News: Glut of cryptocurrencies, or where to buy cryptocurrency and not go to jail?

Relevant digest for legal regulation of turnover of cryptocurrencies as of the end of January 2018

According to many world news publications, 2017 has become a year of cryptocurrency. Based on the statistics published by the service "Google", search queries dedicated to crypto-currencies took the third place, ahead of search queries about "Apple", new cars, etc.

In turn, regulators from around the world that previously preferred not to notice a rapidly growing market of cryptocurrency are forced to react to this phenomenon. In this digest, we briefly reviewed legal regulation of cryptocurrency in 73 countries around the world.

To begin with, we conditionally divide all countries into 4 categories, depending on positions accepted or expressed by their regulator:

➯ Crypro-friendly (a country is actively engaged in legalization of cryptocurrencies, or the latter already have an official status): Australia, Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Venezuela, Germany, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Georgia, Denmark, EU (in general), Israel, India, Iran, Spain, Canada, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Isle of Man, Poland, USA, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, Philippines, Finland, France, Switzerland, Sweden, South Africa, South Korea, Japan.

➯ Not forbidden (countries, state bodies that are somewhat wary of turnover of cryptocurrency, however, citizens are not prosecuted for transactions related to cryptocurrencies): Armenia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Iceland, Kazakhstan, China, Colombia, Lithuania, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine, Estonia.

➯ Forbidden (crypto-currencies are forbidden, any operations with them are illegal): Algeria, Bolivia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Ecuador.

➯ Crypto-vacuum (there is no specific position of a regulator regarding cryptocurrency): Greece, Italy, Latvia, Malaysia, Portugal and others …