Crypto-Italy: Institutions, Politics, Business and Society

Since a couple of years ago, crypto and blockchain have become relevant topics for Italian institutions, political movements, business world and public opinion.

Italy has an independent authority responsible for regulating the Italian securities market since 1974 - the Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa.

Is this the case of the ICOs whose totality or vast majority of the founders, top management and developers are Italian citizens and that nevertheless set their headquarters in countries that offered a business or taxation environment more favorable than Italy.

Switzerland, which shares its southern border with the most economically active Italian regions - and where 8% of the population speaks Italian - seems to be an especially attractive harbor for the Italian crypto entrepreneurs who could find here lighter bureaucratic procedures, straightforward taxation and a regulatory framework already taking into account the needs of crypto businesses.

Some notable Italians include Alessandro Chiesa, co-founder of Zcash, and Simone Giacomelli, business developer at SingularityNet.

The most famous Italian brands have yet to announce any critical projects - however, a test concerning traceability in the textile sector was launched by the Ministry of Economic Development in mid-March 2019, thanks to a partnership with IBM.The crypto peopleEven if a large part of the Italian population is still ignoring what cryptos and DLT are - or know them only for their pathological distortions - the Italian crypto community is quite a thriving reality.

Telegram is another medium that the Italian crypto community extensively uses: Italians are - of course - widely present in the international crypto-themed channels, but they also gather in a bunch of Italian-language chats, sometimes structured with a main chat and a cluster of child chats on specific topics.

The number of members in the Italian channels presents volatility that mirrors the crypto market.

Public intervention hardly eased the process of technology appropriation: Even more recently, the effort to bring Italy to the digital era produced "Italian-only" oddities such as the Italian certificated mail protocol, as a substitute to a suitable digital signature procedure.

"Italian politics noticed quite late the underway revolution. During the first half of 2018, four Italian companies gathered through their ICOs more than the whole domestic venture capital market. Although, all of them were forced to incorporate abroad because the Italian system was not ready. Market understood blockchain more than politics; however, during the last months, some big changes happened. The legal recognition of smart contracts seems to be a small thing, but it is an important step in a new direction."