Morocco’s Minister of Economy and Finance Nadia Fettah Alaoui (photo) said on January 10, 2022 that her country intends to regulate the use of virtual currencies through new legislation. Specifying that his department is also examining the possibility of setting up a 100% Moroccan cryptocurrency, developed and guaranteed by Bank-Al-Maghrib, the central bank.
These announcements, made during a plenary session of oral questions in the House of Representatives, come in a context where cryptocurrencies are prohibited in financial transactions by Moroccan law. They are, however, increasingly popular in the country which ranks 24th in the 2021 ranking of the Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Index of the American research firm Chainalysis.
In 2017, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the central bank warned, in a joint statement, of the dangers of the use of cryptocurrencies in money laundering and terrorist financing. “Transactions carried out via virtual currencies constitute an infringement of the regulations, liable to penalties and fines,” they said.
