Belarus has launched a regulated bitcoin exchange

[boss.afro]

Belarusian hi-tech Park announced the launch of cryptocurrency exchange Currency.com, the activity of which is licensed by the decree"on the development of the digital economy".

The platform will trade tokenized assets for raw materials, shares, indices tied to the basic market value of traditional financial assets — a total of about 150 tokens. Subsequently, their number is planned to increase to 10 thousand.

Investors of the project were the company's VP Capital Belarusian businessman Victor of Protopine Larnabel Ventures and member of the Board of Directors of the group Safmar said Gutseriev. Their total investment amounted to about $10 million.

Citizens of Belarus and other countries, except the United States (due to national bans) and countries blacklisted by the International financial action task force on money laundering (FATF), will be allowed to trade on the exchange.

You can buy and sell tokens on the exchange both with the help of cryptocurrencies (bitcoin or Ethereum) and for Fiat money (us dollars, euros, Belarusian or Russian rubles). With anonymous crypto-currencies, like Monero, the platform will not work.

Make money on Currency.com it will be possible through direct transfer or payment with Visa and Mastercard Bank cards, Belarusian Belveb and Paritetbank will serve transactions. Exchange commissions will be from 0.2 to 1.5 percent depending on the operation.

At the same time, the initiator of the project Victor Prokopenia stressed that Currency.com " more about tokenized securities than cryptocurrencies."

"Currency.com it solves the problem of the lack of traditional financial instruments in the crypto market, which is why crypto investors are cut off from the market of traditional financial assets and can not exchange cryptocurrencies for Fiat currencies," his partner said Gutseriev added.

To prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, the platform will follow the standards approved by the national Bank of Belarus with the assistance of FATF at the end of November 2018.

The exchange founders plan to reach $70 million in revenue by the end of 2019.

CEO of Minerboard, member of the Board of the Belarusian Blockchain Association Alexander Lozben believes that for residents of the CIS countries Currency.com it will gain competitive advantages in comparison with other sites.

"First of all, it concerns the convenience of input and output for the residents of the Customs Union. In addition, investors who do not have access to stock trading because of sanctions, the origin of capital and small Deposit, theoretically will be able to use this exchange," he said in a comment to ForkLog.

Also, according to him, the focus of the platform on tokenized assets will expand the number of its potential users, and provide traders with more trading tools.

Source forklog.com

[elda34b]

Seems like there will be more exchange like this in the future. Previously, it is DX.Exchange, now this one. Both of them provide the opportunity to buy tokenized assets like shares.

Will the exchange hold the real asset so that each token represent 1 asset (or a fraction of it?)? Can users withdraw the tokens to their own wallet? Which blockchain they'll use for tokenizing the security/assets?

[mich]

I read that they are calling this the "world's first regulated tokenized securities exchange."
This is good news for the nation of Belarus as it is when any nation decides to regulate crypto.

Based on this article, it appears many crypto currency businesses are now based in the Belarus Hi-Tech Park after the government in Minsk legalized crypto-related activities for its residents.
https://news.bitcoin.com/growing-number-of-crypto-companies-operating-from-belarus/

[NeuroticFish]

You can buy and sell tokens on the exchange both with the help of cryptocurrencies (bitcoin or Ethereum) and for Fiat money (us dollars, euros, Belarusian or Russian rubles). With anonymous crypto-currencies, like Monero, the platform will not work.

It sounds good. A bit shame for not accepting anon coins, but I guess that they don't really know how to properly regulate them yet.
Also Belarus, while for me at least is unexpected, it has a nice position between Russia and Western Europe, so it can easily facilitate money/wealth/value transfer between both.

Let's see how it goes, for now, as a news, it's nice.

[Crypdon]

This is a good start and i'm sure many more will follow when the profits are released. After binance made millions so many new exchanges sprung up but none are able to compete yet

[Kemarit]

You can buy and sell tokens on the exchange both with the help of cryptocurrencies (bitcoin or Ethereum) and for Fiat money (us dollars, euros, Belarusian or Russian rubles). With anonymous crypto-currencies, like Monero, the platform will not work.

It sounds good. A bit shame for not accepting anon coins, but I guess that they don't really know how to properly regulate them yet.
Also Belarus, while for me at least is unexpected, it has a nice position between Russia and Western Europe, so it can easily facilitate money/wealth/value transfer between both.

Let's see how it goes, for now, as a news, it's nice.

Belarus has been friendly to crypto:

https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-business-is-now-legal-in-belarus/

So I'm not surprised by this news at all. Maybe the government's motivation is really to attract a lot of investors to their country, and just like you said facilitate money transfers all across Russian and the rest of Western Europe, win-win situation. And as the article has noted, they wanted to change the perception about their country so this is one way to attract businesses specially crypto is really booming in the last couple of years.

[upsidedown75]

First of many lets hope. Belarus is a country that doesn't have a big impact on the world economy but if we can manage to get the regulated bitcoin exchanges all around the world and make the exchanges responsible for the mistakes they do instead of letting them do whatever they want we can finally get great exchanges.

Even coinbase which is one of the biggest exchanges in the world does shady stuff that puts peoples money in jeopardy and not get called out for it by the government even tough USA is very law oriented in crypto world. Hence, we need to make sure first world countries like USA/UK and many more like that to follow at the foot steps of Belarus and make sure exchanges are liable with the law and provide customer support at a high level or have the chance of getting sued.

[Upgrade00]

This is a very positive development, and would go a long way in reassuring citizens of Belarus of the legitimacy of bitcoin and selected alternative currencies.
Hopefully it's functioning would be an improvement to majority of the exchanges we have. And other countries follow the trail.

[countryfree]

Who wants to use the service of a Belorussian provider?
I don't. Nor would anyone from Western Europe or America.
Maybe Russian or Serbs, but that's about it.

[figmentofmyass]

Who wants to use the service of a Belorussian provider?
I don't. Nor would anyone from Western Europe or America.
Maybe Russian or Serbs, but that's about it.

true, but that's a big market with very limited services, so it's probably worth tapping. a lot of people in russia and other post-soviet countries were still using WEX when it recently exit scammed because of a lack of other options. there's EXMO (also shady and connected to BTC-e) and not much else. otherwise there's only small local exchanges (limited liquidity) or local p2p exchangers. so i take this as a welcome development.

i guess if the russian government is really planning to accumulate bitcoins, they won't be able to do so on western exchanges or through western OTC brokers either.

[stompix]

Let me see, an exchange run by friends of the last dictator in Europe, in the most corrupt country and one of the poorest in Europe, is planning to attract money from all over the world (well, except US) because.... give me one reason!!!!!

So I'm not surprised by this news at all. Maybe the government's motivation is really to attract a lot of investors to their country, and just like you said facilitate money transfers all across Russian and the rest of Western Europe, win-win situation.

Western Europe has SEPA, Belarus is not part of it, this is one huge NO.
The other huge NO is that Belveb is a bank that is under sanctions from the US, you really want to have your money going through it?

[Theb]

To show its support, the Belarusian government will not levy taxes on such transactions until 2023. Earlier, it passed a law on cryptocurrencies, hoping that they could help Belarusian companies attract foreign capital.

VP capital is lucky that they are fully supported by their own government, but will this come back and bite them in the a**? I mean they are only doing this in the hopes of improving their economy but tokenizing traditional assets really looks like a bad idea in terms of the Belarusian government having control with their own domestic markets, they are allowing themselves to be vulnerable to foreign investors to be manipulated with some price and dump action. This is still on its early phase and I may be wrong but they just allowed themselves to be the test subjects of this system.

[Stac]

According to my point of view The  first online cryptocurrency exchange based on block chain technology has been started in Belarus the world's first  regulated  tokenized securities exchange,, financially supported by London-based Belarusian entreprenuer a Russian business man .The online service allowed users to exchange different types of cryptocurrencies and also to sell and buy for national currencies .Block chain technology makes online transactions faster and more secure and as well as anonymous .Token may be used to safe guard sensitive data such as bank accounts  or financial  statements  the decree makes initial coin offerings and transactions in crypto currencies legal and all such trades will not be taxed.till the year 2023 .

[blockman]

It's smart; they are incentivising their population to invest in crypto so that in 2023 when taxes start there will be a larger pie to tax.

What can we expect? there's a big chunk for these exchanges if the gov't will just recognize them.

[kryptqnick]

I've heard a year ago about project laws on regulation of cryptos in Belarus and about attempts of crypto businesses to operate legally there. It's cool that there's the first legal exchange in the country now, and the fees seem reasonable to me. I also find it acceptable that anonymous cryptos won't be traded, because allowing them and complying with international AML practices is very hard. I was wondering about taxes, though. Will Belarussian traders have to pay the income tax or whatever other taxes there are in this country when they deal with cryptos? Will the KYC be required for every customer?

[eternalgloom]

Who wants to use the service of a Belorussian provider?
I don't. Nor would anyone from Western Europe or America.
Maybe Russian or Serbs, but that's about it.

So what? Isn't it positive that there are exchanges in all parts of the world?
You can't expect Bitcoin to become used and accepted globally if smaller countries don't have their own exchanges.

Without talking about the political situation in Belarus, I think they're doing good by encouraging the use of cryptocurrency.
Other countries can really learn from that.

[MakeMoneyBtc]

Even though this new exchange comes from Belarus, which is not a big country and cryptocurrencies are not very popular there its good to see that they start appearing. Everything starts with a small step and I think we are talking about the same thing here because someone had to take action and other will continue that way.

[cizatext]

This is one of the world first regulated exchange and at that will have great user friendly interface on the exchange and we are hoping on more regulated exchange in the future because more and more countries are adopting cryptocurrency and blockchain.

[daarul50]

If I hear news like this, I always feel like living in that country where crypto and blockchain which are new technologies in the world of economy are accepted by a country openly even the government also supports the development of these technologies. The regulation must be issued because even though crypto is not an asset that is controlled by a party but if crypto wants to be accepted by a person it must follow the rules of that country.

[el kaka22]

So it is both a place to trade stuff like bitcoin and ethereum but at the same time buy stocks and shares of a company as well. I wonder if we could just send bitcoin and with the deposited bitcoin we could buy shares of a company ? If that is the case than I think it is honestly a great innovation in crypto space. Their name is also amazing, just pure minimalist currency.com and that's it.

I think it is certainly a website that has a huge upside and could potentially help out many millions of people not only in Belarus but also people outside of Belarus to be part of this new system as well. I am sure if people are allowed to buy shares and stocks with bitcoin they would jump on that chance even if it was companies based on belarus because people love spending money on companies without actually having to work with banks.