Third-year student of the Armenian State University of Economics (ASUE,) David Arakelyan wrote an article for Banks.am. We present you the edited version below.

Blockchain is one of the most discussed technologies in the world now, but in Armenia, only a few people know that our neighbor Georgia already applies it both in private and public sectors. Moreover, Georgia ranks third globally by use of computing capacity for mining, surpassing the combined index of all European countries (only USA and China score more in this area).

The steam engine of this field is the BitFury Group, founded in 2011, which produces mining equipment and provides mining services. BitFury has three data centers in Georgia. One of them, located in Gldani, was the world’s largest as of 2015. Different sources indicate that construction of these three centers took around USD 30 million.

BitFury Founder & CEO Valery Vavilov said he came up with the idea to enter the Georgian market when he was enjoying khinkali (a national Georgian dish) at a restaurant with friends. Of course, khinkali wasn’t the decisive factor. A member of BitFury management, Georgi Kikvadze insists that the reasons their company came to Georgia were low taxes and power costs, and a good business environment.

While Europe and Russia hold various discussions about blockchain, Georgia went from words to actions. In April 2016, the Georgian government and BitFury announced creation of a new, revolutionary land registry that works with blockchain technology. On 7 February 2017, the government headed by Prime Minister Kvirikashvili added a clause on due diligence for real estate business to the agreement.

Minister of Justice of Georgia Thea Tsulukiani stated that citizens can “sleep well”, with confidence that their property rights are protected. TheEconomist reports that around 160,000 registrations have already been processed.

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