Scandinavia is attempting to tackle the immense popularity of bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry. The Scandinavian countries are beginning to move forward on how to classify bitcoins (BTC) and what tax to impose on the digital currency. On a global level, the response to bitcoin has been mixed.
The Bank of Finland announced Thursday that bitcoin doesn’t meet the criteria to be labeled as a currency or an electronic payment method. Instead, the Finnish central bank has concluded that bitcoin is just a commodity.
“Considering the definition of an official currency as set out in law, it’s not that. It’s also not a payment instrument, because the law stipulates that a payment instrument must have an issuer responsible for its operation,” said Paeivi Heikkinen, head of oversight at the Bank of Finland in Helsinki, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “At this stage it’s more comparable to a commodity.”
The announcement comes as Europe’s very first bitcoin ATM, otherwise known as BTMs, was established at Helsinki Railway Station this past month. It works like other BTMs preceding it: the customer inserts their Bitcoin Wallet identifier, deposits euros and the virtual currency is allocated to the online wallet.
A new Nordnet AB survey found that one in 10 Finns are interested in investing in the cryptocurrency – interest among Finnish men was higher at 17.2 percent.
The United Kingdom will become the latest government to investigate the matter. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customers is considering adding a value-added tax (VAT) to bitcoins, which would be at 20 percent. For the most part, currency transactions are exempt from the sales tax in Great Britain. The ministry deemed the issue “complex” and with bitcoin not being considered legal tender it wouldn’t necessarily mean that all virtual currencies would automatically add a VAT.
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