Head of Ukrainian Binance comments on the potential of the cryptocurrency hryvnia

The head of Ukrainian Binance, Kirill Khomyakov, gave an interview to the Ukrainian media outlet UBR, in which he shared interesting insights into the work of the crypto exchange. We publish the most interesting moments of his statements.

Does the e-hryvnia have a future?

It is important to understand that CBDC, or central bank digital currency, is not a competitor to cryptocurrencies. This is a completely different tool that allows regulators to increase transparency and control over the circulation of the national currency, reduce fees by eliminating the need to work through commercial banks in terms of payments, and increase the overall efficiency and speed of all payments within the country.

This has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, volatility, etc. It is, in my opinion, just a more convenient tool for managing the national currency. There are different opinions on this matter, but the most interesting thing is that so far we have not seen CBDCs being used effectively in any country in the world. Therefore, as far as I know, such projects are currently being considered by the Ukrainian government and the National Bank, but are not yet available to all people. They are being tested in a pilot mode.

Is it true that the exchange froze the crypto wallets of Lavrov and Peskov’s daughters? Does Binance continue to participate in sanctions against Russia? Can many assets be blocked?

Yes, it is true. This is one of the latest sanctions we have applied. Since the beginning of hostilities globally, Binance has applied all sanctions initiated by all governments: both European and American. But even before that, the level of our KYC, our compliance was very high, it was always aimed at identifying and deterring financial crime risks. We have more than 500 people working in compliance around the world.

We have applied all sanctions, and we have also frozen transactions with sanctioned banks in Russia — all P2P transactions. We are also the only ones who have applied the fifth package of restrictive measures of the European Union, which includes blocking accounts of Russians with a balance of cryptocurrency assets exceeding 10,000 euros.

Of course, if governments impose new sanctions, including a ban on access to the platform for users, we will support them.

In the past few years, Binance has periodically appeared in the news of the Cyber Police of Ukraine as a partner that helped law enforcement agencies catch fraudsters. But there have been no such reports for a long time. Why?

In general, if you look at the statistics even for the last year, the number of cybercrimes is growing, because the market is growing and the number of people who are «in cryptocurrency» is growing. Accordingly, we are even more concerned about the safety of our users and ensuring that they do not get involved in any stories related to phishing and other criminal activities in the cryptocurrency sphere.

There are a number of, let’s say, areas that we are working on. Now we see that there are even risks of money laundering in the field of NFT, in the field of interaction with certain dark markets, etc.

We have a comprehensive and strategic approach to the security of our users: KYC, AML, ensuring control over PEP statuses and the effectiveness of various mechanisms that we use to monitor transactions and protect our users.