Amid the roller coaster of the regulations and updates around cryptocurrencies across the world, this year is bringing glad tidings for the crypto industry. The wave of acceptance around cryptocurrency is influencing a lot of countries and hence favoring the industry in a lot of ways. After the First move by El Salvador to adopt the cryptocurrency as a legal tender, many countries have had a change of heart towards the cryptocurrency, and so does Portugal.
For the first time, The Central Bank of Portugal announced the grant to cryptocurrency exchanges and provided them the operating licenses, hence, they are now categorized as the “Virtual Assets service providers”. Though this permission to operate doesn’t mean that the bank has adopted the cryptocurrency as a legal tender, but ‘Criptoloja’ and ‘Mind the Coin’ are the only two virtual currencies that are now listed in the bank. The Central Bank took nine months to announce this after they received five requests for registration in the last year. The CEO of the Criptoloja, Pedro Borges, stated that “It was a long way. Being the first regulated exchange in Portugal means a lot” and appeared to be excited about this development. Borges also said that the company will start operating the exchange program in the next couple of weeks.
The Official grant by the Central Bank of Portugal to Criptoloja and Mind the coin clearly states that, this is the permission to conduct the exchange between virtual currencies and the fiat currencies, Transferring and storage of the virtual assets and also includes the private keys for the safekeeping.
As Criptoloja and Mind the coin are now allowed to offer exchange services in Portugal, now all the eyes are on their strategies to promote the crypto ecosystem among the citizens of Portugal. It is very important to unite the Portugal investors who are potential enough to invest in the cryptocurrency and encourage them towards the crypto exchange for the successful adoption of the new regulation. This step of the Portugal Central Bank for the
Cryptocurrency came in as an energizer for the crypto industry and is a decision in the favor of crypto geeks. Not only Portugal, but many European countries came forward to support cryptocurrency and crypto exchanges recently as they know ‘Crypto is the future. This is a clear sign that Europe embraces Crypto, no matter what.