January 28, 2019

Belarus’ Largest Commercial Bank May Establish a Cryptocurrency Exchange

Exchanges

The cryptocurrency market might be underperforming in terms of prices, but the technology continues to evolve and become deeply integrated into the economy. This is especially true in smaller nations that see an opportunity to stake a claim in the new digital economy. The latest example of this can be seen in Belarus, whose largest bank is now reportedly considering setting up its own cryptocurrency exchange.

Also Read: Galaxy Digital Is Raising $250M to Help Firms Survive Crypto Winter

Belarusbank Crypto Exchange

According to a report by the state-owned Belarusian Telegraph Agency, Belarusbank is now examining the feasibility of setting up a digital asset exchange, as the bank’s chairman of the board Viktor Ananich told the Belarus 1 TV channel. This is seen as a part of a focus on digitalization that the bank plans for 2019. “We are considering a possibility to establish a cryptocurrency exchange. We are working on it,” Ananich said.

Belarusbank is completely controlled by the State Property Committee of the Republic of Belarus which owns almost 99% of the bank’s shares. It is considered to be the largest commercial bank in the country by the total amount of assets it holds, number of branches and other metrics. It provides banking services to individuals as well as large organizations such as the Belarusian Oil Company and Gazprom Transgaz Belarus.

The Digital Landscape in Belarus

While it is not as established as Switzerland or Malta, Belarus has taken steps to promote the development of its domestic cryptocurrency industry. The government legalized business activities related to digital assets back in March 2018, and adopted new regulations aimed at creating even more favorable conditions for cryptocurrency startups later in the year. In November, news.bitcoin.com reported that the number of companies registered in the Belarus High Technologies Park had increased to almost 400.

Earlier this month, the country made headlines when it was announced that Currency.com, which is licensed in Belarus, will launch a new trading platform for tokenized securities. The company plans to issue over 10,000 tokens that will track the underlying price of shares, indices and commodities.

Would you use a centralized cryptocurrency exchange held by a commercial bank? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verify and track ₿itcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from ₿itcoin.com.

Published at Mon, 28 Jan 2019 15:17:33 +0000

You might be interested in …

December 2, 2017

AWS on Blockchain Reluctance: ‘We Don’t Build Technology Because We Think the Technology is Cool’

At a time when many companies are rushing to embrace blockchain technology, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has adopted a more cautious ‘looking but not touching’ approach.

At this year’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, CEO Andy Jassy made clear AWS’ stance on the popular technology, telling journalists that while they have “a lot of customers and partners who either build blockchains on top of AWS or are building services to use blockchain on top of AWS,” they have no plans to integrate the technology themselves anytime soon.

Jassy stated:

We don’t yet see a lot of practical use cases for blockchain that are much broader than using a distributed ledger. We don’t build technology because we think the technology is cool, we only build it if we think we can solve a customer problem and building that service is the best way to solve it.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

While the cloud services platform, which boasts such high profile customers as the NFL, Time Warner, and the Walt Disney Company, isn’t necessarily averse to rolling out a blockchain product at some point, AWS says that isn’t a need for it at this time.

As far as Jassy is concerned, there aren’t many use cases for blockchain technology beyond the distributed ledger. He noted that most of the use cases for which their customers are turning to blockchain technology can already be solved using other technologies – most of which AWS already has within its existing capabilities.

Competitors Rush in Where AWS Won’t (Yet) Tread

AWS has many competitors in the cloud services space and many of those competitors, including IBM and Microsoft, are more optimistic about blockchain technology and distributed ledgers.

This year, Microsoft rolled out Coco, a framework designed to facilitate blockchain adoption by adapting existing blockchain protocols or by creating entirely new protocols, and their Azure Blockchain service, a BaaS (blockchain as a service) that enables businesses to quickly and easily configure and deploy a blockchain network.

IBM also launched their own BaaS, IBM Blockchain, which “empowers businesses to digitize transaction workflow through a highly secured, shared, and replicated ledger.” In addition, they have joined The Hyperledger Project in an effort to help advance cross-industry blockchain technology.

The blockchain ecosystem has received a lot of hype in recent months for its unparalleled solutions across several industries, including business, health, insurance, supply chain, artificial intelligence, and many others. Just like any new technology, the first adoption is very important in creating value. But since the sector is still growing, more research is needed, as clearly stated by Jassy, in order to ensure the realization of the true use cases of this technology. But as to whether there are other systems that will be more useful in solving decentralized problems than the blockchain, that is yet to be known.

Do you think AWS is making a mistake by not throwing their hat into the ring and embracing blockchain technology? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Flickr/JD Lasica, AdobeStock, Flickr/debbie ding

The post AWS on Blockchain Reluctance: ‘We Don’t Build Technology Because We Think the Technology is Cool’ appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

March 7, 2019

Fetch.AI (FET) Is Now Available On CoinSwitch – CoinSwitch

Fetch.AI (FET) Is Now Available On CoinSwitch – CoinSwitch We are glad to inform that Fetch.AI (FET) token is now listed on CoinSwitch. You can exchange FET token with more than 300 cryptocurrencies. What is […]

February 23, 2018

Bringing Renewable Energy to the World Using Blockchain Technology

Bringing Renewable Energy to the World Using Blockchain Technology Modern energy services are vital to human well-being and to a country’s economic development, yet according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), globally 1.2 billion people […]