Finally, global cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has marketed its Security Token (STO) platform in Kazakhstan, opening its first trading day.
Company officials told Cointelegraph that Bitfinex Securities, Bitfinex’s blockchain-based investment platform, will be officially launched on Tuesday.
The new STO platform, announced in September 2021, is organized within Kazakhstan’s national financial center, known as the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC). According to Bitfinex Securities’ chief technology officer, Paolo Arduino, Bitfinex Securities operates in a special economic zone in Kazakhstan that has an independent jurisdiction. The platform is not available to citizens or residents of countries such as Canada and the United States.
According to the announcement, Bitfinex Securities will for the first time launch a Blockstream Mining Note (BMN), a security token that gives qualified non-US investors the opportunity to mine bitcoin or invest in BTC mining stocks using the appropriate BMN hash rate. The token is released on the Bitcoin Liquid side chain and will be traded against BTC and the US dollar, so that accredited investors will have access to Bitcoin mining.
“This highlights pent-up demand among accredited investors for the ability to access bitcoin mining that BMNs provide to companies,” Arduino told Cointelegraph. He added that the company continues to work closely with local regulators as well as companies wishing to raise capital on the STO platform.
Related: Kazakhstan May Lose Lead in Bitcoin Hash Rate in Next Index Update
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the bitcoin mining industry appears to have faded somewhat in Kazakhstan recently, as local authorities have closed more mines and proposed higher energy prices as well as new taxes on crypto mining.
As of August last year, Kazakhstan was one of the world’s largest BTC mining provinces in terms of hash rate distribution, hosting over 18% of the global BTC hash rate, second only to the United States, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
