Estonian Supreme Court Rules Against Bitcoin Trader

By April 12, 2016Bitcoin Business

The Estonian Supreme Court has ruled in favor of restrictions on bitcoin trading activity in the wake of a lawsuit filed by a digital currency broker.

The ruling , which came in the wake of a long-running lawsuit that began as a inquiry into the legality of bitcoin, means that traders face new barriers for dealing in digital currencies in the European state.

The suit traces back to 2014, when bitcoin brokerage operator Otto de Voogd was first contacted by Estonian police in connection with the operation of BTC.ee. De Voogd later suspended the service, citing threats of fines and jail time from the police.

In a Reddit note , de Voogd declared that Estonia was now "the worst country in EU for bitcoin, blockchain tokens and assets".

Of particular note are restrictions on how exchange services in Estonia must interface with their customers. The court ruling affirms that regulation of alternative methods of payment include bitcoin, given its characteristics – a move that brings it under the country’s anti-money laundering (AML) statutes, even if it is not explicitly spelled out.

De Voogd told CoinDesk: "This means that whenever a business trades more than 1,000 euros worth of bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, blockchain tokens or blockchain assets, they must meet their customer face to face. In practice this makes any e-business impossible. It also makes it impossible to serve customers that live further away or in other countries." Unfriendly territory

Estonia has long been considered an unfriendly jurisdiction for digital currencies, tracing back to a January 2014 statement from an official for the country’s central bank, who called bitcoin a "problematic scheme".

Estonia later pushed for value-added tax (VAT) in the European Union to be applied to the full value of bitcoin trades, when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was weighing the issue.The ECJ […]

Leave a Reply

All Today's Crypto News In One Place