Ukraine has been in various news recently. Well, it's already visible, although not as you'd expect. Today, the government officially passed a law legalizing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The bill was originally passed last September, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelanskyy has sent it back to parliament for changes. Today, four months later, the bill was officially signed into law.
"The development of new industries will enable and attract transparent investment and will strengthen our country's image as a high-tech country," Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for digital transformation, commented on the bill in September.
This is a positive step that seeks to protect digital asset owners, exchanges and other stakeholders in the industry. Most notable is the inclusion of the terms digital wallet, private key, and virtual assets in Ukrainian law for the first time. While there will always be groups protesting against the introduction of regulations to cryptocurrencies, overall this is a promising development for the industry and should encourage more transparency and trust for those operating in Ukraine, as well as reduce fraud. The hope is that covert mining operations, tax-dodging schemes, and other "shadowy" crypto activity will now wane, while innovation will surge and foreign investment will flow into the country.
Unfortunately, there's one problem. Even fanatical fans are unlikely to queue to book a one-way ticket to Ukraine, given the ongoing problems with Mr. Putin. The reality is that if you want, you can list all the positive crypto-related things in Ukraine – such as low taxes, simplified legal frameworks, improved technical infrastructure, and the sheer number of engineers – but as long as there are 150,000 Russian troops stationed at the border, Ukraine's hopes of becoming the center of Eastern Europe's digital assets are unlikely to be achieved anytime soon.
However, despite political concerns, he sees Ukraine moving forward to european countries' legal framework on cryptocurrencies. While South America has particularly welcomed their approach to crypto legalization, Europe has not been that warm to date. The EU has begun regulating crypto transfers, seeking to make them more traceable. While each country has legalized it — perhaps most notably the passage of a law in Germany last year that allowed German Spezialfonds to allocate up to 20% of their assets to cryptocurrencies — Ukraine still has high hopes of leading a virtual buzz on the continent, back when the bill was originally submitted.
Of course, the last interesting thing in this story is the sharp contrast compared to Russia. Putin is notoriously anti-crypto, pushing for an outright ban on the industry and focusing more on efforts to develop the central bank's digital currency.
It's one more thing for them to disagree with Ukraine.