Germany

The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin)  has declared Bitcoin should be regarded as a financial instrument. The authority issued a guideline that clarifies the status of cryptocurrencies and associated regulations that govern businesses within the cryptocurrency sector.

As we welcome the year 2020, we look back to what transpired in the 12 months of 2019. In this article we shall review the countries who changed their cryptocurrency regulation most in the year 2019.

Recently, a statement came from Certification of Raw Materials (CERA), the certifying authority for raw materials, announcing that it had implemented a distributed ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain system to trace and track minerals, and many other valuable materials in Italy, U.S. and other parts of the world. The largest automaker by worldwide sales in 2016 and 2017 based in Germany Volkswagen, is also part of CERA.

Germany's minister of finance has embraced the idea of developing the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry by creating a digital euro, however, this plan is against and a threat to private virtual currency initiatives such as the Telegram’s Gram, Facebook’s Libra Project and others.

The data from Bitnodes, a popular site covering nodes of the Bitcoin (BTC) network, uncover the top 20 countries running Bitcoin nodes, with the United States leading the list with 2625, forming 25% of the total.

The e-commerce sector in Italy is expanding. According to the 2017 statistics, nearly half the total number of Internet users in the world have purchased something online at least once. This trend seems to be popular in China, the USA, Germany, as well as in Italy.

The United Kingdom (UK’s) South East Regional Organized Crime Unit (SEROCU), Europol, Hessen State Police of Germany and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), tactically-technically arrested a 36-year old British man suspected of fraud, money laundering and theft crimes.

The question of digital market regulation still remains untouched in the Russian Federation. Even though deputies are already discussing the matter and taking it seriously, there is a high probability of the fintech being banned, as top officials think Russia is not ready for issuance and circulation of crypto.

The world Blockchain survey shows that nearly 40% of the respondents were believing that Blockchain was "overhyped."