Vietnam is on its path towards legally recognizing Bitcoin.

According to regional news services VNA, the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc approved a plan that has the prospect of legally recognizing Bitcoin as a means of payment by 2018, in Vietnam.

 He has tasked Vietnam's central bank as well as the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Public Safety, to draw up a legal framework around cryptocurrencies.

The assessment for how the government should approach this process must be concluded by August 2018. The next step would entail formulating the legal documents required to recognize cryptocurrencies under a regulatory framework, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2018.

Simultaneously, officials will begin to work on a tax treatment for cryptocurrencies. As a matter of fact, by June 2019, a system governing how cryptocurrency users will be taxed in Vietnam is scheduled to be in place.

The approval of such a move would indicate that Vietnam is altering its previous cautionary standpoint, where Central Bank officials warned consumers about the risk of cryptocurrencies, in 2014.