Tanzania’s President, Samia Hassan, recently advised the East African country’s financial chiefs to prepare for cryptocurrency, following El Salvador’s announcement of its adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender.
After reports that Tanzanian President Samia Hassan had asked her finance chief to look into cryptocurrencies, Tunisia has become the newest African country to indicate a readiness to adopt digital assets.
Tunisia’s Minister of Finance, Ali Kooli, stated in a weekend television appearance that he intends to change the country’s cryptocurrency legislation.
After local media reported in April that a 17-year-old (Name can’t be published as the individual is a minor) Tunisian teenager was detained on suspicion of money laundering, the suggested law change was proposed.
Some members of Tunisia’s blockchain community criticized the government’s heavy-handed attitude, citing the country’s lack of clear crypto legislation. In addition, crypto supporters and sympathizers began a social media campaign against the crypto user’s arrest.
Minister Kooli has stated that he wants to decriminalize bitcoin purchases in order to prevent another Tunisian teenager from being imprisoned. This is to avoid falling foul of the country’s ambiguous cryptocurrency regulations. In a recent TV interview, he stated:
I will change the law, we cannot put a Tunisian young man in prison for buying bitcoin.
At the Swiss crypto conference in 2020, Tunisian central bank governor Marouane el Abbasi said,
We are convinced that restraining a technology at its beginnings would be a mistake. … The Central Bank of Tunisia has opted for the strategic choice of positioning itself as a facilitator with the Tunisian innovation ecosystem.
Tunisia and Afghanistan have previously planned to issue bitcoin-based bonds to help preserve their crippled economies.
Marouane said at the time that the nation has formed a special committee to investigate the functions of a sovereign Bitcoin bond, as well as the opportunities that crypto and blockchain provide.
Despite the lack of legislative certainty, crypto popularity in Tunisia is at an all-time high. Tunisian user registrations on crypto exchanges like CEX.IO are up 11 percent in the first quarter of 2021 compared to last year, according to a report from Carthage, an English-language Tunisian magazine. At the moment, all eyes are on Africa.
Also Read: El Salvador Minister denies local reports, too early to use Bitcoin for wages
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