Research on the legal status of the national digital currency Karbo: the state and the prospects

Abstract

The article explores the phenomenon of the development of virtual currencies and their growing popularity, resulting in a natural imbalance when innovations in the field of economy outstripped the development of legislation governing the relationship between entities in the field of calculations and payments. This led to the lack of a common understanding of the legal status of cryptocurrency and the methods of its regulation at the current stage of economic relations and global technologies, which caused the world community the problem of determining the legal status of cryptocurrency, which arose from the evolution of money and the emergence of new structured financial products. For Ukraine, as for most countries in the world, the global digital economy remains an area with undiscovered potential, since the National Bank of Ukraine does not recognize cryptocurrencies with either electronic money, money surrogates or other legal means of payment and does not recommend using them as such, but, in addition, it does not prohibit their use. Evidence of NBU's desire to keep up with current global trends was the emergence in May 2016 of the first Ukrainian «Karbowanec» cryptocurrency (after the Karbo rebranding in September 2017), which prompted many financial agents to ask whether – «Can you trust Karbo?» and «What is Karbo better than other cryptocurrencies?». Karbo is positioned as an alternative to low volatility settlement, designed for calculations and real use with new cryptocurrency ways of regulating money supply and market price. However, the question remains open – should the state recognize cryptocurrency as a digital (virtual) currency, or as a means of exchange or payment, or as other digital or intangible assets, or as property rights, etc., to introduce a method of accounting and regulate the system of taxation of transactions with it?