Cryptocurrency License in Bahrain – 1 Part

At the end of February 2019, the Bahraini media published news stating that in country, at the initiative of the local central bank, a set of rules governing the circulation of cryptocurrency came into force. Moreover, the adopted documents do not just allow all sorts of operations with digital money and similar legal assets, but affect all related moments.

There is extensive set of rules that we currently explore, so every interested businessman will find soon the answer to any question related to the licensing of activities and information about what  is needed to get cryptocurrency license in Bahrain.

Currently we can state that new set of rules clarifies the following

• Information on digital asset management;
• Information on business behavior;
• Information on prevention of conflicts of interest,
• Information on requirements to all market participants;
• Information on management of risks

In addition, acts issued in Bahrain regulate the enforcement of digital money and establish standards for the supervision of all kinds of transactions with them. It describes in detail how to analyze and report transactions.

An important place is given to cyber security of cryptocurrency license holders. For example, according to current standards, the exchange or a project must guarantee all customers the security of cryptocurrency storage and constant access to personal accounts.

Separate paragraphs are devoted to the provisions on prevention money laundering and terrorist financing.

Advantages of the described rules

The advantage of the described rules is that crypto business operated from Bahrain will be transparent, understandable and stable for all stakeholders. Each user of crypto project is guaranteed substantially greater transparency and security during operations and after. In the future, state authorities promise to modernize the published acts so that these always remain up to date.

Based on aforementioned, Bahrain is the very first Arab jurisdiction that introduced full-scale regulation of digital assets sphere. Bahraini government purposefully tries to make the country one of the most important financial centers in the region, because revenues from gas and oil are much lower in comparison with the UAE and Qatar or Saudi Arabia. Without modern tools such a goal is impossible to achieve.