In December 2018, a draft was issued by Central Bank of Bahrain which had the new regulations that needed to be followed for digital assets. The draft plan is to possibly supervise and license digital asset services. Bahrain is a country in the Arabian Gulf which consists of over 30 islands. Bahrain stated, “measures to safeguard customer interests, technology standards, and cybersecurity risk management,” is being carried out by them.
2017 was the first time that Bahrain showed interest in blockchain when the country’s chief executive the Economic Development Boards, Khalid Al Rumaihi said that blockchain technology would be a great option for Bahrain. The regulations drafted were issued on 25th February 2019 as stated by TradeArabia, a local channel.
The new rules and regulations passed are about managing the risks like licensing, money laundering, governance, and counter-terrorism of the digital assets. It also includes main concerns of steps involved in financing, reporting, and cybersecurity, business conduct, conflict of interest avoidance. New standards of administration and imposition were also established by the regulations.
There was a news report that Bahrain had its own Blockchain Academy that would offer courses related to blockchain which would focus on three main proficiency areas that are strategy, development, and implementation. The academy was established by their Institute of Banking and Finance.
These licenses are now available to all the digital currency exchanges which they can get from the Central Bank of Bahrain. All the exchanges should compulsorily follow all the guidelines about matching orders, pre-trade and post-trade transparency, market manipulation and avoiding market abuse. They should also respect all the guidelines as well as regarding the conflicts of interest.
It was said by Abdulhussain Mirza who is the minister of electricity and water affairs of Bahrain that blockchain can secure user’s information and its remarkable progress.
It is said that these regulations that have been passed by the Central Bank have mentioned clearly that all the digital currency exchanges need to intensify the commitments when onboarding new customers. Along with this, they also need to enhance specifications necessitating affirmation that all the custody wallets that have been securely encrypted can be retrieved at all times.
It was reported that a diploma on the blockchain would be issued by the University of Bahrain with the help of open standard in association with Learning Machine.