Europe and Africa Are Legalizing Digital Market as Crisis Is Coming

The French Parliament adopted a law regulating the initial coins offering. At the other end of the world, the Minister of Finance of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Mtuli NCUBE, called on the Reserve Bank of the country to recognize virtual assets as official investment instruments, as the Swiss Central Bank did. Here and there in the world centers of the legislative activity break out, despite the fall in the value of the market for new financial assets. When 6 out of 116 economies in the world are concerned about the normative regulation of the same problem, this no longer seems a simple hype. Most likely, we are dealing with a trend - the transformation of the global economy.

The reasons that gave the authorities of these two countries an impetus to take care of the legalization of digital assets are different.

Minister of Finance of the Fifth Republic Bruno LE MAIRE said that the adoption of the ICO law was a part of President Emmanuel Macron's broader plan for business transformation and development. But whatever the wishes of politicians were, the fact that the most conservative legal system in Europe has turned its face to the digital market speaks volumes. And first of all, that the virtual assets are gaining investment popularity.

The only thing that deterred French entrepreneurs from investing money in these financial instruments is high risks due to a lack of transparency in the initial offering procedure. Now the order of information disclosure by the issuer of digital coins is about the same as for a standard IPO. The Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) is responsible for monitoring the information provided. The same agency will give permission for ICO if the projects represent sufficient guarantees for the client.

In this case, the law gives the following definition of virtual assets: “a digital coin is an intangible property that digitally represents one or more rights that can be issued, registered, stored or transferred using an electronic registration mechanism that, directly or indirectly, simplifies the identification of the owner of this property."

The second reason that gave the French authorities an impetus to legalize the ICO is the slowness of European officials. It turned out that the law was adopted as if to get under the skin of Brussels, where the meeting of the finance ministers of the European Union member states has been held recently, at which the issue of the circulation of virtual coins was discussed. Representatives of monetary authorities of the EU have not agreed on a single position regarding the digital market. The only result of the meeting is an agreement on studying and “mapping” the problem. Such a result, clearly, did not satisfy the French government, and it acted in its own way – it regulated the market of virtual currencies as saw proper. In this regard, conversations about the inner brexit of the Fifth Republic acquire an ever more tangible meaning.

The representatives of the authorities of Zimbabwe, naturally, have another motivation. A series of political crises led the country to the fact that one of the main economic problems was a shortage of cash. They have failed to overcome it with the help of additional emissions; the country is already frightened by hyperinflation. Therefore, digital coins are a real way out of a difficult financial situation.

"Zimbabwe should invest in innovative technologies, but often Central Banks react too slowly to the challenges of the times," - says Mtuli NCUBE. -"If other countries see the value in the turnover of virtual assets, then we also should see it."

The global market is changing. And this is an objective reality. The geopolitical and geo-economic ambitions of superpowers have shaken the traditional monetary system. The world is on the verge of an economic crisis. Fewer and fewer people believe in fiat money. But the digital reality offers an alternative - a new economy, independent of particular national interests. Intangible assets are turning from inconvenient assets into the only reliable tools to believe in economic stability. This is already understood by both the governments of the top-10 countries and by outsiders. But they do not speak it aloud yet.