The Vietnam Finance Minister has proposed a temporary ban on importation of crypto mining hardware. The minister says many of the mining rigs being imported into the country are being used to launch new digital currencies and other forms of payment. In a proposal issued Monday, the ministry says the cryptocurrencies being launched and crowding the market are hard to regulate.
According to figures issued by the ministry, more than 6,300 cryptocurrency mining rigs were imported into the country in first four months of 2018. This is in comparison to 2017, where a total of 9,300 rigs were imported in the whole year.
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Prime Minister’s directive
Earlier in April, the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Xuan, gave a directive for stricter regulation of the cryptocurrency market. Following the directive, credit institutions in the country stopped processing or facilitating cryptocurrency transactions. The Justice Ministry and financial regulators in the country are tasked with ensuring that digital currency stakeholders fully comply with anti-money laundering regulations in the country.
Ban on cryptocurrencies
Towards the end of 2017, the use of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment was declared illegal in Vietnam. However, this directive took effect in 2018. The government has been putting in place stringent measures to tame crypto activities in the country. The move claims to be aimed at protecting investors from cases of fraud and scam as well as preserve the financial integrity of the country, but is actually in place to protect the monetary monopoly of the Vietnamese regime.
In April, an alleged scam that led to the loss of $660 million involving two Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) is said to have been headed by a Vietnam-based outfit. Reports indicate that a total of 32,000 investors lost the money through the purchase of two ECR-20-standard tokens Pincoin and Ifan. If these reports are proven to be true, this will be the largest crypto-related scam ever witnessed.
The need for a robust digital currency regulation framework came to the fore in 2017 when tax authorities failed to get an indictment against a Bitcoin trader who had made quite a fortune as a result of the absence of a legal provision upon which the tax body could file charges of tax evasion.