Uzbekistan ranks first in Central Asia and the Caucasus and 33rd in the world in the global crypto asset adoption index. This follows from a study of the digital financial assets (DFA) market conducted by RISE Research in conjunction with Freedom Horizons with the participation of KPMG Caucasus and Central Asia, Heemera, the Astana International Financial Center, the National Payment Corporation of Kazakhstan and Mastercard.
As noted in the study, Uzbekistan is demonstrating rapid growth in the global decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption ranking due to the growing share of a young, technologically advanced population.
In 2023, 512.3 thousand citizens in Uzbekistan owned crypto assets, which accounted for 1.46% of the total population.
As of October 2024, there are 15 licensed service providers in the crypto industry in the country - 2 crypto exchanges, 3 crypto depositories and 10 crypto shops. Their turnover has exceeded $1 billion, and the volume of revenues to the state budget since 2022 has amounted to over $3.6 million.
Uzbekistan residents have access to crypto assets only through providers licensed in the country. Transactions with crypto assets are exempt from taxation, and providers are not subject to currency control.
The National Agency for Prospective Projects (NAPP — the market regulator) has created a regulatory sandbox for testing new blockchain technologies, providing participants with tax breaks and other benefits. Currently, three organizations are operating within the special regime, implementing four projects.
In particular, the integrator Uzinfocom is working on the implementation of NFT certificates in the ".uz" domain zone, and is also developing a universal distributed data registry Token.uz. Octobank is developing a card product and a virtual bank card Сrypto Сard-UzNEX in partnership with Masterсard.
Heemera uses AI and machine learning, as well as a network of partners in 142 countries, to develop solutions for tracking and recovering crypto assets, as well as compliance for service providers.
One of the largest companies in the Tether space signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Agency for Advanced Projects in March. It issues stablecoins - cryptocurrency tokens whose rate is pegged to an asset, such as the dollar, euro, or an ounce of gold. The largest and most popular of them is Tether USD (USDT). As of January 2024, USDT is the third-largest crypto asset (after Bitcoin and Ethereum).
“Uzbekistan is creating a favorable environment for the development of crypto assets, we see a major role for the regulator in this… Crypto assets and blockchain technologies can lead to significant economic growth, they increase the flexibility and accessibility of financial services. If the financial instruments that are familiar today have an alternative, then even more market players will gain access to resources,” said Denis Filippov, CEO of Mastercard in Uzbekistan.
The full version of the study is available in Russian and English.
Earlier, in an interview with Spot, First Deputy Director of NAPP Vyacheslav Pak spoke about the current state of the local crypto market, the difficulties of legal cryptocurrency mining, the ban on trading crypto assets on foreign platforms, as well as the prospects for creating a digital currency in Uzbekistan.
