The global exchange website Currency.com has announced that it will be offering a tokenized form of Belarussian government bonds, according to a press release on May 7.
According to the press release, users can now use fiat money or cryptocurrencies bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) to invest in and trade Belarussian government bonds. Belarussian-based company Currency Com Bel LLC is reportedly the first organization to tokenize government bonds.
As is the case with other cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, investors will be able to purchase fractional amounts of the new token. Initially, these tokens are being offered on the exchange at $1,000 per token; a token will represent one bond, and there will initially be 252 bonds with a 4.2% per anuum yield introduced to the exchange.
Co-Founder of Currency.com Viktor Prokopenya credits a piece of Belarussian legislation in 2018, Decree No. 8, which provided clear guidelines for the blockchain industry. Prokopenya said:
“All this was made possible by the progressive Decree No. 8 ‘On the Development of a Digital Economy’ that was ratified in Belarus in 2018, affirming the country’s commitment to playing a big role in the next chapter of the technological revolution.”
In a previous report by Cointelegraph, the national bank Oesterreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB) issued $1.35 billion worth of government bonds on behalf of the Austrian Treasury on the Ethereum public blockchain in an auction during September 2018.