In brief
- Kazakhstan’s central bank could invest up to $350 million in crypto and related assets.
- The investments will comprise associated firms and financial products.
- The allocations could dovetail with Alatau City, a so-called smart city.
Kazakhstan’s central bank has earmarked $350 million for investments in the crypto, with plans to deploy capital as early as next month, Reuters reported on Friday.
“This includes not only cryptocurrency itself,” National Bank of Kazakhstan Governor Governor Timur Suleimenov reportedly said, while taking questions on the central bank’s latest interest rate decision. “We are currently developing a list of instruments in which we will invest.”
Derived from the Central Asian country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves, which totaled nearly $70 billion as of Feb. 1, the initiative marks an effort to diversify away from traditional stores as value using a relatively small amount of capital.
The investments will span “shares of high-tech companies related to cryptocurrencies and digital financial assets, index funds, and other instruments that exhibit similar dynamics to crypto assets,” suggesting that the central bank may not hold digital assets in their native form.
Decrypt has reached out to the National Bank of Kazakhstan for comment.
Kazakhstan’s national fund, established decades ago to manage oil-sale revenue, was valued at $65.23 billion at the start of last month. And the central bank’s…
