National Bank of Georgia fine tunes a draft law to establish a legal framework for cryptocurrencies

The

National Bank of Georgia

(NBG) has reached the stage of finalizing the bill for regulating crypto space in the country, Bitcoin.com cited Georgia Sputnik in a recent report. The Georgian authorities are engaged in conversation and discussion with the industry stakeholders for making small and essential changes in the bill. The bill will include coin trading among all other crypto-linked businesses. The finalized legislation will then be presented to the Georgian public by September this year according to the Vice Governor of NBG Papuna Lezhava.

The Central bank underscored the the ongoing work and areas and that would be covered in the new crypto legislation:
- The Vice Governor of NBG Lezhava said that the bank is working on the bill regulating

cryptocurrencies

.
- The bill is now being considered and reviewed by the market representatives, participants and interested parties from the crypto sector to finalize upon the crypto draft law.
- The law aims to regulate several crypto operations and areas all at once.
+ Some of these areas include consumer protection and cryptocurrency trading, and rules for trading platforms such as digital assets exchanges.
- The bill will however not include crypto miners and their activities.

NBG Governor Koba Gvenetadze had announced earlier in April that the Central bank of the country is working for the regulation of cryptocurrencies in Georgia. It had prepared the necessary amendments in accordance with the requirements of the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Money Laundering and received technical assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Central bank also banned traditional financial institutions from providing virtual asset exchange and transfer services before bringing a new legislation.

Georgia has been a crypto mining hotspot since 2018 and was ranked 2nd for electricity consumption for cryptocurrency mining according to the data by Cambridge Center for Alternative Sources (CCAF). In January 2022, the government along with energy distribution company Energy Pro had taken action to curb the increased illicit usage of subsidized electricity for cryptocurrency mining in Svaneti region. In August 2021, its global share of crypto mining was 0.18%.


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