A new survey points to how Ukrainians are earning a lot of money on bitcoin. One explanation is that the Ukrainian investment culture is much different.
Ukrainian investors have earned 400 million dollars on bitcoin in 2020, according to a new survey done by Chainalysis. That ranks Ukraine as number ten in the world, even close to Russia ranking fifth with 600 million dollars in earnings.
The price of bitcoins has been soaring in 2020 and it is benefiting the Ukrainian investors. Kyiv Post suggests that Ukrainians are investing so much in bitcoin because of the different investment culture in Ukraine, where people are less inclined to buy stock or bonds.
The top three countries in the world are the U.S., China, and Japan, where investors earned respectively 4.1 billion dollars, 1.1 billion dollars, and 0.9 billion dollars. Ukraine is ranking over countries such as the Netherlands, Canada, and Turkey.
“The data suggests that Bitcoin has given investors in emerging markets access to a high-performing asset, the likes of which they may not have otherwise had access to. On the other side of the coin, it also suggests that countries attempting to limit cryptocurrency usage through harsh regulations are preventing their citizens from taking advantage of the opportunity,” writes Chainalysis in the report.
The highest-ranking countries:
The price of a bitcoin in USD:
Ukraine is interested in bitcoin
Ukraine has previously ranked first in the world, measuring the percentage of the population who use cryptocurrencies. Since then, the Ukrainian government has been trying to find a way to legitimize the sector and to make it possible to pay with cryptocurrencies in shops. The Ukrainian government also said that they are working on making their own cryptocurrency, but that has still not happened.
“We will continue to look at the possibility of introducing an e-hryvnia (the Ukrainian currency is called the hryvnia, ed.). We will be ready to return to the area when we are convinced – not only – that it is technologically possible, but also that we are not interfering in our mandate as central bank, which is to ensure… financial stability,” said Yakiv Smolii, former governor of Ukraine’s Nationalbank, previously, according to Unian.
Some Ukrainian investors have expressed concern about the government’s plans to regulate the cryptocurrency sector in Ukraine, but the government says that it is purely trying to regulate service providers to protect people’s investments.
“We don’t regulate Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, tokens. The subject of regulation is service providers,” Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation for IT Development Olexandr Bornyakov said, according to Kyiv Post.
