The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market and the National Commission for Financial Service Markets Regulation have said that it is impossible to declare cryptocurrencies monetary units, currency and a payment unit of another country, currency valuable, e-money, securities or quasi-money within the current Ukrainian legislation.

"We, financial regulators of Ukraine, continue working on the legal status of cryptocurrencies and legal regulation of transactions with them, taking into account the position of regulators of other countries and recent trends in development of these technologies," Deputy NBU Governor Oleh Churiy said, presenting the statement of the financial regulators in Kyiv last week.

He spoke against attempts to hastily regulate the status of cryptocurrencies in the Ukrainian legislation.

"We believe that amending the Ukrainian legislation should not be in hurry, as today there is no unified position towards cryptocurrencies in the world," Churiy said.

He said that different regulators interpret cryptocurrencies in an absolutely different ways: sometime it is considered as a payment unit, sometimes – an intangible asset and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) considers it decentralized virtual currency.

"The approach to legislative regulation should be careful and grounded. It is linked to protection of rights of investors into these cryptocurrencies," he said, finding it difficult to disclose concrete terms.

He said that this regulation should not hinder the use and development of modern IT technologies in the financial sector and entail outflow of specialists and capitals or the transfer of businesses outside Ukraine.

The financial regulators again warned of a large number of risks in operations with cryptocurrencies.

Head of the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market Tymur Khromaev said that the commission is ready to take over the responsibility for setting the status of some investment assets, in particular those similar to crowdfunding ICO. However, amendments to the legislation about the regulator should be made.

He also said that the registration of bitcoin futures by the commission under an initiative of a stock exchange should not be considered the recognition of bitcoin, as this is a cash settlement stock index contract.

As for taxation of transactions with cryptocurrencies, Churiy said that representatives of the Finance Ministry and the State Fiscal Service have their members of the working group.