The Estonian government is tightening the regulation of cryptocurrencies. She has a corresponding one Bill adopted, primarily to reduce the risk of financial crime. The revised draft law is based on the general ban on opening anonymous virtual accounts. The government in Estonia met this regulation in the summer of 2020. Before that, the favorable legal environment had caused a boom in license applications. With that, however, the virtual assets were also in their sights Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and other law enforcement agencies.
However, the regulation does not apply to customers of crypto exchanges. Ergo, the legislation does not contain any measures that prohibit the possession or trading of virtual assets. The customers in Estonia are not obliged to pass on their private keys for the wallets. However, the law requires that the Estonian Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) opened accounts may not be anonymous.
Estonia prohibits resale of crypto market licenses
Another important innovation is that only companies that are active in or are affiliated with Estonia can apply for a license to operate as a VASP. Current regulations still allow a company to resell its license to a third party that has no connection with Estonia.
Another change concerns the capital requirements. For admission in Estonia, the exchanges must show at least 125,000 or 350,000 euros of share capital, depending on the type of service offered. This lower limit is currently only 12,000 euros. The license fee will also be increased from 3,300 euros to 10,000 euros. In addition, from April 2022, a supervisory fee of 1 percent of the share capital and 0.035 percent of all transactions for services for the transfer of virtual assets will be charged. The draft law has now been submitted to the Riigikogu, the Estonian parliament, where it has to go through three readings to be passed as law.