Banks in Kazakhstan will be allowed to open cryptocurrency accounts for companies

The republican authorities plan to launch a pilot project and will allow some banking organizations towork with digital assets.

The government of Kazakhstan will launch a pilot projectbased on the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC), which will allow banks to open cryptocurrency accounts for companies providing services with digital assets. This was reported by the Khabar 24 news channel with reference to the Association of the Blockchain and Data Center Industry of Kazakhstan.

The pilot project will be implemented during the year. It is not yet known which banks will be allowed to work with cryptocurrency.

Over the past two years, Kazakhstan has significantlyincreased the volume of bitcoin mining, ahead of Russia. According to the University of Cambridge, from September 2019 to April 2021, Kazakhstan increased its share in global cryptocurrency mining six times (from 1.4% to 8.2%) and took the third place in terms of mining in the world.

On June 29, the President of Kazakhstan signed a lawwhich introduces additional taxation for enterprises engaged in the extraction of digital assets. According to the document, miners will have to pay an additional 1 tenge ($ 0.0023 at the exchange rate as of July 16) for 1 kWh of electricity consumed when mining cryptocurrency. The new tax rules will come into force on January 1, 2022.

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