New rules paves the way for sanctions

The reason for the blockchain community’s opposition to the draft plan for the organization and development of cryptocurrencies: it paves the way for sanctions

The draft plan for the organization and development of cryptocurrencies by the parliament has faced many reactions, including the opposition of the Iranian Blockchain Association. Activists and organizations, referring to the fact that this document has not even been sent to them, believe that definitions such as parts of the “National Cryptocurrency Headquarters” pave the way for wider implementation of sanctions, and the existence of clauses such as “professional secrets” lead to rent and There is corruption.

According to the Iran digital economy annotation, the formation and agreement of supervisory institutions with a process called SRO or self-regulation, along with the drafting of the plan for the organization and development of cryptocurrencies by the parliament, in which a license-based approach is taken, has caused a contradiction that activists criticize.

Morteza Moazeni, the head of the Exchange Working Group of the Blockchain Association, refers to Article 45 of the Parliament regarding this plan and believes that this article is a golden ticket in the Parliament that can only be used 4 times a year and this year for the budget, budget deduction, central bank and It has been used to stabilize the market. For this reason, the use of this article for the issue of cryptocurrencies, although it shows the importance of this issue in the country, but it is not clear why it was pursued in this way.

The plan to organize and develop cryptocurrencies initially includes definitions for this field. According to Moazeni, these definitions are actually heresy in the crypto community. He believes that in the definitions, guaranteed cryptocurrency is a big violation, and based on the law established by the Council of Ministers, which was also notified by the Central Bank, all tokens and coins backed by gold, precious metals, or jewelry are the monopoly of the Central Bank. 

Moazeni also considers the definition of cryptocurrency to be incomplete. According to him, the digital currency of a country’s national monetary display is defined as an asset whose value is one-to-one with the national currency and is issued and offered by the central bank. It is also the responsibility of the government and the central bank to publish, redeem and guarantee the losses to the people.

He went on to say that definitions such as cryptography, functional cryptography or trading database also have problems and these definitions either do not have a global definition or in cases such as trading database, the definition of exchange platform is correct.

Moazeni also said about the legal definition of a new asset class through these definitions: By looking at this document, we can see how many businesses have prepared this plan and submitted it to the parliament, and the traces of each can be seen in the clauses of this plan. In Clause 12, under the name of professional secrets, the hands of the business are practically left open for not disclosing the data of worthless tokens. In the company law, we have company secrets, which include things like financial statements or certain statements, but this is not the case in publicly traded companies. Likewise, there should be no difference between cryptocurrency businesses.

In another section, this document introduces the National Cryptocurrency Headquarters, which is made up of various institutions from government departments, security and private institutions. Moazeni believes that sanctions issues have not been seen in this section. Because one of the institutions of this headquarters is oil ministry, which includes the S722 embargo, and this arrangement also paves the way for other embargoes such as OFEC, Ilsa, and Katsa.

Referring to the American FDD, Moazeni says: this plan will lead to a wider entry of this institution by shrinking the circle of exchange businesses. Because this institution encourages people to disclose the address of exchange platforms by considering rewards including one to five percent of the balance of addresses.

Also, the head of the Exchange Working Group of the Blockchain Association said: There is no other way in the field of exchange other than self-regulation by using the capacities of the private sector and its organizations. The fact that the Ministry of Economy is introduced in this document to issue a license means that the big holdings come in the middle.

In this document, although specific definitions of the areas under the authority of the Central Bank are provided, the name of this institution is still seen along with other ministries for authorization. According to Moazeni: Central Bank is looking for monopoly. In the field of exchanges, in 2010, we had about 1,700 licensed exchanges in the Central Bank. A number that has reached about 600 exchanges today.

The central bank’s approach to cryptocurrency is a restriction approach. The approach that was initially announced by the central bank, but in the end it was called transparency. But the procedure is limited. In the meantime, the central bank has created a whitelist for exchange businesses and asked payment providers to declare cryptocurrencies. An issue that was announced by the payers, but they were not added to the white list by the central bank.

Finally, he said: the self-regulation requirements were written by the Blockchain, FinTech and Nasr Organization and are under final review. In this way, the first applicable SRO document has been compiled by these three organizations. But it is not clear what is the interest of the people behind the crypto development document who want to destroy the SRO. In the meantime, we can mention the support of the Ministry of Information and Fata Faraja Police to SRO, which we see in this document, in addition to the e-commerce development center, they have also been left out.