The Balkan blockchain community for 6 month increased by 1 mln people IMMLA Follow Aug 29, 2017 · 2 min read

That was stated in discussion among experts during the conference Blockemon17, that took place in Belgrad 26 August 2017. According to the Mera Capital study the number of cryptocurrency owners in Balkan region has grown by 1 million people compared to about 280 thousand people by the end of 2016.

Central Banks of Balkan countries, especially Bank of Albania, express negative attitude to cryptocurrencies. They warn of bitcoin volatility and vulnerability of cryptocurrency exchanges to hacker attacks. However as popularity of cryptocurrency assets grows, the population of the Balkan countries has shown a significant increase in the activity in cryptocurrency usage since the beginning of 2017.

According to the Mera Capital study, for six months of 2017 the number of cryptocurrency owners has increased by 1 million people, from about 280 thousand people that were at the end of 2016. The study was conductedin such countries as Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The study was conducted through a sample survey of households with a representative sample of 2760 people.

Mikhail Astakhov, co-founder of IMMLA logistics consortium, attended Blockemon17 as a part of the ICO IMMLA road show. He confirmed that this statistics coincides with the assessments made by the consortium’s experts. IMMLA considers the Balkan region to be an important transit market for the project, and therefore maintains statistics on the number of active cryptocurrency users. The growth of cryptocommunity is an important characteristic of the crypto assets recognition. It shows the readiness of the region to perform payment transactions using smart contracts, which are the basis of IMMLA service.

“The readiness of the business to use cryptocurrency as a payment instrument is very essential for the IMMLA multimodal logistics service. It is very encouraging that the local blockchain community is growing so rapidly. The investors that gathered in Belgrade express their great interest in blockchain projects. Also we are satisfied with the attention and interest to IMMLA ICO. Although our service will be present in Serbia only in 2019, the region will be ready to perceive such advanced technologies as early as in 2018,” — Mikhail Astakhov said.

IMMLA co-founder Mikhail Astakhov reached strategic agreements with large investors concerning their participation in IMMLA ICO which will start on September 15. One of the main goals of Astakhov visit in Serbia was networking with community in Balkan region because those countries are important for blockchain industry as well as in terms of transport corridors.