Joseph Muscat announced on twitter that Malta has become officially the first country to regulate blockchain and DLTs in the aim of becoming the ‘BlockchainIsland’.

#Malta 🇲🇹 officially the first country worldwide to have holistic legislative framework regulating #blockchain & #DLT technologies. We will be the #global hub for market leaders in this new sector. Now for the implementation of #BlockchainIsland -JM @SilvioSchembri — Joseph Muscat (@JosephMuscat_JM) July 4, 2018

An article surfaced on Maltese website went into detail on how the three DLT legislation bills will set in stone how Malta deals with blockchain and cryptocurrency related businesses and ICOs. The bill will cover the dealing with existing businesses and also startups or Initial Coin Offerings right from the planning stage, through the crowdfunding activities and also afterwards during the building phase.

The first ACT passed was the ‘Malta Digital Innovation Authority’ or ‘MDIA’, which established a new authority that is lead by Mr Stephen McCarthy and aims to promote Malta for DLT related businesses and provide services for them.

The second legislation passed has been labeled ‘The Innovative Technology Arrangements and Services Act‘ or the ‘ITAS’, which sets up a registration framework that can properly recognize and can hand out certificates to Technology Service Providers and of Technology Arrangements. Technology arrangements include software that is used to design and to deliver DLT or Blockchain technology including smart contracts, DAOs, applications. The legislation is future proof according to the description as it leaves the possibility open to include all related future tools and innovative technologies that may surface.

Thirdly ‘The Virtual Financial Assets Act’ or the ‘VFAA’ serves as a framework that will aid the operation of ICOs and Digital Asset exchanges. The framework also goes into detail on how whitepapers should be drafted. The VFAA helps exchanges to recognize the category of a certain token or coin issued via any distribution and gives an easy way to recognize if they can be considered a financial instrument or other category via the Financial Instrument Test. The test will conclude the token or coin into one of the following three categories: virtual tokens, financial instruments and virtual financial instruments.

For a more detailed explanation head over to ccmalta.com