Bitcoin Forum

While bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are being accepted by some countries as a legal tender, and some other countries ignoring it and not having any serious rules prohibiting its citizens from venturing into the prospects of crypto, some other countries of the world still have strong policies and laws prohibiting and banning it.

Here's a list of some countries with some strong policies and laws against crypto.

(1) China - Since 2017, there has been a ban on all domestic and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges.

(2) Russia - Since Jan 2021, the Russian government issued a new statement stating that it's citizens can own and trade with crypto, however, they will not be allowed to use it as a legal tender for goods or services  within the country.

(3) Iran - Since 2018, the Iranian authorities issud a law prohibiting financial institutions from dealing on and with bitcoin and other cryptocurrency.

(4) Morocco - The Moroccan authorities forbids its citizens from using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for transaction in the country.

(5) Egypt – since 2018, “, the  legislators in Egypt, issued a total ban against bitcoin and cryptocurrency and completely prohibited its use.

(6) Nigeria - Most recently, this country joined the list. The government of the country has issued a warning to financial institutions to stop activities with crypto exchanges and also threatens to arrest individuals who try to use their bank accounts to transact with crypto exchanges.

(7) Colombia - There is a order in Colombia by the government to financial institutions not to work with individuals or companies that use bitcoin and other related cryptocurrencies.

Others countries on the list are; Cambodia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Nepal etc
(Feel free to add your own)

Do you see this list getting shorter soon?

AFAIK China only ban ICO and shutdown Bitcoin mining, but people can still holding Bitcoin [1]

Iran is allowing Bitcoin mining and had Bitcoin ATMs,  so it means Bitcoin is legal on Iran [2]

Morocco and Egypt ban Bitcoin due to religion (most of them is muslim) but I believe in the future they will allow Bitcoin, since many countries with majority of muslim (e.g. Pakistan, iran, etc) are legal now.

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[1] https://www.mondaq.com/china/fin-tech/944330/regulation-of-cryptocurrency-in-china
[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nasdaq.com/articles/is-iran-becoming-a-bitcoin-nation-2020-11-04%3famp

China has the biggest bitcoin mine in the world, never thought that they were going to shut it down.
Hopefully we can see them lifting the ban because I do not see any problems that might conflict with their faith, knowing that most of the countries with Muslim faith are already accepting bitcoin. Morocco is a US friendly country so I think that they will have no problem accepting bitcoin in their system or any foreign system for that fact.

I am from Pakistan and its very easy to trade buy and sell BTC in my country now since 2 years. I believe this list will get shorter as when digital currency take over, other countries who banned crypto will have to legalize it.

Still hard to stop bitcoin's growth though, maybe some countries have issued a total blanket ban, but I'm sure some of their population will just go underground to go and have BTC. So it doesn't matter if the list grow or not. What's important is that bitcoin and the rest of crypto market is now the most sought asset by anyone and governments cannot stop that. And just imagine if bitcoin is treated a reserved asset, those government that are anti-bitcoin will be left out in the closest while the rest of the world is moving digital.

For sure it will. But other list - "bitcoin extreamly restricted" will grow. Countries where you will be able to hold BTC only on registered address, transfer it only to other registered address or exchange licenced in given country.

Nigeria will not hold bitcoin ban. Its just short term.

With Paypal, Tesla, Mastercard and others in the crypto world, plus those to come, I believe that little by little, Bitcoin will be clearly legal almost everywhere in the world. Another thing is that it will be extremely regulated and the anonymous part will be less and less.

Bitcoin is highly resistant to censorship.  It is near-impossible for any country's attempt to ban it to have a major effect.  For their censorship to have a major effect they would have to:

1.  Attempt to restrict P2P exchanges like LocalBitcoins (which only highly oppressive regimes like China are capable of)
2.  Trace Bitcoin transactions as well as they possibly can in an attempt to catch out anyone using Bitcoin.

Realistically, people are going to use Bitcoin semi-anonymously regardless of what bans are in place.  In China, BITMAIN is producing thousands of ASICs and contributing to the economy.  Countries will only restrict Bitcoin as far as they believe it is practical and will prevent crime, which is not very far.

Some countries are extremely aggressive when it comes to protecting national currencies and see BTC as competition that needs to be suppressed in any way. Some other countries just want to protect their citizens from all possible scams that have become very common - because people do not want their government to interfere in such investments, but when they become victims of scams they seek help from state institutions.

A random look at the list set by the OP shows that more or less these countries are not very developed in terms of education, human rights and freedoms - so how do you expect them to accept something over which they have no complete control.

I don't expect that list to be shortened, because that would mean that most countries in the world think the same - and the world has never agreed and united on anything, so it won't on whether Bitcoin is good or bad.

In any nation, over the globe, you are free to hold your bitcoin in your bitcoin non-custodial wallet. Government don't touch you and put you into jail if you did not make any crime to get your bitcoin.

Bitcoin selling/ exchanging is different and it is the most common restriction from government. They only do restrictions to make locals

• Fear of bitcoin
• Fear of pressure and law regulations from governments that can put them into prisons.
• Accept CBDC more than bitcoin or cryptocurrency

This Coindesk article from last month definitely reports that Irans attitude to mining
is thawing but with mixed approaches. They are definitely seeing the benefits of a decentralised
asset as a means of side-stepping sanctions and creating revenue.

https://www.coindesk.com/inside-irans-onslaught-on-bitcoin-mining

Not surprised. What else can you expect from a country that shamelessly operates as totalitarianism and has imbued with personality cultism?

What's wrong over here? In general, most of the countries never declared bitcoin or any crypto currencies as a legal tender. I think only few (maybe?) selected countries consider bitcoin as a legal tender.
So can their people do p2p trading? Or is that banned too?

Heard about this. Quite surprising to be honest. I remember reading somewhere that Nigeria had a huge community of bitcoin users. I wonder why the government put a ban all of a sudden.
At least the list isn't that big. What I have noticed is that countries that aren't politcally stable (or act like they are polictically stable) are the ones that had banned bitcoin. Wouldn't be surprised if it had to do something with existing "corruptions".

I don't know if you are correct with China but I think it is not totally prohibited, I have some friends who invested and using bitcoin and other coins like ETH and XRP , they even have a large number of that in their wallet, and take not Binance and Huobi are top exchanges who are based in China, maybe there will be some restrictions in that country but they are not totally agains or not friends to bitcoin.

India should be added on this list because they are planning to have total ban for cryptocurrencies soon similar like Nigeria, unless something changes in last moment.
Their neighbor Pakistan is opposite from them as usual and they are even using government funds to mine bitcoin, and long term list of friendly countries will grow.

As far as I know in Iran bitcoin mining is on the state level... Iran is using bitcoin to circumvent U.S. sanctions... Here is one of the articles (https://decrypt.co/46678/bitcoin-miners-in-iran-have-a-new-buyer-the-central-bank) that says the central bank should buy bitcoins from miners... I don't know how much credence can be given to this, but there has been talk about it for over a year...

Some countries are extremely aggressive when it comes to protecting national currencies and see BTC (https://bitcointalk.org/) as competition that needs to be suppressed in any way. Some other countries just want to protect their citizens from all possible scams that have become very common - because people do not want their government to interfere in such investments, but when they become victims of scams they seek help from state institutions.

Yes, not so long ago Nigeria had been included to such kind of list, and it is really the situation there is unsuitable for crypto users even to mine, because you can not use your crypto assets, it is a pity. And hope this strict decision and regulation will change very soon. In my opinion this list may become longer, this is always the case. But nowadays we see such a tendency like famous persons and influential organizations started promote Bitcoin, invest into BTC or accept it as the means of payment. So I hope that such a positive trend will shorten the list of countries that is not friendly to Bitcoin and crypto.

About the arrest of people transacting Bitcoin in Nigeria, the government hasn't made any arrest yet, and account freezing of accounts used to transact Bitcoin has just been an online news, but the authenticity is that there has been a ban on crypto-currency in Nigeria, crypto-currency has made many youth and elderly self-employed in Nigeria but the great reality is Bitcoin can not be truncated in Nigeria.

It's not all black and white. China is quite a hostile place, but crypto mining is still concentrated there. As for Russia, it's cool that trading is allowed, and not recognizing Bitcoin as legal tender is a very typical policy for regulating cryptocurrencies. As for Nigeria, I hope this will be overwritten soon because Bitcoin seems to be quite important there.
To the list of unstable countries I'd also add India who keeps introducing and removing the ban of cryptos.
In many countries Bitcoin and cryptos in general remain in the gray area when they're neither legal nor illegal, so these countries could also be added to the list (especially since Russia is there), but I think that this lack is regulations is actually not that bad for the community of crypto users.

In my country, which you have listed already (Bangladesh), if anyone found to be an user of cryptocurrency, will be punished to 10 years of prison and with some fine too.
That's stupid. Bangladesh govt is blaming crypto and not legalizing it with an argument that money laundering will increase. The reality is the rate of money laundering is very high in our country and with cryptocurrency, it can be reduced actually.

*where is India, it seems like it was discussed here...
I agree with @Jawhead999, China is not banned Bitcoin, China is only banned ICO from its country because it indicates fraudulent investment, at that time ICO fraud was rampant.

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*btw, countries that are banned by Bitcoin from their countries are countries that are difficult to develop

It could take a while. There are countries that aren't even sure that they really want to ban Bitcoin.
Back then, I can still remember when there was a proposal to ban Bitcoin in India. I can't fully recall the whole article but it mentions around that line of "proposal".

I think the opposite is going to happen first, the list is going to get longer, governments are afraid of the potential of cryptocurrencies especially bitcoin and they are realizing that they cannot ignore it anymore because now even some of the most powerful and richest individuals around the world are putting attention to it and they are holding large quantities of it.

They want to do something about it but they know that they cannot get rid of bitcoin directly so most likely what we're going to see is more strict regulations around the world about the use of cryptocurrencies and the need to go through know your customer policies in order to acquire it, it is going to slow adoption especially when it comes to paying your taxes, something that is already complicated, and they are hoping to buy time until they can find a way to finally put a stop to all of this, but as long as they keep their monetary policies then the incentive for people to keep investing in bitcoin is still going to be there.

I thought Saudi Arabia is good with bitcoin because I just did a google search "Saudi Arabia Bitcoin" the past week because my aunt is working there. Never really talked too much before then I ask her about it but she don't know anything about it. Then I did the googe search so I though it is fine.

Maybe the government hate it? and people can still trade or invest in it? Saw some articles talking about their government giving warning about the users of it.

To be honest this isn't nice, China banning bitcoin mining will reduce the rate at which bitcoin is been mined, about 70%+ of all bitcoin miners are in China, and it seems the government don't want their citizens to get involved in any ICO's either, dictatorship government over there, SMH.
I was really hoping for the list to get shorter until Nigeria decided to add to list, their reasons for stopping those financial institutions from transacting with crypto exchanges is just stupid (no good reason), but it seems at the end of the day P2P will come in very handy now, I just hope the next government will see the light in crypto and revert this law.

Lots of countries are just quiet on their stand with regards to Bitcoin usage and adoption on which they are still not clear if they are willing to deal with it or they will be against it. The list just provides the common countries that have already stated their stands about Bitcoin and most of those have already been talked about here around the forum so some are quite familiar already with those countries included on that list. Hoping that sooner or later the list will be shorter and many countries would already open up their vicinity to Bitcoin usage and adoption for it is taking too hard for their people wanting to use Bitcoin but being prohibited because of their country's policy.

With popular companies such as Tesla and PayPal integrating crypto in their system, I believe some of them will change their stance on crypto.
Most of them have no clear grasp on how crypto or blockchain tech works, so they don't know how to react on this new technology.
But I am more than positive, that some of them will change their perspectives regarding crypto, now, that a lot of reputable and known companies are out to support crypto.

This year should be able to make countries that are not friendly to Bitcoin can change their mind. Because this year not only has the price of Bitcoin
gone up, but several large companies decided to invest in Bitcoin. This proves Bitcoin does have a bright future, because it is impossible for large
companies to invest in Bitcoin without careful calculations. So it is a pity if there are still countries that still reject Bitcoin. I am optimistic that in
the near future the number of countries that are unfriendly to Bitcoin will decrease.

Can you name a specific country in which Bitcoin is accepted as a legal tender? I doubt you can name even one. So this line is a bit misleading. It is one thing to be legal; it is quite another to be a legal tender.

There are countries where Bitcoin is regulated and, therefore, allowed within certain bounds but definitely not as a legal tender. Meaning to say, Bitcoin may be accepted by certain business establishments and a few or some of their clients or customers but it is optional. In other words, people cannot pay in Bitcoin if the business establishment does not want to accept it.

China will never adopt other cryptocurrency because they want to make their own.

Other countries' reason why they don't engage on bitcoin is that they think it is a scam and full of crimes.

Also governments doesn't want to regulate a certain coin that has a lot of value in it and they are not a fan of Defi which makes them hate it.

But that is the thing, that will make sense I admit it, with more institutional investors coming to this market and with the support they're showing to the industry some countries could change their stance about the way they feel about bitcoin, but that is not a sure thing and if anything we could see the opposite reaction, governments could see in bitcoin an even bigger threat than they thought at first and instead of becoming accepting of it they could become even more entrenched in the position to not accept it.

And this is a real scenario especially when we take into account the difficult economic situation the world economy is going through because of the pandemic, so I really expect the list to get longer before it gets shorter.

I am from Indonesia and I don't think our government isn't friendly to Bitcoin. Accepting Bitcoin doesn't always mean it should be legal for the payment tool in a country. In my country, Bitcoin is legal for a digital asset and our government support it by making a specific regulation to make all Bitcoin users and local exchanges safe joining it. Once the government makes a regulation or policy, it doesn't mean ignoring or against Bitcoin, their purpose is to secure all the society. If the government does not care about the bitcoin bussines, they won't make a specific regulation or policy on it, instead they simply announce to ban it, right?

Regarding why Bitcoin cannot be a payment tool in my country, we have a strong reason. The laws only allow Rupiah (our national currency) to be a payment tool. Even the dollar cannot be a payment tool here because it is not allowed and no stores accept it. You must do the same as Bitcoin, go to the bank and convert it to Rupiah.

Related source:
- http://www.gbgindonesia.com/en/main/legal_updates/mandatory_use_of_rupiah_in_indonesia.php

Irrespective the reactions of governments, even though some countries rise against btc at least (10) countries across the world ban crypto network, that can never stop's the increments of cryptocurrency, the only effects I saw with all this their banning crypto newa is that some people will now be afraid of bitcoin via investment, but with all these bitcoin still adding efficient values everyday and every weeks,

The list is not accurate. Russia has recently adopted a very friendly stance towards cryptocurrency, despite opposing it in the beginning. A few days back they introduced a regulation to tax cryptocurrency. Details can be found here:

https://www.coindesk.com/russia-lower-house-approves-crypto-taxation-bill-in-first-reading

The same goes for Iran as well. After opposing Bitcoin for a long time, the government recently introduced some reconciliatory measures. They have realized that Bitcoin can be an useful tool to combat the sanctions and embargoes. On the other hand, India is about to introduce perhaps the most draconian legislation against cryptocurrency anywhere in the world. India should be on top of the list.

I'm very sure India will implement the ban on cryptocurrencies in our country sooner, the government of both countries knows exactly their respective reasons for ban, but to Nigeria citizens, the government is just against the youths in winnings the endsars battle case in court, according to one of the member of this forum.

     Most of the countries being mentioned only have some minor restrictions that are pointed at crypto currencies and have not released statements that express their plans of restricting any crypto currency to enter in their country or a comolete ban. Now regarding the list getting shorter, definitely possible. Even those countries with minor restrictions may even reduce these restrictions since more and more countries are favoring bitcoin along with other crypto currencies out there.

If you view all the listed countries that have hard one form of ban on bitcoin/cryptocurrency you will see that their follow one line of action that is public acceptance of bitcoin through their financial institutions just a few other actually ban it citizens from usage. This is so because the government can't control bitcoin just like their are controlling they traditional currencies which is always suffering from inflation and illegal money printing. Bitcoin is way ahead of the government manipulation.