Amidst all the tussle going on around the world regarding cryptocurrencies, from El Salvador’s decision to make Bitcoin legal tender to China banning Bitcoin mining resulting in a severe downfall, Portugal has approved the operation of cryptocurrency exchanges.
The country’s central bank, the Banco de Portugal, has licensed two cryptocurrency exchanges, Mind the Coin and Criptoloja, for operations. The bank is also responsible for registering entities that intend to act as virtual asset service providers.
The bank also has to ensure that the cryptocurrency exchanges comply with the legal and regulatory provisions to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CFT).
Both the cryptocurrency exchanges offer support to popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin and Monero. They also offer traditional payment methods as well as P2P trading.
Regarding the legislatures, The central bank gave the following statement:
Banco de Portugal’s supervision regarding virtual assets service providers, as determined by Law No 83/2017 of 18 August 2017, is limited to AML/CFT purposes, and does not extend to other areas of a prudential, market conduct or any other nature.
The bank has also stated that entities must be registered with the bank that is providing exchange services irrespective of whether they’re dealing with fiat currencies or not. Along with that, entities providing crypto transfer services or “administration of virtual assets or instruments enabling control, ownership, storage and transfer of asset” must also register with the central bank.
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