Tunisian finance minister: “owning bitcoin should not be considered a crime”

Tunisian Finance Minister Ali Kuli announced the need to change the country’s legislation, making it more friendly towards Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

The minister’s statement follows the April arrest of a local 17-year-old teenager for committing cryptocurrency transactions. The police charged him with money laundering because they could not establish the exact origin of the funds. The incident sparked outrage in the cryptocurrency community in Tunisia, which deemed the arrest to be inappropriate.

DFI Blockchain founder Mustapha Boufares stated that the teenager was not detained for a crime, but simply because there is no law on the use of cryptocurrencies in the country. Boufar accused the Tunisian authorities of ignorance, which could take advantage of digital currencies by safely tracking financial transactions and fighting corruption, which cannot be done with ordinary money.

However, regulators in African countries are fighting cryptocurrencies by applying harsh measures to traders, while crypto assets, on the contrary, are gaining popularity among African users. Paxful CEO Ray Youssef said this earlier this month, adding that the African continent is leading the way in cryptocurrency adoption. Given this situation, Cooley considers it necessary to change the laws of Tunisia, according to which citizens of the country will be able to own bitcoins and make transactions with them legally.

Earlier, the Governor of the Central Bank of Tunisia, Marouane El Abassi, said that it would be a mistake to restrict the development of cryptocurrencies and other new technologies at the initial stage of their development. Bank of Tunisia has expressed its willingness to closely monitor the development of the cryptocurrency industry and even conduct experiments with it in order to explore various options for using cryptocurrencies. Despite the regulator’s statements, attempts by the Tunisian government to pass laws that are friendly to cryptocurrencies have been unsuccessful.

This month, the Iranian president also announced his intention to legalize crypto assets, calling for the development of an appropriate regulatory framework. In April, a proposal was made to the government of Uzbekistan to legalize cryptocurrency trading.

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