Important facts:
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Members of the ecosystem assure that the project is ready after a year of work.
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They believe that the adoption of legislation in Colombia is urgent.
The bill to regulate the Colombian cryptocurrency ecosystem is scheduled to be presented next February. That's what some of the community members around the country who have been working on the legislation since last year hope.
According to Mauricio Tovar's statements to CriptoNoticias, representing the South American country before the Ibero-American Blockchain Alliance, The project is finished and in the hands of the national executive. They hope it will be introduced in Congress when the legislative branch resumes activities.
After a break last December, the Colombian Congress will resume its activities on the 16th of next month. From this date the government has the opportunity to present the project in this way be included in the coming debates.
This is a proposal that they have been working on together since 2023 Members of the Bitcoin ecosystem and government authorities. The working group includes the Ministry of Finance, the Financial Supervisory Authority and the Bank of the Republic, as well as commercial organizations such as Colombia Fintech and Asoblockchain.
Everyone is hoping the project will be approved this time, after several proposals in recent years that failed to advance in Congress. A situation that the Colombian community is drawing attention to the urgency of legislation.
In this sense, Tovar and other members of the ecosystem have highlighted to representatives of the national government, the Congress of the Republic, the business sector and academics the importance of regulating the cryptocurrency industry once and for all.
Gabriel Santos, President of Colombia Fintech, share the idea and points out that it is time to regulate and provide users with legal certainty.
In a message in X Santos meetingImportant background is the recent approval of Bitcoin ETFs by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He hopes that this historic event will influence regulators in his country push for the passage of the law. “So that Colombia doesn’t get left behind.”
The Colombian government is ready to legislate
The Colombian government, in turn, is showing its willingness to pass laws. This was recently stated by Finance Minister Ricardo Bonilla. The official reiterated this while attending the Davos Forum The legislation has advanced.
“A project to regulate cryptocurrencies has been building on a worktable for several months,” he commented. This would be the proposal that everyone expects to be made public and that was presented last year by the Finance Commissioner César Ferrari.
The focus of the project is on establishing standards for the creation of virtual assets (AV) and for the operation of cryptocurrency exchanges. All of this is based on a clear definition of this type of asset.
The aim is to set requirements for the exchange to pass on information to the authorities as part of a regulation for the protection of personal data. This coupled with the “adoption of environmental, social and governance measures that would be determined by the state”.
These are a series of measures that appear to be in line with the needs of the sector, as proposed by the lawyer Camilo Gantiva Hidalgo, an expert in capital market transactions.
The expert exposed the six aspects in his opinion must be taken into account in the new regulation. This includes, among other things, the classification of crypto assets, the supervision of platforms, the comprehensive regulation of all companies in the industry (not just exchanges), consumer protection and the promotion of innovation.