South Africas financial markets regulator has officially decreed cryptocurrency assets to be financial products, laying the legal groundwork for cryptocurrencies to be regulated going forward. The FSCA (Financial Sector Conduct Authority) recently stated that while cryptocurrencies are not issued by a central bank, they can however be traded, transferred, or utilized for payments. These assets were recognized by the FSCA as a digital representation of value on distributed ledgers. Governments and regulatory bodies around the world have steadily increased their scrutiny of the digital asset class, a pattern which has accelerated since the monumental collapse of the Terra-LUNA stablecoin project earlier on in the year as well as the ongoing bear market.
