One of the larger Baltic states is making big moves in cryptocurrency.
The nation of Azerbaijan sits on the Caspian Sea, sharing a border with Iran and Armenia, as well as Georgia and greater Russia to the north.
Apart from urban centers like Baku on the coast, Azerbaijan doesn’t seem tremendously populous: according to 2017 numbers, it has under 10 million people in total.
However, the country does have an influx of migration, and new blockchain efforts are meant to streamline the process of keeping track of domestic populations.
With electronic residency services, Azerbaijan allows new digital processes to govern arrival in the country, and even the setting up of small businesses.
“Azerbaijan is the second country in the World after Estonia to offer electronic residency and first ever to offer a mobile residency,” writes Kirill Bryanov today at Cointelegraph. “This service allows non-residents to establish a company online within a day in Azerbaijan and use all of the e-Services in the country. All they require is a smart phone — and they can start a location-independent business in Azerbaijan.”
Bryanov quotes manager of Azerbaijan’s Digital Trade Hub Nijat Asadli as describing this unique innovation.
Asadli points out there are three main areas where the government wants to enhance what blockchain can do for public administration: One is the digital trade hub itself, a public-private hybrid platform to facilitate 21st-century business within the country.
Then there’s an e-government portal for record-keeping and, a third component of blockchain focused at central bank operations to help control the nation’s money supply.
“By implementing new financial technologies in the market, they believe they can boost the cashless economy and extend digital services, making them transparent and available for citizens,” Azerbaijan central bank CIO Farid Osmanov said, according to Bryanov’s report.
All of this is an extremely illustrative example of how even smaller nations can buttress their public administration systems with new blockchain technologies. Investors are looking at this kind of public and private buy-in as they predict where cryptocurrencies and blockchain systems will go in this year and the years to come – will more vibrant adoption spur greater value?
Keep an eye on the site as we detail new programs and initiatives coming out of blockchain adopters around the world.
