G20 right, the world must move as one on crypto

The Group of 20 (G20) economies are rightly focused on cryptocurrencies. As the wave of the future, cryptocurrencies cannot be dismissed or ignored.
This is precisely why the G20 is exploring the possibilities of jointly regulating cryptocurrencies, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said recently.
To be sure, the crypto market encompasses sophisticated technologies that create virtual assets that make their regulation deserving of more than a silver bullet.
Sitharaman, whose country is this year’s G20 president, believes a number of guidelines must be adopted to guide crypto trading.
Her views were made known in the context of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government mulling the idea of ​​drafting a law to regulate, or even ban, cryptocurrencies.

“We are talking to all nations that if it requires regulation, then one country alone cannot do something,” Sitharaman said.
“We are talking to all nations about whether we can create a standard operating procedure that is followed by everyone to create a regulatory framework and whether it can be effective,” she added.
India hosted G20 finance ministers and central bank governors last week for a grand meeting, and cryptocurrencies were high on the agenda.
Agreed, regulation of cryptocurrencies is of vital importance as it protects investors and preserves financial stability.

In doing so, it enables innovation while improving the crypto-asset sector by ensuring that technical standards take advantage of faster economies of scale.
On top of this, regulation strengthens competition by addressing information asymmetries.
These benefits require regulation in all countries, which means that cryptocurrencies must be legalized everywhere.
Not because they are a futuristic innovation, but because they are a social, cultural and technological form of progress.
That is because they are available to everyone and can thus positively affect all parts of society and all sectors of an economy.

This is why some countries have already legalized cryptocurrency trading. To bring you up to date on Uganda’s crypto market, some companies are already using crypto.
While cross-border payments app Chipper Cash enables more than three million people to send and receive money in and between Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and the UK using crypto.
Similarly, the Bank of Uganda (BU) said it supported the idea of ​​cryptocurrency businesses participating in its regulatory sandbox and invited members of the Blockchain Association of Uganda to share their knowledge with the central bank.
A crypto-regulatory sandbox is a testing live-like environment used to ensure regulatory compliance and security checks for financial operations.

The next step for Uganda is to legalize cryptocurrencies so that they are not violated by unnecessary laws that do not promote cryptocurrency regulation.
We stand on the edge of a new age, an age that beckons us to make the right financial choices or deny those choices at the altar of ignorance.
This is where cryptocurrencies find themselves, shrouded in ignorance.
But the beauty of regulation is that such ignorance is brought into the light of understanding through laws that bring undesirable activities under control for the benefit of all.

Mr Orena is the CEO of DM Exchange, a Fintech company. @martinorena