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South Europe: The leading region for cryptocurrency and blockchain

Southern Europe is gearing up to become the premier regions for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The Mediterranean S
Southern Europe is gearing up to become the premier regions for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The Mediterranean Seven agreement was signed

Southern Europe is gearing up to become one of the premier regions for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. In early December, the Mediterranean Seven agreement was signed between Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. These seven countries are working together to promote blockchain technology across the Mediterranean and the adoption of different cryptocurrency technologies. These seven countries together represent a huge economic group and is a very exciting innovation to see happening.

Recent Updates:

Malta:

Malta has done amazing things for blockchain and cryptocurrency regulation over the last year. Inviting companies from all around the world to come and set up their business in Malta. Some of the big names like Binance have made a lot of headlines by moving their base to Malta and a lot of others are planning to join the party as well. So Malta has been making a lot of strides when it comes to cryptocurrency. Allot of other countries should learn from their lead and they see a great opportunity in cryptocurrency in the same way they say a great opportunity in online gambling. For a little country like Malta, it can make a big impact on their tax revenues in the long term.

Italy:

Recently, the Italian government has published a list of thirty experts that they are bringing together to develop the nation’s blockchain strategy. The group is specifically focused on identifying the use cases of blockchain in the public and private services and developing the necessary technical and regulatory tools to promote the adoption of the technology. That’s a great step by Italy to get people to really get committed to doing it and it represents a positive step forward.

Spain:

Spain’s ruling party Partido Popular is introducing draft legislation around things like tax cuts for cryptocurrency companies. Also looking at how they can set up a national council for cryptocurrency and of course faster education of blockchain technology inside the country. Spain is no stranger to cryptocurrency by any means as its a very popular marketplace for cryptocurrencies and also we have seen some interesting innovations happening recently in Spain like for example cyclebit rolling out their cryptocurrency payment processing to 130 different cafes across Spain, Spain’s second-largest  bank; Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and Argentaria has closed a 150 euro loan using blockchain technology with Porsche Holdings which is one of the largest car distributors in Europe and also Spanish renewable energy company Acciona Energia  is going to deploy blockchain to trace electricity generation. So Spain has been doing quite a lot of work.

France:

France, which is one of the leaders behind the initiative to set up the Mediterranean Seven. We have seen a lot of back and forth on cryptocurrencies recently. Recently all of the people we excited about all the tobacco stores offering bitcoin for sale and that is exciting as it does visualize bitcoin to a large audience of people. But the best excitement is the government of France putting forward 500 million euros towards blockchain technology and hopefully, they will find some great use cases in France for blockchain technology and the country can become a leader in this. We can add into that the recent innovations towards ICO legislation but at the same time, the lower house of the France parliament has rejected recent amendments that would have seen the 2019 finance build easing cryptocurrency related taxation but unfortunately, that didn’t pass.

Greece, Cyprus, and Portugal

Up to this time, we haven’t really had any recent announcements out of any of those three countries but nevertheless, these countries are a part of the Mediterranean Seven and we hope that we will soon see some announcements from them in the near future about how they are hoping to integrate blockchain technology and how they are hoping to pass cryptocurrency friendly regulations etc.

What do you think about the adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency by these seven European nations? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.

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