Belarus to remain crypto positive despite Russian crackdown

Belarus has said it has no plans to adopt stricter rules on crypto despite a possible Russian ban on token mining and transactions.

Hi-Tech Park (HTP), the Belarus crypto-currency regulator, has stated that “restrictive changes to the existing regulatory model are not currently foreseen”.

The crypto adoption index by blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis put Belarus third in Eastern Europe, after Russia and Ukraine, mostly because of strong peer-to-peer activity in the country.

Also, the citizens are not obliged to report their crypto transactions to tax authorities.

Belarus maintains close economic, political, and military ties with the Russian Federation, the central bank of which proposed last week to prohibit the use, issuance, and exchange of cryptocurrencies.

However, the regulator’s strict viewpoints have, for now, been rejected by representatives of other government institutions.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko liberalised crypto use back in 2017, allowing individuals to own, mine, and trade digital coins for other tokens or currencies.

Last year, he even advised workers to stay in the country instead of emigrating to fill low-paid farming jobs in Poland and Germany.

The Belarusian leader then said that there was “an alternative source of income”, commenting there’s enough electricity in the country to power cryptocurrency mining.