It is looking like 2018 is going to be the year that governments really started pushing regulations onto cryptocurrencies. The latest is coming from Austria, where their finance ministry said that they are looking to regulate Bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies, similarly to how they currently do gold and derivatives.
Their stated goal is that their move will help push the rest of the European Union to follow suit so that there is a standard set of regulations throughout the region. While most people in the crypto world agree that any regulation is going to be a bad thing, having one set of standards for large areas is at least going to be easier to deal with for most people.
Austria’s finance minister, Hartwig Loeger, said, “Cryptocurrencies are significantly gaining importance in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing. That’s an important aspect for the changes we support. We need more trust and more security.”
While cryptocurrency is really unlike any other asset, many governments, including Austria it seems, are trying to fit the regulations into the same standards they have been using. In this case, they are attempting to mold the gold regulations to fit crypto.
If they were only focused on Bitcoin, it could work, at least in theory. When it comes to the wider crypto industry, however, it seems like quite a stretch. Many cryptocurrencies are designed for rapid movement at almost any scale, which can’t be said for gold. It will be interesting to see how Austria manages to deal with these important differences, and what impact it will have on the crypto world.
