Venezuela introduces a 15% fee on cryptocurrency transactions
- The regulator tightens requirements towards Metro transactions.
- Venezuelans resort to Bitcoins.
Sunacrip, the national regulator of Venezuela, changed the requirements to the digital assets transactions, performed by individuals on the territory of the country.
In accordance with the recent order, the sender shall pay a fee which is based on the amount of the transaction but should not exceed 15%. The minimal commission is 0.25 EUR per transaction.
Apart from that, Sunacrip reserves the right to limit the size of cryptocurrency transactions set the exchange rates for digital assets in sovereign Bolivar and request transaction info from both senders and receivers.
Currently, the citizens can send 10 Petro ($600) in cryptocurrency per month. To send more coins, they should obtain permission from the regulator.
The local cryptocurrency community bashed the initiative as an attempt to centralize cryptocurrency. However, it is worth noting, that Petro has never been popular among Venezuelans. Being controlled by the government from the very start, it was regarded as a pet project of the corrupted Maduro’s administration.
According to the latest data, provided by the research company DataLight, financial and political crisis forced people to buy Bitcoins and use them as a store of value or as a means of payments. The country now takes second place by trading volumes on the LocalBitcoins platform, being inferior only to Russia.
Author
Tanya Abrosimova
Independent Analyst
