The Bitcoin bubble came at a time when Belarus was contemplating entering the artificial intelligence sector.

When the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, was presented with another more interesting option to climb the technology ladder as a country, he was ready to listen and take action.

The idea of using the Bitcoin bubble to make Belarus a crypto hub was so sweet that Lukashenko was ready to push back on his earlier views that the internet was garbage.

The entrepreneurs who presented the cryptocurrency idea to Lukashenko relied on the services of Denis Aleinikov, one of the top technology lawyers in the country, to draft a bill “that would make it easier for foreign companies to work with local ones.”

However, technology enthusiasts in the country wanted to take the idea a notch higher. They wanted to present Belarus as a technology hub on the global market.

According to ZDNet:

The entrepreneurs thought they should capitalize on the crypto/ Bitcoin bubble [since] cutting-edge technology is a very nice marketing instrument for a little country…It would be good for Belarus to be the first country to make smart contracts legal.

Towards the end of 2017, the Belarusian president signed a decree which, among other things, waved tax on foreign companies, legalized initial coin offerings, mining activities, and cryptocurrency trading.

The new regulations saw technology companies ranging from blockchain/cryptocurrency, telecommunications, robotics, etc, flock the small Ex-soviet state.

While this impacted positively on the entire cryptocurrency market, it was not without side effects. For example, as the country took advantage of the Bitcoin bubble, dubious companies were also taking advantage of the county’s friendly regulations.

Most of these shady companies took advantage of ICO legalization which they used to solicit investments from investors. With no intentions of providing returns to the investors, these companies either closed business or have a non-existent working product.

This left investors counting losses which also brought a dark cloud over initial coin offerings. Bloomberg even reported that almost 90 percent of all ICO projects that cropped up during the Bitcoin bubble are yet to deliver tangible products as promised to investors.

While using the Bitcoin bubble to climb the technology ladder, do you think Belarus presented criminals with a clean way to defraud crypto investors all over the globe?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below



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