Page 29 - bne_Magazine_October_2017

bne October 2017 Cover story I 29
If it goes ahead then this will be the second deal Vavilov has struck in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Last year he cut a similar deal in the Repub-
lic of Georgia to register land titles in blockchain land titling project.
With BitFury’s help, Georgia’s National Agency of Public Registry has recently
embrace and implement this technol- ogy, countries like Ukraine and Georgia are positioning themselves to leapfrog other advanced nations,” he says.
Kazakhstan is the latest comer to the party. Blockchain fits in perfectly with its extensive plans to revamp its securities market that were launched
nology, the bank said in September.
Investors will be able to buy notes with a face value of 100 tenge (about $0.3) directly with no commission and no brokers involved on a system that is supposed to launch before the end of this year. The bonds have maturities ranging from one week to one year, which are usually bought by banks and funds and can raise up to $700mn with each issue that bares a yield of 9.9%.
Along with the other FSU countries Kazakhstan is also competing to
offer “the most favourable business climate” for cryptocurrency and
fintech companies, according to the country’s new flagship financial reforms entity, the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC).
“Georgian citizens can “sleep quietly” when it comes to property rights”
moved its land registry onto the block- chain. Some 160,000 registrations have already been processed. Thea Tsuluki- ani, the country’s Minister of Justice, believes that the blockchain will mean Georgian citizens can “sleep quietly” when it comes to property rights.
The FSU has embraced the world of
high technology and in many examples leapfrogged the developed markets by going straight to state-of-the-art technol- ogy. For example, Russia is already the world’s third most active user of fintech – technology related to providing financial services – according to consulting firm EY. Using a smartphone to make bank transfers of SMS alerts when you make
a cash withdrawal from cash machine have become d’habitude in Russia.
And the tiny republic is a giant on the global bitcoin mining scene. In the hills overlooking the Georgian capital Tbilisi is a non-descript building that houses rows of servers quietly hum- ming away. Bitfury located its massive processing farm in Georgia where it mines for bitcoins and has a whopping 6% of global mining capacity. China
is the world’s lead with 60% of global mining capacity followed by the USA/ Canada (16%), Georgia (6%), Europe (5%), Iceland (3%) and Russia (2%).
Vavilov, who was born in Latvia, com- pares what these two former Soviet states are doing with blockchain to what many countries in emerging coun-
tries did in telecommunications. “By being among the first governments to
recently. The National Bank of Kazakh- stan (NBK) plans to sell its short-term bonds to retail investors using a mobile application based on blockchain tech-
Whoppercoin & and UAZik vans on the chain
bne intellinews
Cryptocurrency have barely been born but big business is already throwing itself into the buzz they have created in Eastern Europe.
Burger King Russia has just launched Whoppercoin, a cryptocurrency, which can be traded for its trademark hamburgers, the Whopper. For each ruble spent at Burger King locations in Russia, diners will get a quantity
of Whoppercoin sent to their digital wallet via Waves, a Russian-based Blockchain platform.
“Now a Whopper is not only a burger that people in 90 different countries
love — it’s an investment tool as well. According to the forecasts, cryptocurrency will increase exponentially in value,” stated Ivan Shestov, head of communications at Burger King Russia. “There are only 1bn Whoppercoins in existence, which should be more than enough to provide for the Russian public’s rate of Whopper consumption.”
And in an even less likely development, Russia’s Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant (UAZ, part of the Sollers Group), which make the rather dumpy, but extremely popular “UAZik” van, has also got into the same game. UAZ has teamed up with the LavkaLavka agricultural and retail group to set up another loyalty system.
Customers that buy a car from UAZ or groceries from LavkaLavka will be given tokens that can be used to buy goods from any of the companies in the system. UAZ and LavkaLavka have agreed on an initial three-year cooperation plan during which they want to attract more companies to participate. (It’s not quiet as silly as it sounds as one of UAZ’s big customers is LavkaLavka agricultural produce suppliers, who make up about 10% of the company’s business.).
www.bne.eu