South African Reserve Bank Tentatively Favourable to BTC, but Considered "Crypto Asset" and NOT "Currency"

About this time last year I was following some Ripple hype and reading about legislation in Asian countries strongly affecting things, on top of some discrepancies in interpreting chart data with the way some exchanges displayed some metrics I don't know nearly enough about to speak intelligently on...

Anyway, South Africa looks now to be moving towards legislated acceptance of crypto, even if not entirely adopting cryptocurrencies as officially-recognized currency.

The article has the details, but two points do stand out to me as being very promising indeed:

As a G20-member country, South Africa taking a cautiously favourable stance on Bitcoin and crypto in general should (hopefully) stand as a good example to other countries who may still be trying to decide whether or not crypto presents some kind of economic threat...

Important Side-Note:

Then again, on some other important national concerns the country's example is (IMO) absolutely horrifying and repugnant:

KILLING OF WHITE FARMERS IN SOUTH AFRICA ((DISTURBING IMAGES)) (@carlspackler)

White Farmers Slaughtered in South Africa - Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux (@stefan.molyneux)

I'm not sure about how this story has been developing since it broke, and I'm as unwilling to go very deep into it and its hellish ramifications as when Zimbabwe made a policy of severing its own knees:

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe: 'We Will Not Prosecute Killers of White Farmers'

New Zimbabwe President says: We will NOT give the land back to the White Farmers!

So please, if you haven't familiarized yourself with that stuff, give some of the above a read. Now back to some positive South Afican news:

Continued...

As I was saying, the possible example influencing other countries to more seriously consider cryptocurrencies as valid valuable assets in their law-books is a promising one, but even more heartening is the manner in which the approach is being taken. From the article I read:

It doesn’t appear that SARB is looking to draw out the
regulatory process like some other jurisdictions. Instead,
the agency has said that it is willing to amend legislation as
the industry evolves, rather than waiting for the industry to
develop and then implement rules retroactively.

That seems to be just the kind of intelligent and risk-conscious stance a legislating body can take when deciding how to handle so powerful a technology as blockchain, and I hope to see much more of the same all around the world.

South African Reserve Bank: Crypto Asset Friendly, but Bitcoin Is Not Money