The Legal Status of Cryptocurrencies in the World Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

The whole world is busy fighting the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting financial crisis. During such testing times, there are a few countries that along with fighting coronavirus are trying to focus on critical business matters, including enacting regulations for cryptocurrency. Listed below are the countries that have come up with a new cryptocurrency regulation in the last few days.

Malaysia, which has extended nationwide lockdown at least until April 14, approved a cryptocurrency exchange operator last week. Malaysia’s Securities Commission (SC) has approved Tokenize Malaysia, a crypto exchange operator, to operate a digital asset exchange (DAX). So far, Malaysia has approved three recognized market operators (RMOs) - Luno Malaysia, Sinegy Technologies, and Tokenize Technology - to operate cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.

Japan, last week, approved another cryptocurrency exchange operator, bringing the total count of legal crypto exchanges in the country to 23. The latest to get approval is Okcoin Japan, a subsidiary of Ok Group. As per the FSA’s (Financial Services Agency) website, the newly approved exchange will deal in LTC, ETH, ETC, BCH and BTC.

Separately, an official Japanese government newsletter earlier this week noted that the revised crypto laws in the country would go into effect starting May 1. Last year, Japan passed two legislations – PSA (Payment Services Act) and FIEA (Financial Instruments and Exchange Act) - to regulate cryptocurrency in the country. Initially, these regulations were scheduled to come into effect starting in April.

Singapore, last week, granted a temporary exemption to a few cryptocurrency companies from holding a payments license. The list of companies that got the exemption includes names like   Binance, Coinbase, Ripple and BitGo. All the exempted companies are allowed to operate in the country without a payments license until July 28, 2020.