Three Ukrainian Legislators Admit Large Bitcoin Holdings, Government Conflicted on Digital Currencies

Three Ukrainian lawmakers have released information on their Bitcoin holdings, which are quite substantial. The legislators, Dmitry Golubov, Alexander Urbansky, and Dmitry Belotserkovets, are all members of the group “Petro Poroshenko Block.”

According to Russian news service RIA Novosti, Golubov has the largest Bitcoin holding among with 8,752 Bitcoins. At current prices, this amounts to about $36 mln. Urbansky and Belotserkovets have 2,494 and 398 Bitcoins, respectively.

Conflicted government
These disclosures come as the Ukrainian government considers measures to regulate digital currencies. The country’s central bank recently revealed that the legal and regulatory status of virtual currencies will be a major topic of discussion at the next meeting of the Financial Stability Board in late August.

At the same time, the Ukrainian central bank is considering regulating digital currencies, and several government agencies have launched programs to integrate Blockchain technology into their operations. One of these agencies is the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food, which in October will begin the pilot run of a new land registry powered by Blockchain.

According to First Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food, Maksym Martyniuk, the trial will be conducted at the country’s State Land Cadastre. The technology will be used to digitize auctions for leases of state land.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian police continue their campaign against the use of cryptocurrencies in the country. Local sources report that authorities have raided a state-owned facility where they discovered and confiscated a large cache of Bitcoin mining machines.

These developments show that the Ukrainian government is deeply conflicted and has no concrete plan yet on how to deal with the digital currencies. It will be interesting to see which faction wins and to gauge its impact on the market.