Congressman Mauricio Toro announced this Tuesday, August 3, that his proposed Law to regulate the cryptocurrency sector such as bitcoin has returned to the Colombian Congress. For two years the initiative raises the need to give a legal framework to an industry with massive adoption in the country.
«We will create comprehensive regulations to trade crypto assets and close the doors to the markets blacks, have alternatives to the banking system and guarantee security in transactions, “Toro wrote on his Twitter account, where he shared the bill.
Last year the proposal was waiting for a concept to be issued by the Financial Superintendency of Colombia (SFC), which ended up slowing down the start of the 4 debates necessary to become law.
At that time, the SFC’s intervention raised the possibility of altering the version of the project, as the regulatory authority had made it clear that it did not recognize cryptocurrency service operators. However, the landscape began to change since mid-2020 when the country opened applications to test bitcoin in a sandbox regulatory.
Now, the bill that emerged from discussions with organizations, private entities and unions, is returning to Congress with renewed hopes of becoming law .
In fact, for this new legislative cycle, modifications were being studied with respect to those originally contemplated in the proposal. Above all, recognizing the efforts of the regulatory sandbox with which it does not contradict , as Toro pointed out last year in a forum on the advancement of cryptocurrencies in Colombia.
What we seek is to give them regulations to crypto-asset transactions that are already recognized in Colombia and also to open the doors to exchanges so that they come to a country where they transact massively with them. The economic opportunity is there and we cannot continue giving away spaces to other countries.
Mauricio Toro, Congressman from Colombia.
What is this bill about?
The bill presented by Mauricio Toro describes crypto assets as “Means of exchange of goods and services” that cannot be considered as legal tender, nor foreign currency, nor titles representing legal tender.
The proposal has 14 articles including preventive measures against money laundering . In that sense, cryptocurrency service providers that operate in national territory must comply with a series of requirements. Among them, be registered in the Single Registry of Cryptoactive Exchange Platforms that will be created in the event that the law is approved.
Likewise, the initiative includes restrictions on exchanges in order to prevent scams. For example, they will not be able to offer or pay interest or any other monetary benefit for the balance that they accumulate over time. They will not be able to develop multilevel marketing activities either .
An uphill regulation for Bitcoin in Colombia
One of Toro’s concerns is the slowness with which the Government of Colombia has handled the regulation of the cryptocurrency sector. He believes that the reason why the initiatives are delayed is because the Presidency of the Republic is working on its own proposal, as he pointed out during an interview on YouTube.
What happens is that they stigmatize bitcoin because they associate it with money laundering and terrorist financing without considering that they do so with diamonds, pesos, dollars, cars or others. The problem is not there, the problem is that, by not regulating, that is allowed . Then a hard fight comes because it will not be easy to change those schemes, but you have to try because the changes are achieved by hammering until one reaches the other side.
Mauricio Toro, Congressman from Colombia.
On the other hand , the leader of the Innovation Group of the Financial Superintendence, Laura Clavijo, has indicated that the regulatory sandbox focuses on entities supervised by the SFC , although it is also trying to embrace those it does not supervise until now, such as exchanges. Based on this, the regulatory framework will be adapted to include cryptocurrencies.
As reported by CriptoNoticias, the pilot plan of the Government of Colombia allows the main local commercial banks to test services with exchanges of cryptocurrencies, such as Binance and Gemini.
According to Clavijo, the test environment supervised by the regulator is developed with the aim of improving and expanding the offer of financial services, facilitating access by Colombians to crypto assets . These are seen by the government as a tool that can help reduce the financial inclusion gap in the country.
