There is a common stereotype that governments do not support cryptocurrencies. This may be true for some of the nations (like China or the Russian Federation), but in here we will talk about the countries that greet the changes in the market with open arms. So, here is the top-5 of most cryptocurrency friendly nations in the world.
The Republic of Estonia
This small Baltic state has been on the rise for the last decade. This implies not only to politics and finance, but also to how blockchain technology is perceived and used. Estonian government is trying to blockchainize all the technologies in the daily life of citizens such as healthcare, banking and even the voting system (it’s called e-voting and is based on the blockchain). Wait, it gets even better! Estonia also provides digital identity offered by the government — e-Residency and it also runs on blockchain.
Finland
In Finland cryptocurrency is considered a financial service. That means that all crypto purchases are exempt from V.A.T. Citizens of this Scandinavian country are used to seeing Bitcoin ATMs and various crypto exchanges. Also, as Finnish people have a long standing tradition of gambling, even online casinos started to accept Bitcoin as a method of payment.
South Korea
South Korea is generally referred as a tech country, the homeland of such giants as Samsung and LG. It is logical to assume that the popularity of crypto is also quite high in the Republic. There are no laws regulating cryptocurrency in Korea, so it has lead to the occurrence of many crypto startups (Korbit and alike). Crypto in South Korea eventually became so popular, that even 7-Eleven started to accept Bitcoin as a method of payment.
Japan
Unlike the Chinese government that took a defensive attitude towards cryptocurrency, Japan made a strict, yet clear regulation of the crypto market. A law that includes an increased control of all companies in the crypto market and especially crypto exchanges was released in 2017. Due to this, implementing of targeted anti-money laundering guidelines as well as know-your-customer principles became possible. Only 11 crypto exchanges received an official licence after the law was put into power, but it is a way for Japanese government to secure their own crypto market space and lay a foundation for development.
Switzerland
Multiple — between 50 and a 100 — blockchain companies have established their headquarters around Zug, that is now called the local CryptoValley. As a matter of fact, Swiss government really likes to organise everything, so to avoid any misconceptions, cryptocurrency has officially been labeled as a foreign currency and a regulatory framework for ICOs has also been put in place. Not bad, right? Besides that, Switzerland, just like Estonia, launched a test of e-voting system based on blockchain.
Hope you liked this one! We’re looking forward to meeting you on [ChangeNOW] (changenow.io), where you can swap and buy more than 150 cryptos, easy as cake.
[Get our new app on Google Play] (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.changenow.changenow)!