Central Bank of Armenia Urged to Regulate Cryptocurrencies – In Armenia, calls have been made for the central bank to fulfill its job and put the country’s crypto space in order. Government regulators and financial industry representatives agree that the industry requires regulation to prevent the use of cryptocurrencies for illegal purposes.
The State Revenue Committee (SRC), Armenia’s regulatory body in charge of tax and customs services, has written to the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA), requesting that the country’s crypto market be regulated.
Rustam Badasyan, the head of the agency, elaborated in the Armenian parliament:
“We allow shady transactions to take place without regulating this area, and there have been incidents of both tax evasion and money laundering utilizing cryptocurrency.”
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According to the financial and banking news outlet Armbanks.am, the SRC official made the statement during parliamentary proceedings devoted to the execution of last year’s state budget. The committee works closely with the CBA and is in charge of the small South Caucasus nation’s Customs and Tax Services.
Badasyan further noted that authorities are no longer able to intervene in deals involving digital assets. He cited a situation involving the exchange of a big sum of fiat currency for cryptocurrency, in which an investigation yielded no results due to the absence of a legal framework for this area.
His remarks follow those of Seyran Sargsyan, the Executive Director of the Armenian Union of Banks, who stated that issues related to the identification of cryptocurrency users as well as the transparency of crypto transactions must be addressed. Financial institutions in Armenia do not engage with digital coins and do not provide relevant services, according to the banker.
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According to a report by the crypto news site Forklog, Armenia and some other members of the Eurasian Economic Union failed to agree on a unified approach to the implementation of legislation for the crypto economy in their jurisdictions in March 2021.
Armenia’s calls for crypto regulation come as Russia’s regulatory framework is being delayed by ongoing debates on the subject.
