Kazakhstan to ban cryptocurrency

Kazakhstan’s Central Bank leader Daniyar Akishev has told the Russian media about the view of his establishment on cryptocurrency. He said that both mining of digital currencies and the exchange of tenge (the local fiat currency) for any digital coins will be prohibited and he will make sure of it. Explaining the reasons of the ban, the state official reminded about the fact that digital currencies are used by criminals and overall implied that it is the responsibility of the Central Bank to prevent various financial threats to the national currency.

The ban of cryptocurrency and related business in Kazakhstan will undoubtedly make the country miss various financial opportunities. Another authoritarian government in Belarus has decided to work in a completely opposite direction and become a crypto offshore. This indicates that the cryptocurrency state policy is not necessarily dependent of the political system.

While the authorities in Post-Soviet countries may seem unified and committed to same goals, in reality there are always various elite groups with various interests and opinions. This has been witnessed in Russia - in the most notable example, the Finance Ministry openly admitted the dispute with the country’s central bank on the same coin topic.

Image courtesy of KazPost