Ukraine is “quietly” leading the cryptocurrency revolution

It's nice to be the first in something, ahead of even countries like the United States. And according to an American expert, there is one area in which our country has surpassed everyone - cryptocurrencies. R Street Institute Communications Director and political analyst Ben Karns wrote a column for Forbes about why Ukraine is "silently" leading the digital currency revolution.

In Ukraine, they often joke about how to survive on an official salary. According to Karns, the pervasive corruption and the purely Ukrainian mentality of “house from the edge” have become a springboard for the formation of unique conditions for the development of technology in the country. Beyond the war with Russia and economic instability, a digital revolution is quietly developing in the form of an almost unprecedented adoption of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology, which allows the currency to be decentralized, and therefore anonymous, secure, and stable. This makes cryptocurrencies something like an open, transparent monetary system. In September 2016, the first Blockchain development and study center appeared in Kyiv. It was opened by the American technology company Innovecs and the co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation Ukraine, Mykhailo Chobanyan, with the aim of offering this technology in the banking sector for commercial use, and in the public sector - to fight corruption.

“Ukraine took Bitcoin with open arms when many citizens began to use this currency to protect themselves from rampant inflation and the instability of the hryvnia, which lost 80% of its value as a result of a protracted crisis. In 2014, nearly 5,000 ATMs across the country offered the ability to buy bitcoins for cash as easily as traditional banking transactions.

And last year, one Ukrainian bitcoin service reported a fivefold increase in demand, and the country became the first regulated market in the world to offer bitcoin futures contracts,” Karns writes.

Indeed, according to a joint study by law firm Axon Partners and consulting firm ForkLog Research, Ukraine is among the top 10 countries in terms of the number of bitcoin users and has an active cryptocurrency community. Moreover, decentralized technologies are planned to be used at the state level. However, the legal status of this area in Ukraine is still not defined and standard taxation rules apply to cryptocurrency transactions, although the NBU is studying the experience of other countries.

It is the Ukrainian government’s desire to implement blockchain at the state level that has most excited Karns. As an example, he cites the Auction 3.0 electronic auction system using blockchain technology, which was announced by Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk in July 2016 at a conference in Odessa. The project is being created as part of the “Cashless Economy” project initiated by the NBU, which was promised to be deployed by 2020. The auction is designed to help the country put an end to corruption in the privatization of state-owned assets by making the purchase process completely open and transparent.

Karns sees a sad irony in Ukraine’s sharp move towards digital currencies. After all, Ukraine is one of the nations most susceptible to political changes in the United States with the coming to power of Donald Trump. Namely, his desire to improve relations with Russia. After all, the States have become the largest creditor of our country, which gives them the opportunity to dictate their terms to Ukraine. And yet, Karns believes that the States have something to learn from us.

“Ukraine’s commitment to finding new routes in the name of transparency is a worthy example for the American political sphere, which is increasingly immersed in deliberate obfuscation and “alternative facts,” Karns concluded.

Source: AIN.UA