Is Estonia changing its focus on cryptocurrencies?

As is now known, Estonia had even announced its intention to launch one State cryptocurrency, at the end of the 2017, taking care however to incardinate the project in a framework of absolute security, based on which the Estcoin would have hooked its quotation to the value of the euro, in such a way as to give it stability and avoid the excessive fluctuations of price that usually characterize the encrypted assets.

However, after this announcement, which had caused a sensation, Estonia started one quite deep rethinking phase, which resulted in the renunciation of the project a few months later.

A decision arrived following the words spoken by Mario Draghi, with which the governor of the European Central Bank intended to recall the Baltic country to respect the international agreements signed with its entry into the euro area, in particular those which prohibit member states from issuing money, be it physical or virtual. A declaration that had found the support of Ardo Hansson, President of the Estonian Central Bank and the endorsement of Siim Sikkut, the head of the national IT strategy, who had not hesitated to declare the project closed.

Getting a Crypto license in Estonia will be much more complicated

Il press release issued on May 16 by the Estonian consulting company Eesti, however, seems to go even further than the events of the 2018, or rather in the direction of a considerable tightening of the framework in which the companies interested in digital assets should operate.

According to this release, in fact, the procedure aimed at obtaining a crypto license in Estonia would have become considerably more complex than in the recent past. To make it such would be in particular the provision adopted by the 3 in May, with which the Ministry of Finance has decided to introduce a series of changes to the licensing process.

In particular, the new regulation adds a numbered formal obligation, extends the processing time from thirty to ninety days e establishes the obligation to incorporate a company or a division in Estonia to be able to carry out a project of this kind on the soil of the Baltic country. The address of the registered office and the board of directors must also be located within national borders, while the state license fee has been increased from 345 to 3.330 euro.

The ratio of the provision

It was just the Minister of Finance of Estonia, Martin Helme, to reveal the reasons that drove the government of which it is part to the modifications, affirming that what happened in the banking world, where the lack of controls had dramatic repercussions on the stability of the system, prompted the political leaders of the country to take note of the lesson. According to Helme it is quite clear that international risks must be addressed so as not to cause new crises and among them the one linked to virtual currencies must be considered at the moment one of the greatest ever.
Eesti, on the sidelines of his press release, stated that the new system of rules will make it quite complicated to obtain a crypto license. In addition, those who currently own one will have to comply with the requirements indicated by the new legislation by and no later than the end of the year, otherwise losing the permission already obtained.

A radical change

According to observers it is a radical change of position, moreover not surprising in light of the renunciation of Estcoin, the virtual uniform announced in the 2017.

If until then Estonia was considered one of the most welcoming countries for the virtual economy and digital assets, thanks above all to the e-residency initiative, which allowed entrepreneurs active in cryptocurrency to assume the "virtual" citizenship of Estonia and, as such, have the right to various tax incentives, the change was now widely expected . The announcement was made in particular by the announcement of the Estonian Ministry of Finance concerning the intention to add some amendments to the recently approved budget law, so as to prepare a series of posts in which all the companies that refer to the digital coin industry will have to move.