Israel Securities Authority To Block Bitcoin-Based Companies From TASE Indices

December 13, 2017 | The Israel Securities Authority announced on Tuesday it would block companies based on bitcoin from being included in any indexes on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), according to a press release. Israel Securities Authority chairman Shmuel Hauser said in the statement that the authority may also block these companies from listing their stock on the exchange until there are suitable regulations. Hauser referenced a company called Natural Resource Holdings because the investment company had announced in a stock filing on Sunday early last week that it is in the process of negotiating a 75 percent acquisition a Quebec bitcoin mining business called Backbone Hosting Solutions. Later, that week, they announced the deal was closed. Following Hauser’s announcement, stock was down at least 48 percent for the investment firm, as reported by Calcalist. Other companies are currently trading on the stock exchange with high volatility. The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli regulators issued the bitcoin ban due to concerns that stockbrokers were using unregulated bitcoin “fluctuations” to inflate their own stock. Bitcoin is the now well-known digital payment method related to the application of blockchain, a technology that relies on a distributed ledger (shared and synchronized database across multiple sites, institutions, regions) to conduct instant transactions.