French Court Gives Bitcoin A Fiat Money Status While South Korea Passes A Cryptocurrency Regulation Bill

As cryptocurrencies continue to penetrate the global financial markets their acceptance amongst different regulatory institutions continues to rise. In a landmark decision last week, France’s commercial court of Nanterre ruled that Bitcoin shall be given the legal status of a fiat currency.

This was the first time that Bitcoin has been recognized as a legal entity in France. The court ruling arrived as an outcome of a case between BitSpread, an English alternate investment corporation and Paymium, a French bitcoin exchange.

While classifying a Bitcoin loan as a consumer loan, the court ruling read: “Bitcoin is a fungible and consumable intangible asset in the same way as legal tender”.

The case basically involved a 1000 BTC loan that crypto advisory company BitSpread took back in 2014 from UK’s one of the oldest and popular crypto exchange Paymium. However during the loan period, the first Bitcoin hard fork occurred and BitSpread received Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on the borrowed Bitcoin (BTC).

While BitSpread repaid the loan in October 2017, it kept the BCH tokens received as an outcome of the hard fork. On the contrary, Paymium said that BitSpread shall also send them the BCH tokens as they were the part of the Bitcoin ecosystem before the fork.

However, the court ruling came in favour of BitSpread. The court said that the BCH tokens should belong to the borrower just like the shareholders keep the dividend of the shares they own.

The court ruling read: “The borrower can collect the fruits of bitcoin. He fulfils his obligation when he returns bitcoin without necessarily handing over bitcoin cash.”

On the other hand, Asian economic giant South Korea has finally released a bill to regulate cryptocurrency and its related operations in the country. After two years of ongoing deliberation, the crypto bill has finally come to fruition.

The new bill provides a complete framework for regulating cryptocurrencies and exchanges operating in the country. Although South Korea had passed several guidelines for cryptocurrencies, there was never an official law for regulating them.

The newly framed draft bill proposes a law as per the guidelines of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). As per the law, crypto services providers will have to use the real-name verification system and comply with the reporting requirements in line.

Thus, South Korean investors will now have a regulatory process in place which will help them get legal access to several crypto products and services.