Belarus to Launch Digital Ruble By 2026, Eyes Full Rollout

Belta, the news agency aided by the states, reported citing Roman Golovchenko the head of National Bank of Belarus that it is ready to fully launch its central bank digital currency by the 2nd half of the following year

The news agency quoted Roman who said, “ The digital ruble is one of our priorities. We are actively working on its creation. First of all, we are faced, of course, with the issue of preserving funds. That is for the state for example it will be very important to be able to track how digital money passes through the entire chain.”

What are the major tasks the National Bank of Belarus is facing?

The Chief of the Bank underlines three major drawbacks: the first one is to define the requirement for the ecosystem for the circulation of Belarusian digital ruble, second is to design a inhouse software for the functioning of digital ruble, last is to develop regulatory framework to determine the rules for the functioning and other required regulations.

Following the announcement of dates for the launch of CBDC, the head and chairman of the National Bank of Belarus said, “ Business entities will already be able to use it and by 2027 it will be made available for both government agencies as well as individuals.

Experts argue that the launch of CBDC by Belarus is expected to boost its economy and will also enhance its process of cross border payments and other cross territory trades.

Launch of CBDC by Belarus to hinder crypto adoption

According to the available information, cryptocurrencies have a legal status in Belarus after the president of the nation signed Decree No. 8, which solely talks about the development of the digital economy.

Following this signing crypto including blockchain based business, initial coin offering and smart contracts got a legal status in the nations. Despite these developments the adoption of crypto remains slow in the nation and in 2021 total number of crypto users in Belarus were 350,000 users which amounted around 3.45% of the total population of the nation at that time.

According to some rough estimates the total number of crypto users in Belarus is expected to hit 445.99k users by 2025 end with a user penetration rate of 4.74%.

On March 05, 2025, it was reported that the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, ordered the officials to strengthen and streamline the energy production infrastructure in the nation and also instructed them to consider the crypto mining sector to use surplus electricity

Over the time the nation has continued to dive deeper in the crypto mining industry, and is constantly trying to establish the region as the major hotspot for digital assets miners.

However there are arguments that the full fledged launch of the Central Bank Digital Currency is expected to harm the growth and adoption of crypto in the nation.