More and more often, governments around the world are showing interest in cryptocurrencies; some states have already launched a national digital currency. What prospects await Ukraine if the authorities give the green light to cryptohryvnia and ICO? Can this bring significant investment into the economy and how?
Ukrainian officials are doing their best to pretend that they keep up with the times and monitor new trends and technologies. Often on their pages on social networks you can see congratulations for successful startups or comments under reports on investments attracted to the IT industry of Ukraine.
Last fall, a land cadastre running on the blockchain was launched, and the second tender for the distribution of 4G frequencies was visited by Petro Poroshenko himself.
The presidential administration is still cautious about ICOs, and is confident that “we need to think,” as Dmitry said Shymkiv, deputy head of the department.
“I think that the issue of ICO is very speculative and quite complex. You need to understand what will be the money that will rise. If we are talking about cryptocurrencies, then they are very volatile and virtual, and the state needs real money,” says Shymkiv.
He believes that ICO, as an investment instrument, is more suitable for the corporate rather than the government sector. However, the official does not reject the idea itself.
“The idea is interesting, but I still don’t see how it can be implemented in practice here,” says Dmitry Shimkiv.
Government officials do not see the real application of this idea, so the government structures comment on the possibility of a state ICO with restraint.
“Well, this is a scam,” writes Maxim with a smiley face Nefyodov, Advisor to the Minister of Economic Development and Trade. - Can the state issue MMM papers? I don’t think so - this is MMM for hipsters. In some cases, the tool can work, but I can’t even name any precedents right now.”.
Businessmen adhere to
“I believe that Ukraine can become a place where ICOs will be held. There is such a possibility. We want to show: an ICO with a legal entity in Ukraine is no different from what was done in Switzerland or Gibraltar or anywhere else,” says Andrey Kolodyuk, managing partner of AVentures Capital.
Alexander Ryzhenko, head of the State Agency for Electronic Government, notes that the state is considering similar projects.. But the main difficulty is that at the moment there is no legislative framework that could regulate them. For this reason, the legal company Juscutum, the State Agency and an initiative group of deputies are developing a bill that would regulate, in particular, the issues of state ICO.
Experts are also not particularly supportive of this idea. An expert on decentralized technologies, David Kiziria, believes that the chances of successfully raising funds through ICO are low, and argues that “ICO is a business, and the government is a bad businessman.”
“What do you think are the chances for the development of football when the players of one team have the right to referee?”- the expert asks a rhetorical question.
However, in the National Bank of Ukraine, the issue of creating a national digital currency has been discussed for a long time, even before Bitcoin became wildly popular. The department's intentions are mercantile, but without a single hint of speculativeness. The National Bank is not considering the possibility of holding an ICO at the state level. But he notes interest in the future. In particular, the Cashless economy project.
"At the end of 2016, the National Bank began a research project for the possible introduction of electronic hryvnia - a national currency based on blockchain technology. It can minimize transaction costs for transferring money from one participant in the Ukrainian payment market to another and simultaneously carry them out at almost instantaneous speed. Currently, the study of this possibility within the framework of this project continues," reports the press service of the National Bank.
According to http://biz.liga.net
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