Belarus Registers First Two Crypto Banks Under January’s Decree No. 19

Two crypto banks have been registered as residents of Belarus’s High-Tech Park, the country’s tax and legal zone for digital asset business, according to Russian news agency Interfax. Both Bitcoin Magazine and CoinGape reported the registration this week, though both outlets trace the underlying claim back to the same Interfax dispatch, so this is one event covered twice rather than two separately confirmed sources.

Neither bank has been named publicly. Before either can open, they need accreditation from the National Bank of Belarus, which will jointly oversee the institutions alongside the High-Tech Park administration.

What the decree actually authorizes

The legal groundwork dates to January, when President Alexander Lukashenko signed Decree No. 19, “On Cryptobanks and Certain Issues of Control in the Field of Digital Tokens.” The decree created Belarus’s first formal legal category for institutions combining traditional banking with crypto services.

Lukashenko had backed the National Bank’s push for crypto banks as far back as September of last year. The High-Tech Park’s press service described this week’s registration as “the launch and registration of the first crypto banks in the country’s history,” per Interfax’s translation of the statement.

Dmitry Kalechits, first deputy director of the High-Tech Park supervisory board secretariat, was quoted saying the move would “improve the flow of the financial ecosystem” and help draw foreign investment into Belarus. That framing appears in both outlets’ coverage without independent elaboration from either publication.

Registration is not the same as opening

Residency status inside the High-Tech Park is a licensing step, not a launch. Both banks still require sign-off from the National Bank before they can offer accounts, custody or lending tied to digital tokens.

Neither source reports a timeline for that accreditation, nor do they name the banks’ operators, capital requirements or which digital assets will be permitted on their balance sheets. Those details sit outside what Interfax’s original report covered, and no additional confirmation has surfaced from a second, independent chain of reporting.

Why the source chain matters here

Belarus is not a jurisdiction with dense independent financial press coverage, and Interfax functions as the primary wire for state and quasi-state announcements out of Minsk. When both Bitcoin Magazine and CoinGape cite the same wire dispatch, readers get two outlets amplifying one underlying event, not two separately reported confirmations of the facts.

That distinction matters for anyone tracking regulatory precedent for crypto-native banking. The decree itself, dated January and publicly signed by Lukashenko, is verifiable government action. The specific claim that two banks have now cleared High-Tech Park residency rests on a single wire source, repeated rather than corroborated.

Until the National Bank publishes its own accreditation list or names the two institutions, the practical status of Belarus’s crypto banking sector remains one step short of operational: registered, not yet licensed to take deposits.

Sources

• bitcoinmagazine.com
• coingape.com