The Ukranian government has approved the final version of a money laundering law that will handle virtual assets and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) per FATF guidelines.
On Dec. 6, the Rada, Ukraine’s legislative body, published a final version of the law that considers virtual assets to be a store of wealth, while also recognizing its potential use in financial crimes, such as money laundering, fraud, and the financing of terrorists.
The new law includes some guidelines on how the government intends to monitor and regulate the trading of cryptocurrencies. One of the guidelines focuses on individual crypto transactions worth less than 30,000 hriven ($1,300), from which the government will only collect the public key of the sender for the purpose of financial monitoring.
Applying verification to both sender and receiver
However, once the transaction exceeds that amount, the government will apply verification to both sender and receiver. The process will include identity verification, as well as the verification of the nature of the business relationship.
For VASP’s the threshold sits above the 40,000 hryvnya ($1,600) price level. In that case VASP’s should provide the authorities with information when traders are registered in jurisdictions that do not comply with anti-money laundering recommendations, when traders are family members, when traders are foreigners, and when cash transactions occur.
Konstantin Yarmolenko of Blockchain4Ukraine provided Cointelegraph with guidance on Ukrainian law in this sector.
Binance helps Ukraine to prepare crypto legislation
Major global crypto exchange Binance is reportedly collaborating with Ukrainian authorities to establish cryptocurrency-related legislation in the country. Binance signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine to jointly work on the legal status of cryptocurrencies. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in November that the legalization of cryptocurrencies and the adoption of progressive legislation can play a key role in bringing positive growth in the economy as well as attract additional investments.
As part of the agreement, the Ministry and Binance intend to form a working group focused on the strategy of blockchain implementations as well as the creation of “new virtual assets and virtual currencies market in Ukraine.”
UN Partners With NGO to Tokenize Chocolate Bars for Equitable Trade
The United Nations Development Programme has partnered with Dutch NGO the FairChain Foundation to use blockchain for the more equitable funding of cocoa farmers.
According to an Oct. 17 report from SpringWise, the partners will launch a new chocolate bar, made with Ecuadorian-grown cocoa, together with a token-based scheme that allows consumers to contribute directly to cocoa producers.
Blockchain can “turn every product into a capitalist impact engine”
As the report outlines, each bar – being marketed as “The Other Bar” – contains a QR code within its wrapper that consumers can use to donate a blockchain token directly to farmers.
When scanned, QR code also reveals how much the farmer was paid for the cocoa used to produce their bar, as well as indicating the GPS coordinates of the cacao tree from which the cocoa for their bar was harvested.
According to SpringWire, while chocolate production represents a $92 billion global industry, farmers currently only receive 3% of the value of the cocoa used for marketed products. Many of them do not earn a living wage.
FairChain’s project aspires to ensure that farmers are better paid for their cocoa, with a target of achieving a price of €3,080 per metric ton for their cocoa. FairTrade reportedly pays farmers €3,080 per metric ton, while commercial buyers pay roughly €1,721.
FairChain Foundation founder Guido van Staveren has said that:
“The whole idea is to use technology to influence consumer behavior and basically turn every product into a capitalist impact engine.”
Donation transparency
Each of the tokens in The Other Bar project is reportedly worth around one-quarter of the value of a cocoa tree. The funding raised will be used to plant new trees, with consumers able to track the impact of their donations using data recorded on the blockchain.
As reported, the UN has long been exploring multiple – largely humanitarian – use cases for blockchain technology, beginning with its use of the Ethereum blockchain to transfer coupons based on cryptocurrencies to refugees in Syria, followed by a blockchain-based digital identity system designed to combat child trafficking globally.
This July, the UN unveiled its research into blockchain solutions to foster sustainable urban development in Afghanistan.
The chief of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Global Cybercrime Program has nonetheless recently warned that decentralized cryptocurrencies have made combating money laundering, cybercrime and terrorism financing significantly harder.
