Ukrainian lawmakers have taken the first step towards the creation of a crypto reserve.
A group of eight deputies of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, submitted a bill which would authorize the country’s National Bank to include “virtual assets in the gold and foreign exchange reserves,” on Tuesday.
The bill’s principal sponsor is Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who serves as first deputy chairman of the Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy. Zheleznyak described the bill as a “step [to] integrate Ukraine into global financial innovations,” in a post on Telegram.
“Proper management of crypto reserves will help strengthen macroeconomic stability and create new opportunities for the development of the digital economy,” he added.
Zheleznyak noted however that if it became law, the policy would not demand the central bank create a crypto reserve, merely that it would have the option of doing so.
Ukraine already holds 46,351 bitcoin BTC, worth over $5 billion, a figure which only the U.S., China and the U.K. surpass, according to data tracked by BiTBO. However, reports from 2021 say this is all held by civil servants and other officials, as opposed to being held in government coffers.
Countries planning on building cryptocurrency reserves are not new, with the U.S. being the most prevalent. Pakistan’s government revealed similar plans for a strategic BTC reserve at the end of last month.