Ukraine’s central bank chief flags regulator’s concerns over digital assets

The greatest concern of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) regarding virtual assets (VA) is their potential use for money laundering. This was stated by the regulator’s head, Kirill Shevchenko, in an interview with LB.uа.

According to him, the NBU cannot allow Ukraine to become a ‘global laundromat through which dirty money is laundered’.

The NBU’s principled stance is that cryptocurrencies are not a means of payment in the country and cannot be exchanged for property, goods, or services, said Shevchenko.

“You may hold VA in your wallet, but to buy something tangible — an apartment, a car and the like — you first need to exchange them for fiat currency, namely the hryvnia,” said the head of the NBU.

He noted that commercial banks have approached the NBU with requests to issue cryptocurrency cards. Earlier, such plans announced by Ukrainian monobank.

“But here arises the question of the high risk of such operations, the compliance with the necessary financial-monitoring procedures,” said Shevchenko.

The head of the NBU said that he does not own Bitcoin, but did not rule out acquiring them after the Law on Virtual Assets comes into force.

He also commented on the possible issuance of an e-hryvnia by the central bank, stating that the biggest question for discussion is the possibilities of using such an asset:

“Issuing for the sake of issuing is absurd.”

In September, representatives of the NBU stated about the possible launch by the end of the year of a pilot project for salary payments in the e-hryvnia to employees of the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Later, the regulator posted a blockchain developer vacancy. The candidate will work on developing the digital hryvnia.

Earlier this month, on 8 September, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Law on Virtual Assets. Under it, the NBU is one of three regulators of the market for digital currencies.

The law will not come into force until Parliament passes changes to the Tax Code concerning the taxation of VA operations. Recently, a preliminary draft of this document was sent to lawmakers for review.

Read ForkLog’s bitcoin news in our Telegram — crypto news, prices and analytics.