Belarus registers first two crypto banks for launch

The two entities will provide coin-related services as residents of the fintech hub in Minsk, marking the first approvals since Belarus introduced this new class of financial institution. The Supervisory Board of the Belarus Hi-Tech Park (HTP) approved the registrations in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Alexander Turchin. That authorization lets the institutions conduct digital asset operations under the IT hub’s special legal regime.

One More Approval Still Needed

Anna Ryabova, head of the HTP Supervisory Board’s Secretariat, called the development a significant milestone after more than six months of regulatory groundwork. The registered banks have already assembled specialist teams, built out infrastructure, and passed technical and legal audits.

Full operations still require one more step. Both banks must be added to the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus (NBRB) registry of crypto banks before they can actually open for business.

Belarus Has Been Building Toward This for Years

This latest move follows President Alexander Lukashenko’s Decree No. 19, signed January 16, 2026, which legalized crypto bank activities outright. Since then, the HTP and NBRB have worked out requirements for service providers, permitted transaction types, and accounting rules.

Belarus has actually been ahead of the curve in the post-Soviet space for a while now. It legalized crypto mining and trading years before its ally Russia did, starting with Decree No. 8 in late 2017, which took effect the following spring.

Who Actually Oversees These Banks

• The HTP and the National Bank will jointly oversee the new crypto banks
• Both entities have distinct roles: HTP handles the special legal regime, NBRB handles final registry approval
• Dmitry Kalechits, deputy head of the HTP board’s secretariat, said the dual approach is meant to improve financial market efficiency and diversify available instruments

Kalechits framed the setup as a way to protect savings, widen the range of available financial transactions, and bridge traditional finance with crypto business. The pitch, in short, is that this boosts confidence and pulls in investment.

What These Banks Will Actually Handle

Once cleared, the new crypto banks will process transactions for 26 approved digital coins, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether’s USDT. The NBRB registry listing remains the final hurdle standing between approval on paper and banks that are actually operational.

Hashlytics Take

The regulatory framing here is doing a lot of work to make this sound like routine fintech progress, but Belarus isn’t a normal case. It’s under heavy Western sanctions and largely cut off from mainstream international banking, which makes state-sanctioned crypto banks look less like innovation and more like a workaround. A jurisdiction locked out of SWIFT and most Western financial rails has an obvious incentive to build parallel payment infrastructure that doesn’t depend on institutions it can’t access anyway. Worth watching who these banks actually end up serving once the NBRB registry clears them.