The Isle of Man looks to be setting itself up as a major hub for Bitcoin-related businesses. The Isle of Man is a self-governing British Crown dependency and is already an appealing place to conventional businesses and wealthy individuals. This is because it’s a beautiful Isla and has a fiscally liberal environment. This liberal stance can be extended to cryptocurrency-related activities as well.
The island’s Financial Supervision Commission confirmed that a Bitcoin exchange that holds client funds with a licensed overseas payment service provider is not required to obtain a license in the country for its activities.
No license forever? Indecisions of the establishment.
While there are proponents of regulating everything about business and crypto alike it will be unlikely that a license will be needed in the foreseeable future. First of all the Isle of Man has a history of being independent and has a good liberal perspective on business in general. That is something that will not change overnight.
The second aspect is that most of the world hasn’t heard of crypto, let alone crypto exchanges. Most counties are looking for what the other countries stances are/will be concerning crypto. Are they targeting BTC only or the whole alt coin? How will they be taxed? What to do when there are crypto exchanges? Etc. Some countries, like US China and UK for example, have more weight on their stance toward Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The third reason why “a license” will not be needed in the foreseeable future is because doing business is always a bit adventurous and has a certain amount of risk. Since the Isle of Man has such liberal views on doing business, it stands to reason that they will not change that policy in near future.
Location, location, location.
Our research shows that the Isle of Man is highly attractive to normal businesses but to e-business as well. The Isle of Man is ideally situated and has a very favorable tax regime. Residents are taxed at 20% to a maximum of £120,000 per year, while businesses pay no corporate tax and for banks the tax is only 10%. Add to that an excellent bandwidth speed and redundancy, including a world-class DDoS protection and multiple options for secure hosting and the Isle of Man is looking like the ideal spot to begin any business.
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