{"id":1720,"date":"2022-11-25T10:37:11","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T10:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2023-04-04T07:32:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T07:32:45","slug":"belgium-says-btc-and-other-decentralized-coins-are-not-securities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/belgium-says-btc-and-other-decentralized-coins-are-not-securities","title":{"rendered":"Belgium Says BTC and Other Decentralized Coins Are Not Securities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to Belgium, a crypto asset must meet certain conditions to be classified as a security, in contrast to the views of Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n<p>As confirmed by Belgium&#8217;s financial regulator, cryptocurrencies solely issued by computer code, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/coins\/bitcoin\">Bitcoin (BTC)<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/coins\/ethereum\">Ether (ETH)<\/a>, do not represent securities in the country.<\/p>\n<p>A reported draft opened for comments in July 2022 was released by Belgium&#8217;s Financial Services and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fsma.be\/en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Markets Authority (FSMA)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Following increased inquiries regarding how Belgian financial regulations and laws apply to digital assets, the FSMA clarified the situation.<\/p>\n<p>According to the FSMA, even though cryptocurrencies are not legally bound under Belgian or EU law, they will be regarded as securities if an individual or entity issues them.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/\">Cryptocurrencies<\/a> that are not classified as securities but are used as a medium of exchange by a company may still be subject to other regulations.<\/p>\n<p>As part of its step-by-step approach, FSMA noted that the technology is neutral &#8211; that is, it doesn&#8217;t matter whether digital assets exist and are created on a blockchain or another method.<\/p>\n<p>FSMA first drafted a report draft in July 2022 in response to frequently asked questions by Belgian digital asset issuers, providers, and users.<\/p>\n<p>The stepwise plan is intended to serve as a guideline until MiCA is adopted by the European Parliament and takes effect in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>A contrast exists between Belgium&#8217;s clear guidelines and the U.S. SEC, which is currently fighting to control digital assets with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commerce.gov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Gary Gensler&#8217;s long-standing view that bitcoin is a commodity, ETH and other staked coins may meet the Howey test.<\/p>\n<p>As of February 2018, Belgium ranks 94th in Chainalysis&#8217; Global Crypto Adoption Index among countries adopting digital assets.<\/p>\n<p>The crypto data resource Bitrawr reports that the European country has ten crypto exchanges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Belgium, a crypto asset must meet certain conditions to be classified as a security, in contrast to the views of Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission. As confirmed by Belgium&#8217;s financial regulator, cryptocurrencies solely issued by computer code, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), do not represent securities in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2884,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions\/2884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}