engleski

Cryptocurrencies as (i)legal tender in North Macedonia and the EU

In recent years, cryptocurrencies have increasingly entered the mainstream as instruments of payment and even to a larger extent as investments. While it was difficult and technically challenging to invest in cryptocurrencies in their early days, today it is as simple as or often even simpler than investing in regular stocks, bonds or any number of financial instruments. The promises of cryptocurrencies are that they will allow for simple, easy, cheap, fast, secure and mostly anonymous transactions. While still no cryptocurrency has reached those targets to such an extent that, it could present serious competition to regular means of payment, a vast number of experts across the world, work to solve those issues and improve the quality of cryptocurrencies. However, the steep rise of cryptocurrency brought also a multitude of issues with it. Cryptocurrencies have been used for their quasi anonymity (pseudonymity) as means of payment of criminal organizations and for black market transactions. Furthermore, the international and decentralized nature of cryptocurrency enabled tax avoidance and evasion. An even worse occurrence was the use of cryptocurrency trading platforms for money laundering purposes. Most cryptocurrencies have proven to be unstable, some even up to the extent where their value was entirely artificially created through so called “pump and dump” schemes. In conclusion, cryptocurrencies show a lot of potential, but also present a serious risk for national fiscal and monetary interests, as well as consumer rights. Some countries addressed those issues by outright banning cryptocurrencies, while other preferred to regulate, monitor and tax them. While North Macedonia chose the former approach, the EU took a strong regulatory approachtowards cryptocurrency in the 5th Anti-money laundering Directive. The directive regulates providers engaged in exchange services between virtual currencies and fiat currencies as well as custodian wallet providers, which now must meet the same requirements as financial institutions. This paper compares the European approach with the stance of the Republic of North Macedonia. It attempts to highlights the advantages and risks of the respective approaches by addressing the regulatory impact of the existing legal frameworks on all stakeholders.

anti money laundering directive ; cryptocurrency ; blockchain ; terrorism financing ; cybercrime ; cryptocurrency exchange ; wallet

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