According to the country’s Ministry of Finance, the biggest cryptocurrency will not be legitimized. This means that bitcoin trading of all sorts is forbidden for the financial institutions regulated by said ministry.

Any international proceeds will be viewed as illegal and highly suspect by the government, which puts a lot of the investors in the region into a rather precarious position. However, the situation is not as clear as it the Kuwait’s officials would like the public to believe. Their official stance is far from the open-minded approach of the neighboring Bahrain, but they lack the regulatory power to back up the prohibition.

The ministry (along with the Central Bank of Kuwait) do not have the authority to actually punish any cryptocurrency trading. Since any transactions take place over the internet, the crypto-market seems to be out of reach for both institutions at the moment.

Still, the lack of government support or even acknowledgement does increase the risks for investors in an already volatile market.