Ukraine’s Parliament Adopted a Revised Virtual-Assets Framework

Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada adopted a revised virtual-assets law on February 17, 2022, accepting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposals and assigning oversight principally to existing financial regulators. The official roll call recorded 272 votes in favor, three against, 69 abstentions and 21 members not voting.

The vote mattered because it moved Ukraine toward a defined legal perimeter for cryptocurrency ownership and service businesses. It did not, however, make bitcoin legal tender or place a fully operational licensing regime into effect on February 17. The statute expressly denied virtual assets the status of a means of payment, and its commencement depended on separate tax legislation.

A returned bill cleared parliament

Parliament had first adopted bill No. 3637 on September 8, 2021. Zelenskyy returned it on October 5, 2021, objecting to the cost of establishing a new central executive body for the sector. He proposed placing the relevant authority with the National Securities and Stock Market Commission instead.

On February 17, lawmakers considered the president’s proposals individually and then approved the law as a whole with those changes. The measure became Law No. 2074-IX, although presidential signature and publication still remained steps in the legislative process. Describing the vote as completed “legalization” therefore obscured the distinction between parliamentary adoption and legal commencement.

What the framework covered

The adopted text defined a virtual asset as an intangible good, expressed as electronic data, that has value and is an object of civil rights. It divided virtual assets into unsecured assets, which do not certify property rights, and secured assets, which do certify rights or claims to other civil-law objects.

That classification was designed to allocate supervision. The National Bank of Ukraine was assigned authority over virtual assets secured by currency values. The National Securities and Stock Market Commission would supervise other virtual assets and the providers serving them. Its contemplated powers included issuing permits, maintaining a provider register, setting reporting requirements, supervising compliance and applying financial-monitoring rules.

The law identified covered service activities including custody or administration, exchange, transfer and intermediary services related to virtual assets. Those provisions offered a route toward recognized operations for exchanges and other crypto businesses, but they did not prove that any provider held a Ukrainian permit on February 17. Implementing regulations and the permit system still had to be built.

The payment limitation was equally important. Under the adopted text, virtual assets were not a means of payment in Ukraine and could not be exchanged directly for goods, work or services. The law’s concept was regulated property and service activity, not replacement of the hryvnia.

Adoption was not commencement

Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation said on February 17 that it was preparing related amendments to the Tax and Civil Codes. It also stated that the signed law would enter into force only when legislation amending the Tax Code for virtual-asset transactions took effect.

That dependency left material questions unresolved on the event date: applicable tax rates, the implementation timetable, detailed licensing rules and the practical treatment of existing providers. Official statements that the law would launch a legal market described the government’s intended outcome, not a market that had already opened.

Why the vote was consequential

The February 17 action replaced a proposal for a new crypto regulator with a framework centered on institutions already responsible for securities and monetary oversight. That choice reduced the immediate need to create another agency and tied virtual-asset supervision to familiar licensing, reporting and anti-money-laundering functions.

No defensible cryptocurrency price move can be attributed specifically to the vote from the cited records. The event’s significance was institutional: parliament had settled the revised architecture and defined the next legislative dependencies.

Later context

On March 16, 2022, Ukraine’s government announced that Zelenskyy had signed Law No. 2074-IX. The announcement repeated that commencement remained tied to Tax Code amendments. That later signature completed a separate milestone; it does not change what had—and had not—occurred on February 17.