Namibia Now Legalizes Crypto And Digital Asset

Key Points:

• Namibia’s National Assembly approves measures to regulate digital assets and service providers.
• The legislation focuses on licensing, consumer protection, and risk mitigation.
• The Bank of Namibia maintains cryptocurrencies are not legal tender in the country.

Namibia’s National Assembly has adopted a bill to regulate domestic digital assets, cryptocurrencies, and digital asset service providers.

The legislation’s goal is to provide a framework for licensing and regulating virtual asset service providers (VASPs). It also intends to appoint a regulator to regulate these providers and their actions. Important goals include consumer protection, limiting market misuse, and lowering the danger of money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation in the virtual asset market. Before it can be implemented, the measure must first be officially published.

Importantly, the Bank of Namibia (BON) maintains that cryptocurrencies are not legal cash in the nation.

The measure is now awaiting formal publication before going into effect. Namibia’s Minister of Finance and Public Enterprises, Iipumbu Shiimi, indicated in his report the formation of a regulatory agency to regulate and give licenses to VASPs in the nation.

Noncompliant providers might face fines of up to ten million Namibian dollars and a ten-year jail sentence.

Kazembire Zemburuka, the BON’s director of strategic communications and international relations, stated the bank’s position in the report, indicating that once the associated risks of innovations like virtual assets are better managed, the bank will assess and decide whether to accept them into the financial system.

The execution of a bill to legitimize digital assets by the parliament seems to contradict the BON’s declaration at the end of 2022. BON, in particular, feels that cryptocurrencies are not recognized as legal money in this nation. On the other hand, the bank has said that it would not prohibit companies and merchants from taking cryptocurrency.

Although the bill’s approval by the Namibian parliament was lauded as a move in the right direction, other experts emphasized that its implementation should not create needless barriers to innovation.

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