Ukraine’s Virtual Assets Ministry has released a manifesto that encourages crypto mining in the country and supports blockchain technology. As well as being pro mining, the manifesto lays out the ministry’s desire to allow blockchain developers a freer hand in terms of regulatory oversight in an effort to become a force in the emerging industry. The news comes less than three weeks after Ukrainians were told to declare their own and their families’ crypto holdings on tax returns.
Ministry Keen on Pushing Decentralized Technologies
The short manifesto begins by recapping the essentials of blockchain technology and its achievements to date, before adding that the current situation is “just the beginning of a sustainable and civilized development of this industry and related technologies.”
The statement then addresses the “transparency of the development of the virtual assets market” and the “goals and objectives assigned to the Ministry of Finance”, which they summarize in two points:
- Formulation and implementation of state policy in the field of digitization, digital economy, digital innovation, e-governance and e-democracy, development of information society
- Participation in the development of virtual assets, blockchain and tokenization, artificial intelligence
The ministry lists a number of ways in which they intend to reach these twin goals, many of which will be music to the ears of fans of crypto and blockchain technology. These include contributing to the development and introduction to the market of decentralized technology applications, and facilitating interactions between the virtual assets markets and traditional financial markets.
Market Can Regulate Mining
There are two areas in particular however that point to an overwhelmingly positive stance by the ministry – they will not regulate mining activity, trusting the network to govern itself, and they will support blockchain startups “even if they are partially unregulated and / or not defined by national law.”
This latter policy is reminiscent of last week’s suggestion by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Hester Pierce that US regulators should offer crypto startups a “safe harbor” period of three years. In return, the ministry asks enthusiasts and developers to “let us establish the legal regulation” with regard to the new paradigm, which is to be expected. This suggests that ministers might seek to work with developers on the broad strokes of policies in order to achieve their aims to be another of the emerging blockchain-friendly countries, which can only be good news for Ukraine and blockchain technology as a whole.
