Kazakhstan Plans to Introduce New Laws for Crypto Regulation
2023.02.11 01:54
Kazakhstan Plans to Introduce New Laws for Crypto Regulation
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – One of the world’s biggest Bitcoin (BTC) mining hubs, Kazakhstan plans to implement new crypto regulations to cut down on tax fraud and illegal business practices.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev reaffirmed the country’s opposition to illegal crypto asset issuance and mining operations in a new law he signed on February 6. The first of the two laws requires the issuers of secured digital assets to have permission from the government.
In addition, these issuers will be monitored in accordance with the country’s existing law, “On Combating the Legalization (Laundering) of Proceeds from Crime and the Financing of Terrorism.” The legislation will take effect on April 1, 2023.
The second piece of legislation focuses on unsecured digital assets, which are typically obtained through crypto mining activities. Crypto miners in Kazakhstan will be required to sell at least 75% of their earnings through registered crypto exchanges in order to reduce the likelihood of tax evasion. From January 1, 2024 to January 1, 2025, this rule will be in effect with the intention of collecting “information on the income of digital miners and digital mining pools for tax purposes.”
In Kazakhstan, crypto mining licenses are only issued for a specific amount of time—three years—depending on whether or not the miner owns the mining facilities.
The “digital tenge” pilot project, Kazakhstan’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) project, was launched alongside the aforementioned laws.
Binance presented a bilateral report on the “State of the Digital Assets Industry and DeFi in Central Asia” alongside the National Bank of Kazakhstan.
The joint report provides an overview of the local digital assets industry, general DeFi trends, and crypto adoption
NBK deputy governor Berik Sholpankupov wrote about the bank’s vision of a “collaboration between traditional finance and DeFi” in a report that was published jointly by the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) and the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. He added the following:
“We also started a practical R&D project in Kazakhstan to see how our CBDC, Digital Tenge, can connect the crypto world with the infrastructure for traditional fiat payments.”
Binance previously received a permanent license from Kazakhstan’s Astana Financial Services Authority (ASFA) to manage a digital asset platform and provide custody services in October 2022.
