Ukraine

The authorities of Ukraine have recently rolled out a new bill combating cybercrime that also describes the procedure for the confiscation of cryptocurrencies obtained illegally.

Eastern European countries are topping the list in cryptoasset adoption speed. Particularly, Ukraine and Russia have topped others because they have unduly intensive cryptocurrency usage. This shows that a bigger ration of nationals has moved away from traditional monetary activity to cryptoassets.

Ukrainian cryptocurrency market is under-regulated and therefore attractive for those wishing to take advantage of it for criminal purposes. Recently, law enforcers exposed a gang that has laundered about $42 million using cryptocurrency.

The outbreak of Covid-19 has pushed several governments and electoral commissions globally to the wall by making them look for other alternative means of organising and conducting free and fair elections. One of the available options is using a Blockchain-based e-voting method.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Energy offered the Energoatom energy generating company to explore the possibility of cryptocurrency mining using the potential of nuclear power plants.

The government of Ukraine will start overseeing all Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transactions, however, the current minister of finance has acknowledged that it is not virtual tokens but fiat currency which villains, fraudulent and corrupt public workers take advantage of.

The Ukrainian security authorities have detained cryptocurrency miners at a nuclear energy plant. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the law-enforcement agency and primary government security body in the fields of counterintelligence operation and fighting terrorism, arrested many people for illicitly mining Bitcoin and other digital assets at the country’s nuclear power plant (NPP).

A good number of countries including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Italy, Estonia, Ukraine, Denmark and Russia are planning to use blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) to conduct their polls via sophisticated electronic processes and in other vital sectors. As the US presidential elections are getting closer, some blockchain-friendly candidates including Andrew Yang are proposing the use of the technology in e-polling, to avoid vote rigging and manipulation of poll results as what happened in the last elections.

In late 2017, the lead analyst of cryptocurrency exchange EXMO, Pavel Lerner, was kidnapped in Ukraine. On December 26th, men wearing dark-colored clothes and balaclavas forced him into a car and drove away. Lerner resurfaced only three days later, having paid a ransom to the kidnappers.