Are you for or against cryptocurrency?

May 24, 2018

At the National University of Ostroh Academy was hold a debate on "Cryptocurrency as a Way of Payment in the Territory of Ukraine: Pros and Cons". The event took place within the framework of the celebration of the week of the Faculty of Economics.

The debate took place in the traditional Cambridge format. Participants were divided into two teams of parliamentarians. The first team consisted of third-year students of the Faculty of Economics, who supported the method of cryptocurrency payment (position "for"), and another team was formed from the fourth-year students of the Faculty of Economics and took the opposite position ("against"). The event was organized by a student board of the Faculty of Economics, in particular by the head of the cultural and artistic department of the faculty Oksana Bezpalko.

“I decided to choose such a topic of debate, because today it is very disputed, everyone is talking about it. The obvious benefit of the event was the fact that the teams provided a lot of available information, which allowed them to effectively defend their own position and to go against the points of the rivals. The fact that impressed people most was that one of the participants had experienced buying cryptocurrency and he knew straightaway in practice what cryptocurrency is and whether to buy it or not,” comments the organizer of the debate Oksana Bezpalko.

The debate consisted of four stages: a team representative that advocated the benefits of cryptocurrency, voiced assumptions in support of the idea, and a representative of another team presented counterarguments to the theses of the previous speaker. At the second stage, the main speakers of the "for" team and the "against" team had to give in turn additional arguments in order to defend their positions and to prove the mistakes of certain abstracts of the opponent's team. During the third stage, the participants could ask the opponent team two questions. The fourth stage was the voicing of the conclusions made by each team during the debate and adding of the final arguments that proved the benefits of a particular idea.

The debate was won by the team of the fourth-year students of the Faculty of Economics Dmytro Kulbaba, Yaroslava Verkhohliad, and Ihor Ostapchuk, who defended the position "against".  The position "for" was represented by the third-year students Alisiia Shyriaieva, Valentyn Kushniruk, Roman Hudz.

The members of the jury that evaluated the performance of the teams were the Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Doctor of Science (in Economics), Associate Professor of the Department of Economic Theory, Management and Marketing Liudmyla Kozak, the Head of the Department of Finance, Accounting and Audit, Doctor of Science (in Economics), Professor Nataliia Mamontova, the Head of the Department of Economic Theory, Management and Marketing, PhD. in Economics, Senior Lecturer Nataliia Ivanchuk, and the post-graduate student of specialty "Economic Cybernetics" Bohdan Krasiuk.

“I really liked the debate. Such events, in my opinion, are very useful, the discussions increase adrenaline and excitement. It's great that the teams respect everyone's opinion and are able to listen to all of them,” comments the member of the winning team, the fourth-year student of the Faculty of Economics Dmytro Kulbaba.