Panama and Ukraine recently revealed their ambitions to follow in El Salvador’s recent footsteps by legislating Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, into legal tender. The day El Salvador officially implemented the policy, Panamanian Congressman Gabriel Silva introduced a bill called “Crypto Law” that he’s backing while Ukraine passed a draft law to legalise cryptocurrencies.
Titled “Crypto Law: Making Panama Compatible with the digital economy, blockchain, crypto assets, and the internet,” Gabriel gave an overview of the proposal on Twitter, saying that it has the potential to create thousands of jobs, attract investment, and make the government transparent. From Article 2, it says that the bill is designed to provide “legal, regulatory, and fiscal certainty to the use, holding and issuance of digital value and crypto assets in the Republic of Panama.” From the title itself, the bill would not limit the implementation of crypto to only Bitcoin, but other digital coins as well.
Ukraine’s law, however, is not as straightforward as the Panamanian plan, as it only allows for the regulation of crypto instead of recognising it as legal tender on par with the Hryvnia, the country’s national currency. El Salvador, on the other hand, gave Bitcoin an equal footing to the U.S. Dollar, its official currency.
Ukraine plans to open the cryptocurrency market to businesses and investors by 2022, which might open up the possibility of adopting Bitcoin as a form of payment in the future. Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov explains that the country was modernising its payment market so that its National Bank would be able to to issue digital currency.
There has recently been a massive wave of support for crypto from several governments, as more and more nations begin recognising and regulating the market. Just a few weeks ago, even the communist island of Cuba introduced legislation to embrace the decentralised virtual cash. While it sounds like the value of Bitcoin should start being cemented in the global economy, El Salvador’s adoption led to a significant price drop due to technological snafus and uncertainty by the locals.
