Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has announced that BNB Chain will play a role in the Republic of Kazakhstan central bank digital currency (CBDC). The Central Asian country has been in the CBDC race since May 2021. Here are the details…
Major development for the Binance network
A decision on the feasibility of launching a CBDC is due by December 2022, as the country’s central bank announced late last year. Changpeng Zhao, “CZ,” said that the Binance team has been working relentlessly in terms of global adoption of cryptocurrencies. He met with Berik Sholpankulov, First Deputy Chairman of the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NKB), and Binur, Head of the Center for Payments and Technology. The result of the meeting was the integration of BNB Chain into the digital tenge, Kazakhstan’s CBDC.
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1585494097795629057
While no further details are known yet, it seems likely that CBDC will be based on a multi-chain architecture. In fact, NKB announced in December 2021 that CBDC is being piloted on R3’s Corda platform. As we have also reported as Kriptokoin.com, a CBDC pilot was conducted in Kazakhstan in a controlled environment with real users in the past months. On this subject, CZ said:
We look forward to NBK preparing CBDC use cases to see how it can be integrated into BNB Chain to bridge the gap between traditional banking and the crypto ecosystem.
Binance has many licenses in Kazakhstan
The pilot is being tested with Kaspi Bank JSC and Eurasian Bank JSC, the country’s largest commercial banks. Kazakhstan’s CBDC model is two-tier, meaning the central bank oversees the entire system and smaller banks open digital tenge wallets where users can use digital tenge and make interbank transfers. The Central Bank of Kazakhstan also said that the CBDC is not intended to replace cash or cashless payments. Therefore, digital tenge tokens will only be recorded in users’ digital wallets and not on banks’ balance sheets.
As CZ noted in his Twitter post, Binance maintains good relations with the Kazakh government and central bank. Just three weeks ago, the crypto exchange received a “perpetual license” to operate a crypto asset platform and provide custody services. The license grants Binance the status of a regulated platform and authorizes the company to provide digital asset trading, fiat deposit and withdrawal, and custody services.
In addition, Binance received presidential approval to develop a virtual asset market in Kazakhstan. To this end, CZ and the Financial Supervisory Authority of the Republic of Kazakhstan signed a memorandum of understanding (MOA). According to Zhao, the deal is part of the company’s Law Enforcement Training Program (LETP) to combat cybercrime. Currently, the exchange’s coin, BNB, is changing hands at $289, down 0.1 percent. The coin rose 6.4 percent in a seven-day period.
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