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Ukrainian Central Banker: Bitcoin Is 'Definitely Not a Currency'
A Ukrainian official described bitcoin as a risky investment and a vehicle for fraud but downplayed any systemic concerns about the cryptocurrency.
Ukraine does not recognize bitcoin as a currency or as a medium of exchange, an official at the country's central bank has said.
"We can say that this is definitely not a currency, because there is no central issuer. And we cannot recognize this as a means of payment," said Oleg Churiy, deputy head of the National Bank of Ukraine, according to a report Friday by the Ukrainian website Financial Club, as translated by Google.
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Echoing recent comments by senior financial services executives in the U.S., the Ukrainian central banker described bitcoin as a risky investment for consumers and a vehicle for fraud. But he downplayed any systemic concerns about bitcoin and its brethren.
"World regulators are not concerned with any threat of cryptocurrency because of their small volume," Churiy said at the Ukranian Financial Forum. "They are concerned only with the fact that people can lose money [by investing in them]. And fraud that can be [committed] with them."
The Ukrainian central bank has been warning about the risks of bitcoin for several years, and last month it indicated it may soon regulate the use of cryptocurrencies.
Yet at the same time, Ukraine’s government has recently been testing the distributed-ledger technology that bitcoin inspired, in a novel use case: auctioning seized assets.
Bitcoin has even figured in Ukrainian politics in recent years, with separatists and other political dissidents using the permissionless, borderless system to raise and transfer funds.
Image of monument in Kiev by Shutterstock.
Marc Hochstein
As Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Features, Opinion, Ethics and Standards, Marc oversees CoinDesk's long-form content, sets editorial policies and acts as the ombudsman for our industry-leading newsroom. He is also spearheading our nascent coverage of prediction markets and helps compile The Node, our daily email newsletter rounding up the biggest stories in crypto. From November 2022 to June 2024 Marc was the Executive Editor of Consensus, CoinDesk's flagship annual event. He joined CoinDesk in 2017 as a managing editor and has steadily added responsibilities over the years. Marc is a veteran journalist with more than 25 years' experience, including 17 years at the trade publication American Banker, the last three as editor-in-chief, where he was responsible for some of the earliest mainstream news coverage of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. DISCLOSURE: Marc holds BTC above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000; marginal amounts of ETH, SOL, XMR, ZEC, MATIC and EGIRL; an Urbit planet (~fodrex-malmev); two ENS domain names (MarcHochstein.eth and MarcusHNYC.eth); and NFTs from the Oekaki (pictured), Lil Skribblers, SSRWives, and Gwar collections.
