The Bank of Lithuania has updated its position on virtual assets and initial coin offerings (ICOs), in line with an announcement published on February. 14.

The Bank of Lithuania at first issued a document detailing its position towards ICOs and digital currency in Oct, 2017, defining how and when virtual assets could also be used for payment. The document conjointly specified how and on what terms monetary market participants (FMP) could establish investment funds for investment in virtual assets.

The recent document reveals that the bank has not made changes to its underlying principles, stressing that FMP still should separate their monetary services activities from those related to virtual currency and will not participate in activities or offer services associated with virtual assets.

The policy still doesn't enable FMPs to receive payments with virtual assets, however provides the chance to use third-party services. Payments to FMP accounts will solely be made in fiat currencies.

The bank’s position currently permits for the creation of monetary funds as well as virtual asset for professional investors. FMP are prohibited from accepting virtual assets with the requirement to repay them with or while not interest. The bank conjointly stresses that FMP aren't allowed to issue virtual asset loans or settle for virtual assets as collateral, unless they're thought-about to be securities.

Last Oct, Lithuanian regulators conducted a seminar examining the “threats and potential benefits” of ICOs to the country’s economy. The authorities then made public that a high ICO turnover volume — €500 million ($567 million) over the previous eighteen months — involved tougher anti-fraud mechanisms. It’s been noted that “as per ICO figures, Lithuania is one among the leading and shows the very best, 305 %, growth from everywhere the planet.”

Last June, Lithuania discharged comprehensive new “guidelines” on ICOs. Covering an outsized range of regulative aspects additionally as taxation, accounting and anti-money laundering (AML), lawmakers gave the impression to single out an ICO token’s “granting profits or governance rights .

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