The Malaysian Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (KKMM) is supporting cryptocurrency adoption, with the deputy minister urging the government to legalize cryptocurrency.
Datuk Zahidi Zainul Abidin, Malaysia’s deputy communications and multimedia minister, has requested Malaysian authorities to legalize some use cases for cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFT), according to local news outlets Harian Metro on Monday.
Zahidi said that such measures will greatly benefit young people since the bitcoin business has grown in popularity among the younger population. He also said that the KKMM is looking at measures to enhance young people’s engagement in the business.
The deputy minister said that Malaysia’s financial authorities, notably the central bank and the Securities Commission Malaysia, have the last say on crypto regulation.
However, the government is eager to raise this problem since the cryptocurrency business is growing. “business and financial program of the future, especially for young people now,” Zahidi said, adding:
“We hope the government can try to legalize this matter so that we can expand the participation of young people in cryptocurrencies and help them in terms of energy consumption and so on.”
According to some reports, Zahidi recommended adopting cryptocurrencies as legal cash rather than only allowing some cryptocurrency transactions in Malaysia.
Officials from the KKMM did not immediately react to Cointelegraph’s request for comment. This page will be updated when new information becomes available.
According to some rumors, Honduras is also planning to embrace Bitcoin (BTC) as legal cash, following in the footsteps of El Salvador, which implemented its Bitcoin Law in September 2021. “We must not let El Salvador be the only nation that is not subject to dollar hegemony,” Honduran President Xiomara Castro is quoted as saying.
Malaysia’s finance minister, Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, stated in early March that payments in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) were unlawful in the nation because they did not fit the universal criteria of money.
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“In general, digital assets are neither a suitable means of trade nor a store of value.” This is because digital assets are prone to dramatic price swings as a result of speculative investments, the possibility of theft as a result of cyber threats, and a lack of scalability,” he said.
The minister also said that Bank Negara Malaysia is considering developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as well as blockchain-related advancements to react to the rising trend in the digital asset industry.
