Bulgaria’ officials working on cryptocurrency payment framework

Bulgaria is working to bring a mechanism to use cryptocurrencies in the payment system. 

After the entry of El Salvador in the crypto industry by adopting bitcoin as a currency, the majority of the financial institutions and countries are planning to adopt this technology directly & indirectly to use in the improvement of the payment system. But creating a framework on these ideas is a very prior thing that is why crypto-based payment systems are rarely not commonly seen. However, there are some crypto companies like Bitpay, which are providing crypto-based payment services but these are not enough for a stable value based payment system, even use of Stable Coins still not exactly perfect.

On 21 January, Bloomberg published a report on Bulgaria’s idea to adopt crypto in the payment system. 

According to the report, the deputy minister of Bulgaria for the EU fund and minister of the fund, Assen Vassilev, stated that the country is currently working to create a framework to adopt crypto in the payment system. 

Assen said that they are in discussion on this initiative with the Bulgarian National Bank and also with the industry players to explore crypto-based better payments methods as soon as possible. 

However, at the same time, Assen asserted that there are fewer chances to see Bulgaria as a hub of crypto mining operations. Through this statement, he clearly said that Bulgaria is ready to adopt the crypto & blockchain industry but not ready to face an energy outage because of crypto mining operations. 

Right now Bulgaria is holding  213,519 Bitcoins. However, the total holdings of Bitcoin by the Bulgaria government is not a part of the officially purchased number from the market but still, this number is very high over other countries’ Bitcoin holdings. Almost all of these Bitcoins are seized from illicit activities and fraudsters. 

One thing here is interesting to note, Bulgaria is one of the eight countries which didn’t adopted the Euro and also it will not get the Benefit of the Digital Euro. So probably the idea of crypto use in the payment system of Bulgaria is the reason to not to use Digital Euro. 

Read also: SEC agency objection on Microstrategy Bitcoin purchase reporting