Oman to establish regulatory framework for virtual assets

The Capital Market Authority (CMA), the regulator of Oman’s fiscal markets, looks to found a caller regulatory model for the virtual plus manufacture successful the Sultanate.

According to a Feb. 14 press release, the caller rules would see oversight of virtual plus activities, a licensing process for virtual plus work providers (VASPs), and a model to place and mitigate risks surrounding the caller plus class. The announcement reads:

“The purpose of this caller regularisation is to found a marketplace authorities for virtual assets that see rules to forestall marketplace abuse, including [thorough] surveillance and enforcement mechanisms.”

Several virtual plus activities nether the projected guidelines see issuing crypto assets, tokens, crypto speech products and services and archetypal coin offerings, among others.

XReg Consulting Limited, a virtual assets argumentation and regulatory consultant, and Said Al-Shahry and Partners, Advocates & Legal Consultants (SASLO), an Omani instrumentality firm, were enlisted to counsel and assistance CMA successful drafting the caller regulation.

The fiscal markets regulators said the projected regulatory model aligns with Oman’s Vision 2040, an inaugural to digitally alteration the country’s system portion attracting planetary players into Oman.

While Oman looks to presumption itself arsenic a person successful virtual plus adoption successful the Middle East done the projected regulatory oversight, the country’s cardinal slope appears to beryllium warier erstwhile it comes to cryptocurrencies.

Related: UAE cardinal slope to contented CBDC arsenic portion of its fiscal translation program

In October, the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) urged citizens to workout caution erstwhile transacting with cryptocurrencies, fixed the risks of fraud astir the asset.

In repeated advisories, CBO warned it has yet to licence immoderate entity to commercialized successful cryptocurrencies successful Oman and that currency banking laws bash not screen immoderate integer oregon virtual currencies and activities involving their use.

However, the informing did not halt Omanis from holding and investing successful the asset. According to the caller Souq Analyst survey, astir 65,000 residents, oregon 1.9% of the big population, ain cryptocurrencies successful the country.

The survey recovered that 62% of locals ain crypto for the agelong term, portion 25% said they usage integer assets for learning and education. The remainder said they usage cryptocurrencies for regular trading.