What is the legal status of Bitcoin in your country?

[bitzizzix]

In the country where I live bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are only allowed to invest and trade on cryptocurrency exchanges and are not allowed to be used as a means of payment, and only legal national currencies can be used for transactions.
for me it's not the most important problem I can still use bitcoin and other crypto even though it can't be used for transaction tools, because I can still use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to convert them into national currency so I can use any transaction, and maybe in the future bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be used for transactions because we will not know in the future there are only possibilities.

[kotajikikox]

Lucky that my country has no direct stand about crypto, it is not banned nor support but at least we are allowed to use, treade or even in business to operate and accpept bitcoin and cryptocurrency .
we are even giving the chance of using our local wallet often but of course with risk and own choice.
i don't know if the new administration comes if what will be the stand towards crypto , this will happen next year.

[o48o]

Legal.

Taxing for trading cryptos is a mess in here so i am avoiding it and mostly holding. But people are divided, there blockchain courses on universities and some people are excited about the possibilities. Most people in here don't understand it, but that doesn't surprise me because the whole concept was hard for me too when i was starting.

And obviously on the negative side there are people saying it's a scam or it's destroying the planet.

[Maxre]

In my country, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies should only be used for a store of value such as gold. our government already regulates crypto usage laws. So, crypto and bitcoin in our country can only be traded and cannot be a currency to buy goods and services. If someone is caught using bitcoin as currency (buying goods and services) it will be legally processed.

[lenovop-70]

Its legal as asset, but illegal as method of payment. There was confusion between illegal or not even as an asset, but ended up being legal with certain procedures. I think why the country is so fussy about it because there are a lot of money laundering processes in it. We all know that corruption is rampant here, and some of them are using blockchain to hide their assets.

[Rajamuda]

In my country... I just thought that Bitcoin would just be like a store of value and not as a local currency, but its functionality/benefits are just as powerful as a regular currency I guess.
Many people have been helped because of bitcoin's role for citizens, but it seems that the government in my country has not at all seen going to legalizing Bitcoin as a currency that can be transacted like local currency, it is only as an alternative currency to encourage the financial side of citizens, it still selling it to the local currency.

[Mikayla Buckley]

Normal use.
However, the government has not indicated that it is advocating the use or setting up Bitcoin as legal tender.
It is hoped that the government can notice the advantages of Bitcoin earlier.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

It's still on the neutral, the government doesn't do anything about it which is a good thing because I don't want them touching my crypto for taxes which only ends up being plundered and stolen by the politicians. And the good thing in my country is that I don't have to pay any taxes no matter how big my profit in crypto is since there's no law and the banks don't care about those and some of them support crypto.

[ene1980]

In my country, the trading of Bitcoin is not illegal. And it is not officially legal also. Because there are some regulations on the way and I assume we will see them before the end of this year. Until the regulations start being active, shopping with Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is illegal.

You said there is no legal framework for Bitcoin and why do you think it becomes illegal to accept them if there is no rules or regulations against Bitcoin. This is the misconception everyone has, if there is no law or regulations no one is stopping you from accepting them.

We can just trade our coins in crypto exchanges. I guess the government wants to tax the transactions while buying something with crypto but they can't do it as we are waiting for the regulations. However, it's not clear yet whether the government will let people buy something with Bitcoin after the regulations.

You are bound to pay the taxes if you are making the profit and you cannot get around from that. As long as you are making money you need to pay taxes.

[gabbie2010]

The Central Bank in my country has banned any third party exchange that deals with buying and selling of any cryptocurrencies related transactions, in an statement released by the Apex bank that any corporate body or individual caught in the act will have their bank account frozen, however thanks to anonymous and P2P transaction of cryptocurrencies which enable crypto traders, investors and hodlers to carry out transactions anonymous without any bank and government involvement, that is the visionary idea of Satoshi in action.

[CryptoYar]

How many countries have banned Bitcoin?

these few countries have still banned bitcoin.

Illegal	Restricted
Algeria	American Samoa
Afghanistan	China
Bangladesh	Egypt
Bolivia	Morocco
Republic of Macedonia	Nepal
Zambia	Qatar

Source: coin.dance

I know of Iran and China but I think they have unbanned it now?

I don't know much about Iran. In Iran, there is probably no restriction on mining, but in China mining is illegal. Nonetheless, there is no restriction on crypto trading so Chinese people can still trade BTC or other cryptocurrencies.

[bakasabo]

In my country it is legal to trade cryptocurrency. But, a person should declare all deals that gives him income (however they are not monitors, probably). If persons income exceeds 1000 EUR quarterly, he is obliged to pay income tax.

It seems like a free will to declare income and pay the tax. Because so far, government (hope so) can not check how much I trade, how successfully I trade and can not check, for example, that I get a reward from signature campaign.

[Lucius]

While in Croatia we don't have any specific crypto law, you can do pretty much do anything with it except pay taxes with it (AFAIK). So if you wanna report your trade profits, you would do it same as you would for stocks, while for example mining is taxed as 2nd income and the same would do for profits from signature campaigns (again AFAIK).

What is very positive for crypto investors is that capital gains tax is not necessary to pay, if at least 2 years have passed since the day of purchase. As for the possibility of paying with crypto, since it became available on bazzar.hr, we can buy literally everything that is normally sold online, along with all other online stores that accept crypto payment.

Overall, situation in Croatia is pretty good for crypto enthusiasts, especially since there are ways to legally buy/sell up to 2,000 euro worth of crypto per day from crypto exchanges without any sort of KYC but somehow I think that won't last for long and sooner or later we will be hit with more strict regulation. But well, at least we can enjoy while it lasts as i know that in many countries you can't do that anymore.

The choice of physical outlets where it is possible to buy/sell cryptocurrencies has really increased recently, and the fact that there is still no KYC can be thanked to our incompetent government (at least they are good at something) which has not yet adopted AMDL5 which should have come into force in early 2020. I agree that it is only a matter of time before that changes.

[Rikafip]

What is very positive for crypto investors is that capital gains tax is not necessary to pay, if at least 2 years have passed since the day of purchase.

Yep, so it's not really that hard to avoid taxes in Croatia (which are moderate, 10%) if you don't have issues hodling a little bit. But even with that relatively low tax rate, people tend to avoid paying taxes in Croatia, at least people around me and they don't even care about that 2 years thing.

The choice of physical outlets where it is possible to buy/sell cryptocurrencies has really increased recently, and the fact that there is still no KYC can be thanked to our incompetent government (at least they are good at something) which has not yet adopted AMDL5 which should have come into force in early 2020. I agree that it is only a matter of time before that changes.

Those are some of the rare perks of not living in the first-world country. Same reason why majority of people in Croatia are avoiding paying crypto taxes. That will change though, and few of my friends are already looking into possibility of moving to Portugal as they have zero taxes on crypto there.

[Lucius]

Yep, so it's not really that hard to avoid taxes in Croatia (which are moderate, 10%) if you don't have issues hodling a little bit.

10% + what we call surtax, which depends on where you live in the country - and as far as I can see in the capital surtax is as much as 18%.

That will change though, and few of my friends are already looking into possibility of moving to Portugal as they have zero taxes on crypto there.

I don’t know how smart that is, because laws can change at any time - and it’s also a question of whether there is any condition for a person to be exempt from paying crypto taxes (in terms of length of stay in the country). If I went to live in Portugal with a crypto I bought in another country, would that mean I don’t have to pay taxes if I sell that same crypto in Portugal?

[cheezcarls]

Some countries banned crypto assets totally, some banned mining, some allows even paying taxes with it and some doesn't allow purchasing goods using crypto assets.

The Republic of Turkey has a strict ban against using crypto assets as a way of payment or developing technological infrastructure for such use case. However, it is perfectly legal for individuals and businesses to buy/sell/mine/trade the crypto assets.

What is the situation in other countries that you know of? And do you think the world will start accepting it or will regulate and see it only as a "store of value" and not a currency?

Right here in the Philippines, it’s neither legal or illegal.

Although our country is one of the friendliest in the crypto and blockchain space, the SEC Philippines is treating cryptocurrencies as securities and not as legal tender.

Unionbank of the Philippines are having their first-ever regulated crypto ATM, numerous licensed virtual currency echanges (VCEs), Philippine Stock Exchange and GCash are also gonna be serious in adding crypto trading, the tremendous growth of P2E blockchain NFT games that helped the Filipinos during the pandemic and so on are the positives of it.

However, we’re still having lack of regulation for now especially the tax side. For now, we’re doing fine here in the Philippines.

[electronicash]

Philippines has just more things to fix than getting busy banning Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. but we Filiinos are grateful that SEC supports this innovation.

Some countries banned crypto assets totally, some banned mining, some allows even paying taxes with it and some doesn't allow purchasing goods using crypto assets.

The Republic of Turkey has a strict ban against using crypto assets as a way of payment or developing technological infrastructure for such use case. However, it is perfectly legal for individuals and businesses to buy/sell/mine/trade the crypto assets.

What is the situation in other countries that you know of? And do you think the world will start accepting it or will regulate and see it only as a "store of value" and not a currency?

your country has confusing laws for crypto. but i think this is because the the sharia laws?
it doesnt make sense to ban yet people can own and use it as currency in business. i once saw a thread from a guy in turkey who buy and sell coins so i guess its not really illegal.

[AicecreaME]

I belong in Southeast asian country, particularly the Philippines and the status of cryptocurrencies here is legal. Fortunately, our government is nice enough to allow and make the status and transactions on crypto legal. The cryptocurrency exchangers are regulated by the Central Bank of the Philippines under the Circular 944 to monitor if ever there are illegal activities happening such as money laundering acts.

However, the cryptocurrencies are not recognized by our central bank as a legitimate currency. They also stated the risks the cryptocurrencies possess because it isn't backed up by anything and isn't issued by them.

[Vaskiy]

In my country we haven't got a perfect statement from the government allowing the cryptocurrency usage as a legalized one. As of now there is no restrictions, earlier banks were given order not to have any transaction support for cryptocurrency related services. This looks more of a positive thing for the cryptocurrency adoption within the country. Right now more exchanges too have started their services all around the country. Right now things are on the right path.

[Koro-Sensei]

Some countries banned crypto assets totally, some banned mining, some allows even paying taxes with it and some doesn't allow purchasing goods using crypto assets.

The Republic of Turkey has a strict ban against using crypto assets as a way of payment or developing technological infrastructure for such use case. However, it is perfectly legal for individuals and businesses to buy/sell/mine/trade the crypto assets.

What is the situation in other countries that you know of? And do you think the world will start accepting it or will regulate and see it only as a "store of value" and not a currency?

Luckily, it was regulated. Specially the exchanges and luckily our government wasn't aggressive toward Cryptocurrency. I don't think that they know its full potential but im happy to say that my country makes Cryptocurrency legal. The problem is the max cash out by major exchange which is only a $100K a year not quite big but still tolerable. Other than that, there's no problem.
Another thing is that even though they allow and regulate it, they still warns the public about the risk it has. Major Fud still surrounds our country where people here think of BTC investment as a scam.