Bitcoin Forum

This might be a bit niche as a topic, but it might be of interest to some. In short the head of money laundering bureau in Estonia has gone to media with the suggestion to either revoke or review all crypto licenses issued in the country. For context Estonia houses about 400 companies that own crypto license.

As of right now it is merely an idea but one which is held by a head of a powerful organization in the country. It is also published during a time when Estonian government is trying to pass a law which makes it harder for companies to recieve a crypto license.

For anyone interested here is the link to the article: https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/94821441/pauk-kruptoarile-rahapesu-andmeburoo-juht-soovib-tuhistada-koik-tegevusload-sest-eestit-varitseb-oht. The arcticle is in Estonian and behind a paywall but for anyone interested I can translate parts of it if needed.

They are one of the most crypto friendly countries in my opinion. If I'm not mistaken as early as 2017, some crypto projects wanted to move to Estonia because of that reason.

Maybe it grew too big for the government to really monitor everything that's why they wanted to review it. Hopefully though, it doesn't mean the total shutdown of exchanges and financial services in the country, otherwise if could be a big blow to crypto market in general.

I don't know more than what the OP wrote, but is this anything different from what South Korea did recently, which Japan has done on several occasions? Being friendly about something must never mean that everyone should be allowed to do what they want and in whatever way they want. The reason why Estonia is considering revising all licenses is certainly that they have found that there are a lot of irregularities in the work of all these companies - and I would not be surprised if there is no pressure from abroad on their regulatory agencies.

Whatever happens will not significantly affect Bitcoin, as some companies may be denied a license, but that only means that it will move to another country - if Bitcoin has survived China, there is no doubt that it will survive Estonia as well.

No doubt it will not have a huge impact. The reason I posted this was that this plan might be of interest to some non-Estonian speaking persons who operate their crypto business in there. Just that the eventual scrutiny from government would not be a total surprise

Estonia is one of the country that made its early entry into cryptocurrency. Importantly it is the country that prioritised blockchain adoption. The governments management infrastructure too is incorporated with blockchain technology.

Estonia is crypto friendly country because it gave easy access for cryptocurrency companies to register and receive license in a very short time period. Now the same might be getting harder as the country's adopting cryptocurrency is growing with time. Maybe Estonia might've not achieved what is being planned which seems to be the reason for the review over the issued licenses. This might create some deviation in the market.

1."Crypto friendly" countries can become not-so-crypto friendly pretty fast.Sad but true.
2.It's no big deal that many companies might lose their license in Estonia.
They will have to move to another country,so I don't think that this would be a "big blow" for the cryptocurrency industry.
3.Estonia is a small country with a population of less than 2 million people.The Estonian market is really small,and most crypto companies currently operating in Estonia are focused on the global market.This means that Estonia isn't important for the crypto industry,despite being one of the first crypto friendly countries in the world.

In 2020, Estonia's Financial Intelligence Unit also conducted a massive license revocation (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/12/15/estonia-has-withdrawn-licenses-from-over-1000-crypto-companies-this-year/) operation due to the burden of monitoring compliance.

Apart from Singapore, Estonia is often a top destination for crypto companies to obtain licenses even though they mainly target services overseas. This is shown by the many counseling service sites how to get a license in that country. As far as I know the country's favorite companies are crypto exchanges and casinos.

Apparently, Estonia just wants cryptocurrency to be outlawed. As for me, this is a rather interesting event.

Every serious company always has a backup plan, and since we are only talking about the headquarters of the companies here, moving to another country is not a problem for most of them. Also, the Estonian authorities are certainly communicating with all these companies and they are aware of what is expected of them - and I am sure it will give them enough time to adjust.

Yet this may be an opportunity for some companies to consider moving to some other, for crypto much cheaper and warmer regions, like El Salvador.

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@noorman0, I wasn’t sure, but it was somewhere in my subconscious that something similar had already happened in that country, thanks for the reminder ;)

I just finished reading two other articles ^{[#1 (https://cointelegraph.com/news/estonian-regulator-wants-to-revoke-all-crypto-exchange-licenses) and #2 (https://news.err.ee/1608367998/anti-money-laundering-chief-cryptocurrency-licenses-should-be-revoked)]} that listed all of the reasons behind that move and from where I'm standing, it does look like they just want a piece of the pie ^{[main objective]} while mentioning a few other stuff to make it less obvious!

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Something like that... They've given more licenses in comparison to the whole of Europe:

• Quote from: https://news.err.ee/1608367998/anti-money-laundering-chief-cryptocurrency-licenses-should-be-revoked
  At present, the RAB estimates there are around 400 companies in Estonia, population 1.3 million, who hold a cryptocurrency provider's license, a figure higher than the rest of the EU combined.
  
  Singapore, with a population over four times that of Estonia and one of the world's key financial centers, has issued only one such license to date, while the U.K., population nearly 68 million and also a key financial center via London, has issued 12 and Malta, well-known as a center for online gambling, both physically on-site and in the issuing of licenses to companies based elsewhere, has issued less than 20, BNS reports.

They probably have their reason to do so. I haven't read the article, but I guess its because they have a weak regulatory framework and its becoming hard for the government to keep track of everything?
Revoking or reviewing licensing doesn't mean that they want to outlaw crypto currencies.
I thought bitcoin and other crypto currencies are for everyone. Just because they have a small population you can't go around saying that Estonia isn't important for crypto industries.

I think that this comes form the fact that the country has been a safe paradise for a lot of crypto companies over the last couple of years, and this has been growing even more, and the government has gotten overwhelmed by the transactions that the would have to monitoring and investigation and attention that will be costing them money at the end of the day, so them passing laws to limit the licensing is highly understandable.

It's good to see that the Financial Intelligence Unit regularly withdraws crypto licenses from untrustworthy companies.

I am familiar with the "MODERNITYPARTY (https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/14831182/)" company which is currently registered in Estonia and is incorporated as "UTRUST". A year ago, its team suddenly decided to swap their tokens. In short, they sent a large amount of new tokens directly to the Etherdelta smart contract and actually burned my tokens. As a result, I lost about 8000 USD at the current price. I contacted the official Customer Success Manager via Telegram, provided him the transaction hash, but in the end he just fell silent. As far as I know, many people who traded on decentralized exchanges have also suffered extensive financial damage. I even created a Scam Accusation thread on the Bitcointalk forum.

I personally would be glad to hear that the Estonian regulatory agency has revoked the crypto license that UTRUST obtained. I believe that other companies that commit fraud should also be shut down to protect people from impudent scammers hiding behind legal entities.

Anyway, such companies usually operate with their native tokens, so the next wave of revocations is unlikely to significantly affect the BTC price.

Estonia used to be the country where most crypto service and companies want to register their brands to. But it appears that Estonia has had a change of outlook on crypto, and wants to control or limit licenses that they give out to companies. Surely there must be a triggering factor from all of this sudden change of heart on crypto. Perhaps the influx of scam companies or complaints that they receive from businesses registered ln their country. They're getting good money from those licenses surely that they'd suddenly stop is really intriguing.

Does this one man alone has the power to do this? Or does he need support from the government or parliament? It's so common in crypto journalism to have a title that talks about a country, but when you open the article it says literally one official stated their own opinion.

But I wonder what made them consider such move? Is Estonia becoming a hub for international money laundering via crypto, or is it a purely domestic thing?

this is the kind of thing that just embarrasses the head of some institution in a country like Estonia. because instead of messing around and taking meaningless radical measures he could be looking at ways to monitor companies that have licenses so that things like money laundering would not happen. even before cryptocurrencies existed money laundering existed, he cannot act as if money laundering happened with only cryptocurrencies

It will, soon as their SEC like agency do monitor and pass regulation requirements for those companies then we will see like a south korea way, where quality over quantity which lots of exchanges and didn't/can't comply the requirements that leads to shutting them down I suppose.

Most likely there are crypto based exchange in Estonia that adheres to their local laws, hence they are able to go with their normal business as usual.

But I think the target by the government or their financial regulatory bodies is those fly by night exchanges as they take advantage of Estonia being 'crypto friendly'. But I believed the cleansing will not effect the market and it might do good in the long term.

If a country is trying to pass a law which would make a crypto license difficult to obtain, it doesn't mean those who got theirs earlier and therefore a lot easier are off the hook. The regulations have been tightened. It would be natural for the regulators to look back and review those that are already operating after complying very simple requirements only. Especially in the case of Estonia where companies having crypto license are numbering to the hundreds, it would indeed be prudent to conduct a review of the existing licenses.

This is really unfortunate Estonia was a crypto friendly country and there was a good opportunity for a lot of companies to operate freely but now more restrictions will be imposed I hope there is no blanket ban on cryptocurrencies, some bad people who use crypto to launder money are the ones who caused this but I do not think that this news will have a significant impact on Bitcoin, as we saw how Bitcoin bypassed the Chinese ban and returned to the rise again, even though Estonia is not comparable to China in terms of economic impact.

This is just fine since they had so many people who are getting those crypto licenses lately and they wanted to review it. Bad news for those who took this thing to their advantage and get those licenses from the wrong source and pay huge money with that. As someone already said, as long as it is not something like China did, it's totally fine. Maybe some other countries should do something like it as well to avoid illegal activities using the name of cryptocurrencies.

Well considering the number of crypto projects they'd have, there'd probably be quite a bit of backlash on them though I think if they really wanted to push ahead, they'd pretty much be able to even considering the possible damages they could incur. Though honestly, I'd rather have them consider adopting new regulations instead and re-examine the current licenses that are registered under their country, certainly a lot more work, but they do retain the benefits after all. Not that damaging with concerns to Bitcoin or crypto price in general really, it's more of damaging instead to the companies themselves.

I support their move. if you see it is very easy to get a crypto license from that country. so if they make regulations to tighten it this will be good for the market. so the company that gets the license is a really good company. not like now, so it's a good move. they should have done it sooner, if they had done it a few years ago, it might have had a big impact.

It's bit surprising to hear this sort of news from one of the most crypto friendly nations but again every land has their own law and they are doing this to avoid or reduce money laundering and I don't think we should be worried about it since not all the crypto organization indulge in such acts and measure are necessary but it's shouldn't be like what china does everytime. This law will only bring more genuine crypto projects to Estonia and keep the scammers or illegal peddlers away which is good for us.

Why is everyone surprised about this?

Estonia used to have those online registrations where you paid a few euros and you get your licensed company, so 99% of the scammers trying to portrait an air of legitimacy for their business did so with that license. Just how now they are using Uk business licenses that cost the same same.
This is from last year
https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-scammers-plague-estonias-e-residency-program

Just search the forum for Estonia and scams, there are tens of those that were revealed just here, I know at least two wallet providers that were advertising here had such business licenses, and guess what happened to them. Plus a so-called cloud mining company that claimed to be legit and had a real license. Let's count the ICOs? Who has the time for that, maybe Methuselah!

As far as I know Estonia is one of the countries that got involved in cryptocurrency early on. It is important that the country has prioritized adoption for the use of blockchain. The government regulatory infrastructure is also combined with blockchain technology these are bold moves by Estonia. Moreover, Estonia is also a crypto-friendly country as it allows companies to make money. easily register to use and receive a license in a very short period of time, quickly and conveniently. Also we can't forget to mention Singapore, which is also one of the countries that I know they are very crypto-friendly.

Earlier it was easier for the companies to get a license as majority of the licenses were procured by agents and i am sure corruption was really big as they would usually provide any license if you are willing to spend money. If they are really reviewing the licenses that they issues that does not mean anything because they will somehow regain the license even for shady companies, in short money talks.

And if they will at least be strict about it, I think, it is about time.
We all know in this community, that if a project wants a crypto license, most of the time they resort to acquiring from Estonia or other crypto-friendly countries.
And I believe, getting it from Estonia has one of the affordable rates and easiest in this market.
But you are right, with the corruption involved, I don't think it will be very effective.
The price may just jump up a lil bit but still these project owners can just buy their way in.
We will know if the rates will be affordable, if these project owners will still purchase their license from this country or they will find another country with cheaper fees.

this is only a small blow for Bitcoin due to the actions of the Estonian government which has made the decision to partially revoke crypto licenses. The price of bitcoin will not be destroyed if the Estonian government revokes most of the crypto licenses in the country, so we don't have to worry about the actions taken by the Estonian government.
The price of bitcoin will continue to rise from year to year as the times and along with the increase in population around the world.

Estonia is not alone in being hard on crypto exchanges. There are other countries that are difficult and putting hard requirements and compliance to these businesses.
For example, South Korea, they've been one of the crypto havens before but just this year, a lot of privacy tokens have been delisted on the exchanges there as the first step. Next is about the taxation and other regulatory requirements that will also remove a lot of exchanges operating there.

If Estonia revokes some company license, what has it do to the valuation, i am not sure what is your calculation in this aspect. The price is determined by the market and if a whale wants to short the market with a new like this, it is possible he could create panic in the market.

You cannot expect the price to rally ever year, if you are new here in the market, you should accept the fact that there will be time when the market goes down drastically and it might even take years to recover during a bear run :P.