Romania Sees First Cryptocurrency Organisation

Romania has established its first cryptocurrency organisation, according to local media outlet Bugetol.

The United Blockchain Association of Romania is a non-governmental organization founded on the 22nd of March. Its purpose is to raise awareness of cryptocurrency by educating the public and creating a platform for dialogue.

The founding members are Andrei Stănică, an entrepreneur and a cryptocurrency investor, Andrei Pipas, another entrepreneur, and Ruxandra Iane, fund consultant and a gender equality specialist.

“All of the United Blockchain Association objectives are in fact topics that we intend to address in the near future with the decision-makers in Romania, but also with the enthusiasts of the blockchain and crypto domain in our country. Our organization aims to provide an umbrella to support the common interests of those who are actively involved in this field in a formal manner. We want to unify the ad-hoc groups and create a strong coalition that will be the interface in direct communication with the Government, the Parliament, the NBR and the ASF,” said Stănică. “We are already in contact with some of the organizations in the European countries and we want to make partnerships.”

Romania’s first Bitcoin ATM was set up in Bucharest in May 2014, and the country’s first exchange, BTCXchange, attracted 2,000 customers within 7 months of opening, according to Reuters. That same report said that there were a number of Romanian service providers accepting Bitcoin, as the citizens of the European Union’s second poorest country are “Tech-savvy and still deeply distrustful of officialdom 25 years after the end of communism.”

The biggest exchange in the country at the moment, Bitcoin Romania, celebrated its fourth birthday two days ago, and another exchange, CoinFlux, recently announced it has traded 23.8 million dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency since its foundation in December 2015, according to Bitcoin Magazine.

Ilan Laufer, Romania’s Business, Commerce, and Entrepreneurship Environment Minister, said to local press in December 2017: “I strongly believe in the idea of cryptocurrencies and that the future and the way we complete transactions—the way in which banks behave—will be affected by the development of this new industry. It’s a challenge for the banking system because this area isn’t very well regulated and I believe that this should happen. It’s an area in which lots of money circulates, but it is also a new technology. We have to understand and look at what benefits it brings with it and how it can be implemented in the real economy.”