The Central Bank of Uruguay is working on a law to regulate cryptocurrencies in the country.
It's been a while since my last post because I'm dealing with some life stuff, and my time is short these days. It's nothing serious and hopefully will be sorted out soon, but it's been sucking up most of my "free time".
Anyway, did you see that Elon guy? Bought Twitter for more than $40 billion. Crazy! But this is not a Twitter-Musk post. This topic is being very well addressed by many of my colleagues on LeoFinance so I thought I'd talk about something else today.
It has to do with one of my favourite topics, cryptocurrency adoption.
Call me over-optimistic or even a dreamer, if you will, but at this point, I have no doubt that cryptocurrency will be adopted by the masses in the near future. Whether it will completely replace the legacy financial system or coexist with it remains to be seen, but I don't see a future without mass adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.
However, while fairly optimistic about it, I'm also a realist in the sense that I know that for mass adoption to happen, regulation will too and so that is something that will be coming our way sooner or later. I can only hope that it's done in a way that doesn't hinder our ability to thrive in this new ecosystem.
I made this preamble because I recently heard some news that Uruguay is working on a "Bitcoin Law" and that's something I want to talk about. Not the law itself because there is not a lot of information about it yet, but the meaning behind it.
Uruguay working on "Bitcoin Law"
I don't know how people, in general, reacted to this but it wasn't a surprise for me. I've been saying that Uruguay is a great candidate for a crypto hub in South America and it wouldn't surprise me either if they take an extra step and make Bitcoin legal tender in the country.
Just to make it clear, I don't think that's on the table. Not yet. As I said, there is not a lot of information about the so-called Bitcoin Law yet, but I hardly doubt they will even touch the legal tender question at this point.
So what do we know about it at the moment? Diego Labat, the president of Uruguay's Central Bank said that, for now, the draft will be made exclusively from a financial perspective, meaning that it won't touch other aspects such as energy, mining and taxation.
One thing about his declaration that worries me is that he believes there is a big risk in cryptocurrencies because the makers of the coins are unknown. That shows how little people understand the underlying concept of cryptocurrencies and decentralization.
While there are many projects out there that are very much centralized, truly decentralized networks such as Bitcoin and Hive could be perceived as a threat.
The current law is being referred to as being one with "little intervention" but we'll have to wait and see what that means exactly.
Final thoughts
The fact that governments are looking more and more into regulation is an indicator that they too are starting to accept the fact that the adoption of cryptocurrency is unstoppable and imminent. There is still much to be done before we can actually say we're anywhere close to mass adoption territory but we are definitely getting closer and people are starting to realize it.