Israel Opens Proposed Crypto Rulebook for Public Comments, Here’s What We Know

The first week of 2023 has already seen several nations make strides in formulating laws to oversee the crypto sector. After the UK, Italy, and Morocco — Israel has moved a step closer to finalising a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and other sorts of virtual digital assets. The authorities there have opened the drafted crypto rules for comments from the public, before sealing them officially in the coming days. The date of February 12 has been set as the deadline for people to submit their reactions to the drafted laws.

The rules have been listed by the Israeli Securities Authority (ISA) after activities around crypto assets picked pace in the nation with estimated 200,000 holders and traders experimenting in the volatile industry from Israel.

Safeguarding investors of the crypto sector and mandating operational requirements for industry players looking to work with Israeli crypto investors are important points of focus for the government of the Western Asian nation, CoinTelegraph said in a report.

The proposed laws have further asked for an amendment in the term ‘securities’ to include virtual digital assets (VDAs) under the category.

The government of Israel is looking to impose sanctions on individuals as well as crypto companies that fail to obey the laws, once they come into effect.

For now, all the issuers of digital assets have been asked to submit a detailed document about their assets before getting them registered for trading.

Like other nations working on their respective crypto regulations, Israel too, is trying to devise ways to monitor the route of crypto transactions, which largely remain untraceable with the element of anonymity.

In November last year, Shira Greenberg, the chief economist of Israel submitted a detailed report proposing potential rules that may finetune the crypto industry in the Western Asian nation to its finance ministry.

The proposal included giving the Bank of Israel the authority to oversee transactions of stable digital assets.