Ukraine Speeds Up Digital Hryvnia Project – Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation intends to increase efforts to complete the development of the country’s electronic hryvnia (e-hryvnia), according to its head, Mykhailo Fedorov, in an interview. The pilot phase was supposed to begin in 2024, but the administration now wants to start this year.
Fedorov told the business news portal RBC-Ukraine that the first blockchain transactions with the digital hryvnia had already taken place. “It is developing, I was recently presented with an electronic hryvnia based on the Stellar product,” the minister said.
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The department chose the Stellar Development Foundation as a partner in the development of the country’s virtual assets ecosystem, including infrastructure for the Ukrainian central bank’s digital currency, in January 2021. In November 2022, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) presented a “draft e-hryvnia concept” to representatives of the crypto sector, banks, and other financial organizations.
Tascombank tested the currency on the Stellar network in January of this year. The CBDC implementation plan is part of the central bank’s Strategy 2025. Fedorov, who is also Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, claimed he wrote a letter to the NBU in which he urged the NBU to accelerate the creation of the electronic hryvnia.
According to existing Ukrainian legislation, the NBU should launch the digital hryvnia pilot program in 2024, the digital minister stressed. “But we want to start this year, not postpone to the next,” emphasized Mykhailo Fedorov who is also a crypto proponent. Despite the ongoing conflict with Russia, Fedorov recently confirmed Kyiv’s “very ambitious plan’ to make Ukraine the most digitalized country in the next two years.
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“Digitalization is going to be the foundation for rebuilding. We are doing these reforms during the war,” Fedorov told reporters at the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, also promising that the Eastern European nation will become “the best crypto jurisdiction in the world.”