The chief economist said the Supervisor of Financial Service Providers and the Israel Securities Authority should be granted more powers to oversee the industry.
Israel’s chief economic expert has laid out a list of recommendations on however policymakers ought to tackle digital asset laws within the country so as to safely go up crypto adoption.
In a 109-page report submitted to the Minister of Finance on November. 28, Shira Greenberg, chief economic expert at the Ministry of Finance, called for a more comprehensive restrictive framework that may bring commerce platforms and crypto issuers in line and would expand the powers given to its financial regulators.
Greenberg counseled Israel should improve capitalist certainty and protection by imposing stricter licensing needs on trading platforms and issuers of cryptocurrencies, still as ensuring funds originating from digital assets area unit more safely managed.
She also counseled the supervisor of financial service providers have broader powers to oversee licensing rules and develop a additional comprehensive taxation framework for the buying and selling of digital assets.
Expanded powers for the Israel Securities Authority were also counseled by Greenberg, who stated the powers were required so as to ascertain whether a digital asset falls within the scope of Israeli securities laws and to observe the activity of payment service providers within the crypto space.
In respect to legislation, Greenberg created mention of the necessity to implement specific licensing and direction rules for stablecoin issuers, along with a planned institution of an inter-ministerial committee to examine and regulate blockchain-based suburbanised autonomous organizations (DAOs).
She superimposed it absolutely was necessary that policymakers and lawmakers take under consideration the construct of technological neutrality once implementing digital asset-related rules.
Minister of Finance Avigdor Lieberman praised Greenberg for her work, stating the report “constitutes the foremost comprehensive and up-to-date report currently available on this issue for state use” in Israel which he expects the “report can function a basis for future decisions and legislation” on digital asset-related matters within the months to come.
Related: Israel’s regulator teases comprehensive crypto framework at icc
Despite Israel usually being mentioned as a tech-savvy nation, the country hasn’t shown to be too crypto-obsessed thus far, having graded 111th out of 146 countries in a recent international crypto adoption index conducted by blockchain data firm Chainalysis.
Greenberg also referenced knowledge in her report that states that Israeli residents have accounted for 21 million blockchain-based transactions in total, that solely equates to 0.04% of all crypto transactions worldwide.
Meanwhile, only a pair of of Israelis reported owning or using a crypto wallet.
More adoption seems to be on its means. The tel aviv stock exchange (TASE) recently proclaimed on oct. 24 that it intends to make a blockchain-based platform to expand its trading services to cryptocurrencies. within the same month, TASE also launched live tests for a pilot project involving the tokenization of digital bonds, that is expected to be completed in Q1 2023.
Government-issued licenses are finally being issued, too, with Israeli-based trading platform Bits of Gold turning into the first firm to receive a license from the Capital Markets Authority in September. 2022 to store digital currencies through their own secured custody wallet and supply certain digital asset-related services to banks.
(BRAYDEN LINDREA ,Cointelegraph, 2022)