Striga Technology is granted the first Crypto License since recent Estonian regulation.
On 20 September 2022, the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has granted Striga Technology OÜ the first license for Virtual Asset Service Providing (VASP).
Striga defines what they do as "Crypto native Banking as a Service".
Their goal is to facilitate a seamless integration between financial and crypto infrastructures.
The new legislation, "The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act", was passed and enacted in March 2022.
- The goal of this legislation was to reduce risk of financial crime by effectively regulating "Virtual Asset Service Providers".
- One of the results of this legislation created stricter regulations against Cryptocurrency providers.
- It seems that this legislation is particularly concerned with anonymous accounts and wallets offered by VASPs.
The legislation does not contain any measures to ban customers from owning and trading virtual assets and does not in any way require customers to share their private keys to wallets. The regulation does not affect individuals who own virtual currency through a private wallet not provided by a VASP. However, accounts opened with Estonian VASPs cannot be anonymous and Estonian VASPs cannot offer anonymous accounts or wallets - Estonian Ministry of Finance
I wasn't really familiar with the term "VASP" until this article and my other post about Israel granting their first license.
So what is a VASP? Sure, it clearly was stated that VASP is a Virtual Asset Service Provider...but what really is that?
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) defines VASP as "any natural or legal person who, as a business, conducts one or more of the following activities or operations for or on behalf of another natural or legal person:
- Exchange between virtual assets and fiat currencies;
- Exchange between one or more forms of virtual assets;
- Transfer of virtual assets;
- Safekeeping and/or administration of virtual assets or instruments
- enabling control over virtual assets; and
- Participation in and provision of financial services related to an issuer’s
- offer and/or sale of a virtual asset."
I love crypto, and obviously that means I am against unnecessary regulation.
I feel that regulating Crypto where it is no longer anonymous and identities must be provided goes against the whole point of crypto and decentralization.
Like I said in my post about Israel, this is awesome to see cryptocurrency adoption keep pushing on; despite these strict regulations!
Shoutout to all my Estonian friends!
See ya!
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Originally Posted on Publish0x