Kazakh financial authorities have come a long way before reaching a point when they are ready to regulate Bitcoin and its family members out of existence. At the end of the March 2018 the chief representative of the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) alluded in one of his public speeches on the upcoming complete ban of crypto-trade in the country.
It's difficult to say, however, that it had been an unexpected surprise for a local crypto-community. Already in October 2017 NBK put forward a proposition to restrict the local use of crypto-currencies. It was also accompanied by a promise to outlaw Bitcoin mining. Even earlier, in 2014, the same bank's officials deemed local financial institutions' use of Bitcoins illegal. After so many belligerent declarations, broadcast by country's top monetary watchdogs, it had already became very difficult to believe into the bright future of crypto in this Central Asian country.
Although those types of strong anti-crypto sentiments have already became one of the leading characteristics of financial gatekeepers populating this particular region of the world, it's, still, very sad to recognize that one of the most technologically advanced Central Asian nation, which had seen the first Bitcoin terminal installed in its capital city Almaty as early as in August 2016 and, prior to that, Kazakh government backed crypto-currency announced in March, is now reverting its steps back to the past.
Business Notes for Startups Founders:
political climate: officially friendly;
economic climate: not friendly;
regions to focus: locally;
industries to focus: mobile commerce and FinTech;
major limitations: dominance of mineral resource extraction industries, economic slowdown, bureaucratic and administrative hurdles, outdated legal system, brain drainage, low population density;
stimulus: high-low income population (per-ca $12,000), low income tax (10%), low costs, educated personnel (although mostly engineering, not IT);
opportunities: mobile commerce, FinTech, entertainment.
Cryptocurrencies and ICOs (outlook): legal (negative).
The author: Svyatoslav (Svet) Sedov
Angel investor and founder of The First International Incubator for Silicon Valley Companies (FirstInternational.In) in the Bay Area, CA, USA.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SvjatoslavSedof