The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working on legislative changes that will ban peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC).
On July 2, the ministry published an official announcement on Telegram about new laws that would ban P2P crypto exchanges for individuals.
Citing a high rate of cybercrime in Belarus, the agency said local prosecutors had suppressed the activities of 27 citizens offering “illegal crypto exchange services” since January 2023. Their total illicit earnings amounted to nearly 22 million Belarusian rubles ($8.7 million).
The ministry argued that crypto P2P services “are in demand by scammers who pay out and convert stolen funds and transfer funds to organizers or participants in criminal activities.”
To prevent such illegal activities, the ministry will ban individuals from P2P and allow them to exchange cryptocurrencies only through exchanges registered with Belarus Hi-Tech Park (HTP). The regulator stated:
“The MFA is working on legislative innovations that would ban crypto exchange transactions between individuals. For reasons of transparency and control, citizens are only allowed to conduct such financial transactions through the HTP exchanges.”
The agency also indicated that it plans to introduce a practice similar to foreign currency exchange procedures, which “will make it impossible to withdraw funds from illegal activities.”
“In such conditions, it becomes simply unprofitable for information technology scammers to operate in Belarus,” the ministry wrote.
In response to the news out of Belarus, many cryptocurrency enthusiasts have questioned the government’s ability to ban P2P cryptocurrency trading. “Good luck with enforcement,” said one crypto watcher on Twitter.
Related: Banning crypto ‘might not be effective in the long run’ – IMF
The P2P exchange is the original brainchild of Bitcoin, as anonymous BTC inventor Satoshi Nakamoto writes in his white paper. Banning P2P is no easy task, if not impossible, according to Bitcoin advocates like Jan3 CEO Samson Mow. The executive told Cointelegraph in June that many users in China are still using P2P channels to exchange their cryptocurrencies, despite the country banning all cryptocurrency transactions for users in 2021.
The latest news from Belarus is somewhat at odds with the laws that Belarus has passed in recent years. In 2022, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed a decree reaffirming the country’s formal support for the free movement of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
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