonian VASPs cannot offer anonymous accounts or wallets.”

The new AML regulations require VASPs to disclose their customer details and prohibit them from facilitating or working with anonymous accounts.

Crypto regulations tighten around the globe

Most of the nations are currently actively working and mitigating probable regulations for the crypto market. Most of the nations are expected to implement FATF-approved AML guidelines quite similar to what Estonia has proposed in its draft bill. The likes of South Korea, the UK, and several other European nations have already implemented the same.

The United States is also currently actively looking to regulate the crypto market where the main focus seems to be around stablecoins. Policymakers in the country have demanded faster regulatory frameworks from top regulatory bodies such as the SEC.