Ukraine has begun formal steps to legalize the crypto industry, shifting from a largely unregulated market to one with a defined legal status.

On Sept. 3, Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak revealed that he and his colleagues approved a bill that legalizes and taxes the use of digital assets in the country.

According to him, the draft bill introduces a tax framework that makes transactions subject to an 18% income levy and a 5% military contribution.

To encourage compliance, the bill offers a one-year window during which withdrawals converted to fiat currency would be taxed at just 5%.

He added that regulators for the space have yet to be named, with both the National Bank of Ukraine and the National Securities and Stock Market Commission being considered.

Meanwhile, he pointed out that new revisions would be made to the bill before the second reading.

Ukraine’s crypto industry

The legislative move comes as Ukraine faces mounting pressure to bring its crypto sector under tighter oversight.

A recent study by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) suggested the country could recover up to $10 billion by building a more robust regulatory system.

The Crypto Investor Blueprint: A 5-Day Course On Bagholding, Insider Front-Runs, and Missing Alpha

Nice Your first lesson is on the way.

Please add [email protected] to your email whitelist.

According to the report, the country’s thriving over-the-counter markets have become a focal point for illicit financial flows, including purchasing restricted military components, using money-mule networks, and gaps in donor verification rules.

The report linked these weaknesses to broader geopolitical risks, warning that they create opportunities for foreign actors to launder money into politics and undermine democratic systems.

Experts at the institute also cautioned that Russian intelligence may be exploiting Ukraine’s wartime distractions to channel illicit funds through local intermediaries.

Considering this, the report argued that Ukraine risks being perceived as a hub for crypto-based money laundering without stronger oversight, which would damage its financial stability and international partnerships.

The report comes at an exciting time, as Ukraine ranks among the world’s most active crypto users. Data from Chainalysis placed the country in the global top ten for adoption and first in Eastern Europe.

That high level of retail and institutional activity has given lawmakers added urgency, as crypto regulation is now seen as necessary to capture tax revenue and shield the economy from illicit activity.

Mentioned in this article

The crypto sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is on track to become its second-largest industry in the next five years, due to the country’s regulatory policies and attractive business environment, according to Chase Ergen, a board member of publicly traded digital asset investment firm DeFi Technologies.

“They have a reputation for leadership, legislation, and community,” Ergen told Cointelegraph in an interview. He also predicted:

“They sell oil, that’s their main business. I think their second-biggest business is going to be the blockchain industry in the next five years. This will start to be double-digit parts of the economy.”

The country has a clear crypto regulatory framework, a community of key crypto industry executives, a debt-free economy that allows the government to funnel surplus into tech investments, low crime, attractive tax policies, and forward-thinking leadership, Ergen added. 

The UAE has created a moat that has made it the undisputed hub for crypto and tech in the Middle East and Africa (MENA) amid growing nation-state adoption of crypto and the race between sovereign powers to become global leaders in the digital finance age.

Related: Dubai and UAE move to align crypto frameworks under new partnership

Nation-state crypto adoption ramps up in 2025

Nation-state crypto adoption accelerated in 2025, following the inauguration of president Donald Trump in the United States and the regulatory shift that followed.

The Trump White House released its long-promised crypto report in July, outlining the administration’s plan to make the US the global leader in crypto.

Pakistan’s government reversed its long-held opposition to cryptocurrencies in November 2024, one day before the US presidential election.

Since that time, Pakistan has established a national Bitcoin reserve and appointed a national crypto council to craft a comprehensive digital asset regulatory framework within the country.

Sovereign wealth funds, including the UAE’s Mubadala and Norway’s sovereign fund, have exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) through exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other investment vehicles.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest state-directed investment fund of its kind in the world, increased its Bitcoin exposure by 192% over the last year, according to crypto research firm K33.

Magazine: Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh may be crypto’s sleeping giant: Crypto City Guide

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/crypto-to-become-uaes-second-biggest-sector-in-5-years-institutional-investor/feed/ 0 53541 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/is-nft-mania-coming-back-sector-adds-1-billion-in-a-day/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/is-nft-mania-coming-back-sector-adds-1-billion-in-a-day/#respond Mon, 21 Jul 2025 08:21:10 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/is-nft-mania-coming-back-sector-adds-1-billion-in-a-day/

A top executive at the retail-focused trading app giant Robinhood is updating her targets for the S&P 500 this year.

In a new interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild says that she believes the S&P 500 may close the year at around 6,200, though a move to 6,500 is on the table.

“I started [the year] at 6,500. When tariffs hit, I said GDP could come down and that could impact earnings. Usually, a 1% hit on GDP is about a 4% hit on earnings. We’ve seen earnings expectations come down. I said there was risk to 5,800, but I never went there. And now I think there’s risk to 6,500 – obviously we’re over my target. But with the pumping up of potential tariffs now I’m just sort of waiting to see what happens…

This is all driven by tariffs, but is driven by our president, who also cares about the economy and wants the economy to grow…

If [the Fed] cut, then you definitely get 6,500…because then it just like reaffirms what the market has been hoping for.”

Guild also says that ahead of next week’s bank earnings, she believes regional banks will outperform the big banks in the coming months.

“I’m more bullish on the regionals than the large [banks]…I think they’ll just benefit more from deregulation.

And if we do get some rate cuts this year, which I think we should, but obviously there are reasons why they haven’t been cut yet, then I think you do get a steeper [yield] curve and then that does help [regional banks] as well.”

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

&nbsp

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

Generated Image: Midjourney

The decentralized oracle network Chainlink (LINK) continues to dominate crypto’s decentralized finance (DeFi) sector in terms of development activity, according to the analytics firm Santiment.

Santiment notes in a new post on the social media platform X that Chainlink registered 363.73 notable GitHub events in the past 30 days.

The figure far exceeds the second-ranked DeFi project, DeepBook Protocol (DEEP), which clocked 193.57 events. The DeepBook project is a decentralized central limit order book (CLOB), which is what exchanges use to facilitate buying and selling between traders by recording bids and offers.

Third on the list is DeFiChain (DFI), a layer-1 protocol designed specifically for decentralized finance apps. The project registered 152 notable GitHub events in the past month.

Chainlink, DeepBook and DeFiChain also occupied the top three spots on the list last month as well.

Santiment notes that it doesn’t count routine updates and uses a “better methodology” to collect data for GitHub events based on a “backtested process.”

The analytics firm has previously said that heavy development activity centered around a crypto project is a positive indication that could mean that the developers believe the protocol will be successful. It also indicates that the project is less likely to be an exit scam.

LINK is trading at $12.83 at time of writing. The 17th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is down more than 2% in the past 24 hours.

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

&nbsp

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

Generated Image: Midjourney

Dan Ives, the global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, believes that one stock market segment will continue to surprise investors with its upside in the next five years.

In a new CNBC Television interview, the investor says that stocks in the US tech sector will continue to print gains and trade above their fair value in the coming years.

According to Ives, the tech sector will witness massive developments in the years ahead, fueled by the rapid advancement and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).

“My view of tech, if you focus just on valuation, you missed every transformational tech stock in the last 20 years. I believe the market is still massively underestimating what growth is going to look like for the AI revolution in tech…

You could say some of these are expensive. You’ve got the next two, three, four, five years, given our view of autonomous robotics, that’s why I think we’re going to be talking about the Nasdaq 20,000, 25,000, over the coming years.

And that’s why any type of geopolitical sort of events, we always view as opportunities to own these names cheaper. That’s always been our view in the last 25 years covering tech.”

As of Tuesday’s close, the Nasdaq is trading at 21,719 points.

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

&nbsp

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

Generated Image: Midjourney

The decentralized oracle network Chainlink (LINK) continues to dominate crypto’s real-world asset (RWA) sector in terms of development activity, according to the analytics firm Santiment.

Santiment notes in a new post on the social media platform X that Chainlink registered 532.43 notable GitHub events in the past 30 days.

The figure far exceeds the second-ranked RWA project, the layer-1 blockchain Avalanche (AVAX), which clocked 290.87 GitHub events. The peer-to-peer payments project Stellar (XLM) was third, with 240.7.

Chainlink has occupied the top spot on Santiment’s list all year, often clocking multiple times the number of GitHub events as the second-ranked project.

Santiment notes that it doesn’t count routine updates and uses a “better methodology” to collect data for GitHub events based on a “backtested process.”

The analytics firm has previously said that heavy development activity centered around a crypto project is a positive indication that could mean that the developers believe the protocol will be successful. It also indicates that the project is less likely to be an exit scam.

Chainlink’s native token, LINK, is trading at $15.58 at time of writing. The 16th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is down nearly 7% in the past 24 hours but up more than 1% in the past week.

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

&nbsp

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

Generated Image: Midjourney

South Korea’s Financial Post reported that the Democratic Party, the National Assembly’s biggest party, is currently “considering” issuing a manifesto promise to ditch existing fiat on/off banking rules.

Crypto Exchange Deregulation Now Inevitable, Sources Claim

The current banking rules require domestic fiat-trading crypto exchanges to partner with a bank that must provide platforms with customer banking services via dedicated crypto wallet-linked bank accounts.

In late April, the ruling People Power Party (PPP) unveiled a host of crypto promises, including a pledge to do away with the rule.

If the DP does indeed follow suit, this could mean the end of the era of exclusive banking deals. Instead, exchanges would be free to strike deals with multiple banks.

And that could potentially spell trouble for K Bank, whose partnership with the market-leading exchange Upbit has led to exponential growth for both parties.

However, the media outlet wrote that the banking sector is now set to “undergo surgery” as “voices urging deregulation grow louder ahead of the presidential election.”

Frontrunner Mulls Manifesto Pledge

The media outlet claimed that the campaign team of the DP candidate and presidential frontrunner Lee Jae-myung is “strongly considering” making a near-identical pledge.

That would all result in K Bank “taking a direct hit,” the outlet continued. Critics have previously claimed that K Bank’s “dependence” on its Upbit-related business could derail its long-running bid to go public.

K Bank has been Upbit’s exclusive banking partner since mid-2020. Trades on Upbit account for almost 68% of the current total of the domestic South Korean market.

South Korea is set to go to the polls on June 3 after the Constitutional Court ruled to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol earlier this year. Lee leads in most polls by a margin of about 20%.

The DP has responded to the PPP’s bid to woo younger voters with crypto-friendly policies with its own crypto pledges.

The party launched a Digital Asset Committee on May 13, headed by the pro-industry lawmaker Min Byoung-dug.

Min has previously called for tax parity between South Korean stock traders and crypto investors. He has also urged Seoul to green-light Bitcoin spot ETFs.

Regulators on Board With Deregulation Plans?

Regulators are also hinting that they could be prepared to soften their hardline stance on the crypto sector.

The same media outlet wrote that the Financial Services Commission (FSC) is now “looking into conditional deregulation measures.”

The FSC Chairman Kim Byung-hwan told reporters at a recent press conference:

“Since the existing banking rules were introduced to reduce the risk of money laundering, we will need to check to see if banks and exchanges have the systems in place that let them manage all related risks. We will conduct a comprehensive review. And after that, we will decide whether or not we need to improve the current system.”

An unnamed financial industry executive told the media outlet:

“Since there are so many voices calling for deregulation, we will have no choice but to go in that direction. But we need to gradually ease regulations, while ensuring we make up for any shortcomings.”

The post South Korean Crypto Exchange Deregulation Plans Set to Rock Banking Sector appeared first on Cryptonews.

The United Kingdom’s financial watchdog is asking for the public’s opinion on crypto regulations.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says it aims to develop a “safe, competitive, and sustainable” digital asset sector.

“Long-term confidence in crypto assets depends on clear regulation to promote market integrity and appropriate consumer protection.

We are seeking input into how the unique aspects of crypto assets should be considered in our future regulatory regime. We want an open discussion on the features of the future regime, with this latest Discussion Paper (DP) seeking views on how we regulate trading platforms, intermediaries, staking, lending and borrowing, and decentralized finance. We are also seeking feedback on the use of credit to purchase crypto assets.”

The regulator says a discussion paper and its proposals were developed after extensive consultation with crypto industry professionals, digital asset consumers and stakeholders in the traditional finance sector.

The FCA aims to restrict credit card usage when buying crypto, and earlier this year, the regulator moved to ban digital asset ads, managing to cut the advertisements down by 50%.

The financial watchdog says it is now making “good progress” with tech companies in regulating the banned advertisements but is still concerned about the prevalence of scams online.

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

&nbsp

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

Generated Image: Midjourney