While the Ukrainian government has moved to legalize Bitcoin (BTC) amid ongoing attacks by the Russian military, some of the largest local banks have reported that they have banned their customers from buying BTC using the national currency.
PrivatBank, the largest commercial bank in Ukraine, has temporarily restricted its customers from buying Bitcoin with the national currency, the hryvnia (UAH), industry publication Forklog reported on Thursday.
Quoting a spokesperson for PrivatBank, the report notes that the latest restrictions of PrivatBank are in accordance with an order of the National Bank of Ukraine. The restrictions will apply during the current period of martial law in the country.
The statement came shortly after Binance’s Ukrainian division reported on PrivatBank’s cryptocurrency restrictions on Wednesday.
“We would like to inform you that PrivatBank will not support UAH trading on all cryptocurrency exchanges without exception from March 2022,” announced Binance Ukraine in a post on Facebook.
Binance also advised its clients to use its peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange service, noting that other banks can make a similar decision at any time.
While multiple reports suggest that PrivatBank has restricted customers from buying crypto, Some of the major Ukrainian crypto exchanges apparently still support BTC purchases with UAH. The founder of the Kuna exchange, Michael Chobanyan, told Cointelegraph that both purchases and withdrawals of crypto with the hryvnia on PrivatBank through the Kuna exchange were doing well since Friday.
“Everything works as usual, nobody has blocked anything, especially during the war”, Chobanyan said.
According to the bank’s official website, PrivatBank has taken multiple steps to maintain financial stability under martial law, offering credit holidays and increasing withdrawal limits. PrivatBank did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
The first reports about PrivatBank’s crypto-related restrictions emerged in late February, with some users claiming that banks were blocking user accounts associated with P2P cryptocurrency exchanges like LocalBitcoins.
What are alternatives to send money to Ukrainians using crypto? Privatbank is failing us. https://t.co/jIOmG7ZhjT
— claberus (@claberus) February 26, 2022
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law to establish a legal framework for the country to operate a regulated cryptocurrency market. The Ukrainian government was actively working to adopt the regulations, and the Ukrainian parliament passed the legislation in its second reading in mid-February.
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