So it looks like Kuwait has decided to ban crypto payments, investments, and also mining. The reason? is the usual:
Kuwait has prohibited the use of crypto for payments or investment to combat money laundering, according to a circular by the country's financial regulator issued on Monday.
As the article states, any violations of the prohibitions would result in penalties.
I personally wasn't expecting this, especially with their neighbor (UAE and Bahrain) doing the total opposite.
I don't expect all nations the accept Bitcoin at the same time. Some will be friendly now others will be in the future. Kuwait is claiming it wants to abide by the rules of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to curb financial practice, terrorism financing, and money laundering. But they are been too harsh to the crypto community because FATF recommends strict supervision of the financial activities of crypto operations and not an outright ban. In other nations, regulators are coming up with advanced methods of monitoring, tracking, and recovery of illicit crypto funds, instead of a ban. They will lose most of the opportunities that cryptocurrency offers. The good news is that this year more countries are opening up to Bitcoin. Affected businesses and miners will move to friendlier neighboring nations like UAE and others.