Another country plans to regulate cryptocurrencies and mining: Paraguay

Paraguay is living historic days after the presentation of a crypto bill. Will it be a new country in Latin America that regulates cryptocurrencies?.

These days are key for the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the South American country. Two parliamentarians have presented in the National Congress located in the Paraguayan capital (Asuncion) a proposed law that seeks to legalize cryptoassets.

The proposal projects a regulation of cryptocurrencies and permission to mining.

It also aims at establishing both legal, financial, and fiscal security in the market related to cryptoassets that exist today. The proposal aims at establishing both legal, financial, and fiscal security in the market related to cryptoassets that exist today.

One of the deputies who promoted the proposal has announced the project through a tweet arguing that there is “a need to move forward together with the new generations.”

He said that “the time has come” to promote the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and remarked that “in these days we will start with a plan that financially innovates the country and is an example at a global level.”

Another legislator who was part of the initiative, Fernando Silva Facetti, also spoke on the subject, in this case through the social network of Mark Zuckerberg. He focused on the regularization of mining and the use of electricity.

If the bill becomes law, the South American country would become the first at the regional level, and the second, behind the Central American country of El Salvador, to legalize the use of digital currencies.

The bill to regulate cryptocurrencies

The bill presented highlights legislation related to cryptocurrency mining.

The draft establishes, at that point, the need for the recognition of what it calls “Virtual Asset Mining” as an industrial activity that shall be regulated under the umbrella of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. This is so because capital, labor, machinery, and construction of civil infrastructure are employed for the purpose of producing a product (the bitcoin).

This industry is capital-intensive and subject to the purchase of machinery, the project says.

Around enforcement of the legislation, the proposal states:

• Freedom of competition: access to international investment is to be encouraged.
• Internationality: the idea is that there will be a kind of best practice rule in the use of digital assets that takes into account what has been agreed at the international level, especially in the prevention of money laundering cases.
• Nondiscrimination: the law aims not to discriminate against the new industry of virtual assets since it legalizes and validates it in all its forms.
• Consumer defense: the law will seek to ensure the right of consumers and providers to their defense within Paraguay.

Cryptocurrency legalization project

One of the Paraguayan parliamentarians said, when the project was presented, that it is aimed at the regulation of “a reality that already exists.”The project is aimed at the regulation of “a reality that already exists.

In addition, he remarked that it seeks to legalize the use of cryptocurrencies, which are currently in an area that is on the borderline between legal and illegal.

He also added that his country is having a great opportunity with this, as they propose the regulation of a digital currency industry that has “skilled labor”.

The proposal consists of more than twenty articles that talk about regulation and control of the use of cryptocurrencies.

The area where it would apply is in the natural and legal persons dedicated to this market.

In addition, the project highlights that everything will be under the orbit of the Ministry of Industry and that the plan is to transform cryptos into commodities.

The lawmakers, in the presentation, said they are confident that they will have the backing of many sectors.

The bill includes the holding of a public hearing.

In Paraguay as in El Salvador?

Silva Facetti, in his defense of the law, has differentiated his project with respect to the one already in force in El Salvador, which was promoted by President Nayib Bukele.

He said that we are not talking about a proposal like there, where digital currencies will be used as exchange assets, but rather about “intangible assets”, where commodities will become the final product.

The legislator said that people who are already in this industry (illegal, for now) will be given a term of six months to regularize their situations.

She said that they are confident of the acceptance and support of the people and that they expect to reach the sanction in the Chamber of Deputies, to then pass to the Senate.