With European regulations and taxes making it difficult for mining companies to set up, one Eastern European country decided to take direction and make itself an attractive hub for miners.
The State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection in Ukraine announced that the department doesn’t have any plans in place to require any licensing for cryptocurrency mining.
For years, anyone who wanted to mine cryptocurrency in Ukraine could do so as long as they had the equipment and the capital to pay for the running costs. For some, this was a lucrative opportunity, and Ukrainian miners have made over $100 million out of these activities.
Still, doing so carried the risk of penalties because no one really knew if Ukraine would eventually levy fines on these activities if they had been done without licensing. Companies that wanted to mine in the country had to accept that at some point, the government could decide to step in and put a stop to everything.
While the news is good for miners in Ukraine, the country still struggles to find common ground on how cryptocurrencies as a whole should be regulated. None of the three bills introduced to parliament have made it through for approval.
This means that Ukraine is still a “wild west” as far as Bitcoin and other coins are concerned. Knowing this, the government formed a working group at the beginning of this year to develop regulations for the cryptocurrency market.
Despite all of these efforts, there’s still no comprehensive policy from the government. On the one hand, this is a boon for those who want to trade freely and even develop companies based on the market.
On the other hand, any initiative that develops in Ukraine could suddenly be shut down in the future because of bureaucratic pressure without a legal system in place to determine how digital coins should be treated.
As previous efforts by the government had included the presence of law enforcement agencies, miners have been understandably cautious about coming to meetings. This has created a Catch-22 situation. Ukrainian projects and initiatives centering around cryptocurrencies need to gain a significant amount of power and influence before regulations are discussed so that they could have a say in the process. However, at the same time, there’s a certain reluctance to open up about one’s activities because the regulatory environment has been unpredictable.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
