Armenia to start licensing companies providing crypto services

YEREVAN, April 3. /ARKA/. Armen Nurbekyan, Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia, speaking at the Doing Digital 2024 forum, presented the regulator's program for regulating the cryptocurrency market, noting that the main goal is to balance the benefits and risks of distributed ledger technology (DLT).

"The Central Bank's main objective is to ensure a sustainable, equitable market for all companies to innovate, while at the same time protecting the interests of users and investors. This is what the Central Bank is striving for," he said.  

Nurbekyan said the Central Bank's goal is not to restrict the use of technology, but to create equal regulation for all technologies. This means that no matter what technology underpins financial services, they will be regulated equally, he said.  

He said that a special licensing system will be introduced for companies providing cryptocurrency services.

At the same time, he noted that the Central Bank prefers to talk about crypto-assets rather than cryptocurrencies. Nurbekyan admitted that the Central Bank's proposed solutions are based on the EU's Crypto Asset Regulation Act (MiCA), which is planned to be implemented in 2025 and has not yet been tested in practice.

According to Nurbekyan, central bank digital currencies (CBDC), non- fungible tokens (NFT) and non-convertible cryptoassets will not be subject to regulation. At the same time, crypto asset services will be regulated.

The Central Bank deputy chairman noted that if the crypto asset being created does not pursue a commercial purpose, for example, it is a token that only provides access to some services, then such an asset is not subject to regulation. -0-