Israel's Attorney General proclaims the country's crypto ban illegal

Cryptocurrencies, while disruptive and advanced technology, still come with one major issue — they lack any real regulations that would firmly establish what can and can’t be done. As a result, individuals, businesses, banks, and even the entire governments are left to examine the inadequate laws on their own and try to apply them on an asset that doesn’t exactly fit.

The most recent example of this was just reported in Israel, where the country’s Attorney General, Dr. Abihai Mandelblit, announced that the country’s crypto ban is illegal. The ban he mentions is the two-year court ban on transactions in financial institutions and banks. However, the Attorney General said that every crypto transaction needs to be individually handled if cases of money laundering were to be identified and confronted.

In addition, he claimed that Israel-based banks could not ban crypto transactions since not every crypto has ties to money laundering. Instead, banks should inspect transactions and ban suspicious individuals, not an entire asset class.

Crypto ban to cause Israel to miss out on new opportunities

According to what is known from a document from the Tel Aviv-based district court, Mandelblit wishes to clear the air regarding digital currency. He believes that it is not right for financial institutions to refuse to process any crypto, just because of fear that some coins may be used for money laundering. Such incidences started during the hearing of Mercantile Discount Bank’s dispute with BIT2C.

Since the account was involved in crypto trading, the bank refused to process payments for it. The situation had only gotten worse from there. Now, Mandelblit is trying to resolve it, even though his views differ from the established guidelines that were introduced by the Bank of Israel. Still, Mandelblit claims that Israel will miss out on numerous advantages due to the ban.