Bankless - Crypto in Ukraine | Alex Bornyakov, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

In this special episode, we bring on Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation to discuss the current state of the war, crypto’s impact, and so much more. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world—and in particular—the crypto world has rallied to donate as much as possible to the courageous people of Ukraine. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the people of Ukraine. To further support, please consider donating: https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/  ------ 📣 ZERION | Trade Across 7 Networks and 500+ protocols https://bankless.cc/Zerion  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 POLYGON | LAYER 2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon  ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask  💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger  🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 6:14 State of Ukraine 11:54 Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation’s Goals 14:00 Pre-Ukrainian War Crypto 18:00 Ukraine’s Crypto Fund 22:00 How Donations Are Being Used 24:55 Crypto Enabling Ukraine’s Goals 31:00 How Crypto Changed the War 32:40 Bridging Crypto to Fiat 33:40 Individual Ukrainian’s Using Crypto 35:18 Crypto’s Value Proposition in Ukraine 41:09 Humanitarian Limitations vs. Crypto 44:15 New Ukrainian Crypto Law 47:20 Crypto Policy Advice 48:55 Sanctions & Crypto 51:55 Alex’s CTA for Everyone 53:15 Ukraine's NFTs & Tokens? ------ Resources: Donate to Ukraine https://war.ukraine.ua/donate/  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Well, my advice will start from what we realized in Ukraine at some point. We realize that there's a huge blockchain community. There are a lot of people that are using crypto, and you can't ignore it. So if you're a truly leader of your country, take care of your people, want to take care of people, make it official. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless.

Guys, we have a special guest on the show today. The Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Alex Bornyakov. We are talking to Alex all about what's going on in Ukraine. A few things that we discuss, number one, how crypto is helping Ukraine in a time of war. Number two, why Ukraine's government is adopting a crypto-friendly policy as a result of this. And number three, his advice for other countries considering crypto- policy. We're talking to someone who is in an active conflict zone, an active war zone. Of course, we've never done this before on bankless, but crypto has become very relevant, actually,

to the story of Ukraine. And I think it's an example of the type of impact that this technology can have on the world. David, we got introduced in kind of an interesting way to Alex. Could you talk about that introduction? Yeah, we got introduced to, Alex via Vitalik Buteran. Vitalik and I were passing messages in Telegram about who best to bring on from Ukraine to tell the story about crypto in Ukraine. And we landed on the deputy minister of digital transformation himself, who Vitalik was in contact with previously. So Vitalik introduced us, and we just immediately hit it off in telegrams to schedule a quick podcast just to get the story out the door. So this is an official representative out of the Ukrainian government telling

the story about how crypto has moved the needle in Ukraine. So an unscheduled podcast, but you know, when Vitalik Buren connects you with somebody straight from the Ukrainian government, you make a podcast. So that is what we did. And he helps really tell the story of the details of what it's like as a government to use crypto funds to make things happen quickly and meaningfully when it comes time to saving lives. And so there's, There's a lot of previous ideology and philosophy and ideation about how crypto can help the world. But every once in a while, the world presents you with an actual story to really illustrate. Like, this is what when things get real, crypto is there.

And so Alex is here to help us tell that story of how things got real in Ukraine and how crypto is there for the people of Ukraine and the government of Ukraine. Over $60 million in crypto donations coming through on a crypt. crypto address is controlled by the Ukrainian government, which is absolutely insane. They're actually talking about releasing NFTs as well. Alex talks about all of these things. And this legislation that just went forward to approve crypto, you know, a set of laws, basically to make Ukraine a crypto-friendly jurisdiction.

We get into that as well. But that's been a result of the conflict and been as a result of Ukraine using crypto for real utility during a time of war. So, David, any last thoughts before we get in? Yeah, I mean, there are a number of U.S. congressmen, congresswoman, and EU political leaders who I know listen to bankless. So I would just like to say that as soon as Ukraine was faced with the opportunity to use crypto, they started adopting crypto-friendly regulation. So I think this is perhaps going to be a lesson to learn, a lesson to pay attention to, that crypto helps entire countries when they need it. Guys, we're going to get right into the episode with Alex. But before we do, we want to tell you about the sponsors that made this episode possible.

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being under different difficult times. So in some part of Ukraine, there is an actual war zone, some part just experience and shortage in everything. In some cities, there is no heat and electricity. And a lot of cities being shelled, even Kiev. So when it's all started, I was in Kiev, and I spent almost two days. And I woke up from explosions.

And then during their next 24 hours, there was instant like sirens going and you had to go to shelter. So, but there was light, there was connection. And it's still there. But it's not safe on around 40% of Ukrainian territory. So even in a distant part, they fire ballistic rockets. to as they say to destroy military infrastructure but sometimes they're just missing and and people dying so well that's that's terrible and but we're holding up we're trying to make out our best we do our best to keep going to do our job

and everyone has to do the job because we believe we're going to win and we need to restore this and there's so much work ahead of us. But thank you and we really appreciate you. A lot of people from, from the U.S., from Canada, from European Union, from other countries are standing with us and that's really inspiring for all Ukrainians that a lot of countries support us in this difficult times. Alex, that's definitely something that I've noticed both inside of Ukraine and outside of Ukraine is there seems to be an immense amount of unity going on. And at least from the outside perspective, at least initially in the first few weeks of the war, we saw just a surprising amount of high morale out of Ukraine. But I'm

wondering how that's been holding up now that we're beyond 15 days into this thing. How is the morale on the ground at Ukraine? Short answer is what I personally experience is pretty much high. Moral is is beyond, I think, anyone's expectations. People in Ukraine are really united. And according to the latest poll that I'm aware of, 92% even 92% of Ukrainians believe that we're going to win this war. And during the first 96 hours, it's really hectic. And news were horrible because they were advancing.

It was just so many people were afraid of what's going on, what's going to happen, and they were fleeing country in Russia. But now it's kind of stabilized. Our military forces stopped them almost on all directions and pushed back on several directions, especially around Kiev, which is kind of like a heart of Ukraine. and it's located in the middle of the country. So now I see, like, we can kind of plan at least her term and maybe midterm. But during the first week, it was not possible because, like, a situation was changing dramatically every couple hours. And people were really upset.

But now, I think morale is high, but we experience, like, there was. the war is in our country. It came to our homes. And like if for Russians and for rest of the world, maybe just news, but for Ukrainians, it's losing their, it's losing your friends. You're losing, you hear like people you know losing their properties and they worry about their relatives. They're losing connection with their relatives in a war zone. So it's a, it's a, it's a strategy. it's a huge strategy.

But generally, we're high hopes. Well, of course, Alex, our hearts go out to everyone that's been affected by this. It's obviously the last thing that everyone wants to see happen into the world. Alex, we were introduced by Vitalik Buterin, and because of your role in the Ukrainian government, you are the deputy minister of digital transformation. What does that mean? What does your job entail? What are your goals as deputy minister of digital transformation?

Well, sure. Ministry of Digital Transformation was created not so long ago. It was like we are two years plus a couple months old. So there was a couple major goals that were set up like we have envisioned. And one of them is to develop and grow the IT industry of Ukraine. So, basically, as a deputy minister, I'm in charge of growth and development of IT industry. And, of course, IT industry involves crypto, and we believe that is a significant part of it. So right after I started, we immediately announced that we want to become crypto-friendly jurisdiction,

and we want to do what we can in order to make crypto-friendly. and all the virtual assets legal in Ukraine. But, like, generally speaking, as a deputy minister, I was in charge of a couple projects. Like, we built a project called DECD. It's a sort of like a Silicon Valley for IT companies with low taxes, with a lot of other benefits. We were introducing electronic residency for those who want to do business in Ukraine,

but don't want to go into your country physically. And many, many more initiatives that we were doing. So I hope I give you a sense of what I was doing before the war. And of course, it's dramatically changed after the war. Alex, I want to get a perspective of what crypto in Ukraine was like before these events have unfolded. From our perspective, there's been a number of projects that Ryan and I pay attention to that have sent out messages saying, hey, progress is going to be a little bit slow due to

the number of developers that are in the middle of fighting a war at the moment. And so there's a lot of developers that we have connections to that are in Ukraine and have had to just pause whatever they're working on in the crypto space. And so there's a lot, Ukraine hosts a disproportionate amount of. crypto developers, but also what was the attitude of like the Ukraine government, the centralized Ukraine government about crypto prior to this? Like was crypto on the radar? Because it's certainly on the radar now. What was what was the attitude about crypto before these events have unfolded? Well, of course, most of the government was pretty much skeptic about crypto. And you have no idea how

how much efforts did it cost to convince people to make them believe that it's going to turn to something bigger. So when I started to do this, Bitcoin cost was around 3,500. So it is just on the low. And everyone's like, why are we even dealing with it? But then, of course, we believe in crypto. and as a Minister of Digital Transformation, we define policy of the government

regarding specific items or directions, I would call this. And if we speak that crypto is a priority, it also becomes a part of government priority. So each ministry

gives its priority, so it becomes generally a government priorities. So it was put in government priorities, but then you have to convince National Bank of Ukraine, Ministry of Finance, Security Commission, financial monitoring services. So there's a lot of authorities that related to crypto. And of course, even you consider crypto as priority, they don't.

So you have to convince them. And then crypto went to, like, rocketed you 60,000 per Bitcoin price. And of course, this was another portion of attention from them. They said, like, all right, right. So let's do it faster. So eventually we managed to vote their long virtual assets, which basically about crypto and pass it through Paul Pullman. But then war hit us.

But the good news is that once we started this crypto fund and everyone saw that how successful it was and it is, how successful it is right now, President Zelenskyy eventually signed this law. And we are working on taxation legislation and other official papers that we have to do before this all goals live. And now no one actually argues about that crypto is not a priority. So I think everyone understands how we're saying. So that's the good news. Alex, it's funny that much of the before that you just described, I think fits a lot of jurisdictions across the world, a lot of countries across the world,

where it's hard for any sort of digital transformation group internal to the government to actually get government officials and the rest of the government to talk about crypto. It's hard to get it on their radar, and sometimes when they do, these governments are hostile. But what you're describing is,

first of all, there was these champions internally to Ukraine, like yourself, who are sort of pushing this pro-crypto agenda forward. But can you tell people, bankless listeners, who haven't seen what's gone on, you mentioned a crypto fund for Ukraine.

What is that? And how much money has Ukraine actually raised in crypto so far? Because it seems like that has completely changed the tone and tenor of the conversation about crypto's utility in Ukraine. So tell us about this fund and what's been raised. Yeah. So again, during the first day of war, our national bank's severely limited ability to send foreign transfers, especially in dollar in euro. So we have to somehow find a solution to cover immediate needs for our reinforce of Ukraine. And then this was one of this decision of Michael Fodoros. He said, listen, let's set up a fund and do this with their private exchange and make it.

So we can push it and tell everyone that we also accept. the nations in crypto and we and then when money started to flow in we were able to quickly perform the transactions and and maybe for the first days the crypto was our first choice for that and so crypto really helped us because we were able to cover those needs and so far it managed We managed to together like $62 million around that. But again, as the war has continued, we have a refining approach, and we launched the official website

where people can donate the cryptocurrencies and different talks. So we started from Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether. But then we started to add a lot of others. And we so much appreciated for, Gavin Vood responded with $5 million donation through PolkaDOT. Then HDara also donated like million dollars in H-Barr. We also connected Dodge Coin, Minero, Icon, Kusper. Salonic community was very helpful.

And Everstate community, so we were like more than, this was beyond expectations that crypto community, is so into it. They're eager to help. And of course, this step that we have taken, so we announced that we're able to get officially a donation in crypto, it reflected in their mind and they decided to help. So this is, that's absolutely incredible. And we're going to provide some more information on that fund and where the crypto community

can actually continue to donate. Because I assume, Alex, you guys are continuing to accept funds. Yes, yes. As we go, and over $60 million. Is this all coming from individuals and organizations in the crypto community? Is this where this money is coming from? Well, I mentioned some organizations who are donated, but the majority of the funds, I think,

coming from individuals. And we actually haven't analyzed who exactly donated. and where this money comes coming from. Well, to be quite fair, to be quite fair, we need to understand it's pretty hard to find out the nations where they come from. Yeah, so I think part of the reason the crypto community has rallied around this is because crypto is definitely a movement for freedom and sovereignty. And I think many in the crypto communities see what you're doing.

your resistance in Ukraine as part and parcel with that. Can I ask you, Alex, what has Ukraine done so far with the funds? Have you done anything with it or what are they allocated to go fund? Well, before I answer the question, I'd like to mention also. This is very, I think that's very important to the community that after it's managed to establish relationship with the National Bank of Ukraine and they actually created a bridge to convert crypto into fiat currencies with the help of National Bank of Ukraine. And so Everstake helped to facilitate this and FDX and National Bank.

This is a precedent because that never happened before. And I know it's outside of our fund, but I just want to mention that as an example of integration of the government structures and private, crypto private institutions like international how they communicate, how they cooperate with each other.

And I hope this is going to be again a precedent for other things that crypto companies can do with the government. About the font itself. So so far we

have spent around 35, 30, close to $36 million. And we purchased thousands of bullet-proquests, helmets, medicines, medicine packages. We purchased a couple hundred thousands of food rations for Ukrainian militaries, thousands of thermal images, optics, night vision goggles. So this all goes to the army to our defenders.

So we're going to, by the way, we're going to provide with their more statistics and reports on what being purchased. And for instance, like HBarr, they told we want to support just humanitarian needs. So we bought just what's this called? all eight packages. I mean, if you're injured in the battlefield, then you can quickly fix your... So we respond to every request, actually. Alex, you mentioned that the traditional banking system

stopped being so useful at the onset of the war. How has access to these crypto funds enabled Ukraine to access resources when the banking system stopped working so well. Like what about the properties of crypto, the instant finality, the instant settlement, instant transfers, and also global transfers? How have these properties really enabled crypto or really enabled Ukraine to achieve some of his goals? Well, if I understand your question correctly, I'll try to answer, but you correct me if I go to the wrong direction.

So again, during the first day of war, we had to put a hold on number of purchases because we had to just like put that. Let's really put a halt because we need to deliver them. We need to make all the paperwork, but we don't have time for that. So we were using crypto to pay those money like prepaid. but then companies started to respond and it's like listen we can even do in crypto

some of the companies started to especially US companies they started like all right we can do Coinbase account for the company and you can send a crypto then we can just convert it that's just forget it we know how well you are and you just transfer

crypto you don't need to find like exchange to for fiat currencies. And I think that we like 40% of transfer were just straight in crypto. And of course, having this tool and comparing with the fiat currencies where you send a wire, and then you wait for the air two. And you're not able to even check your transaction. And other party need to confirm with his bank or their bank to respond to, yeah, we got the payment.

But with crypto, you just get in five minutes. and it's a proof of transaction because you go to the either scan, you give them link, and they make sure that they make sure that they send them and that's okay. They just confirm the transaction is done. So it's completely different from wires and other means of payment. Yeah, people tend to think that crypto is overly complicated and that's what scares them about crypto, but it seems to be that when it really comes down to it, the crypto is actually the more simple of the two types of financial systems that we have. And you've said that some vendors have

told you that they're willing to accept crypto. How proliferate it? How prolific is that? Are most vendors able to accept crypto in this time? No, no. Okay. Well, especially for those who are dealing with their military grade equipment or equipment just for the military, they are more like classic companies that prefer to do the old-fashioned way. But still, they started to accept at least prepaid and they say, like, listen, give us prepaid. And then we can figure out so we know that you have serious intentions. I mentioned that, but I think maybe it's missed like 40% of what we span is actual crypto. And the 60, it's rough calculation.

I don't have the exact figures in top of my head. But majority of the payments, of course, has to be done through wire. Because, again, we're not dealing with the regular stuff. I hope you understand that. If we were dealing with some standard goods for people, entertainment or whatever, I think the percentage will be more. but still it's pretty good, I think. Polygon is Ethereum's the largest and most vibrant scaling solution to date.

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it takes time. I can't say that all of them already on the bottlefield. But what I assume that if we supply those goods, some of them can save people lives. And in this case, let's hope that this bulletproof has never will be. needed. But again, we know that if we armed, we have not armed, but if we supply those, those goods to the soldiers, they could feel more safe. And this is our goal to save as much life as we can. Alex, you mentioned about how there's been integration with crypto exchanges like FTX and how they've helped bridge the gap between some of the crypto assets and Fiat. Can you just

elaborate on that a little bit more. Is it like the Ukraine government sends crypto to one of the exchanges and the exchanges takes it the rest of the way to a Fiat transfer? Is that how this infrastructure has been set up? Well, I think it's opposite. So there was there. Yeah, so official National Bank of Ukraine created a special account for the nations, but of course it was in Fiat. And at some point, there was some people who want to donate. And I think, it was ever-stake, but they were not able to transfer. So they involved FDICs. So they signed a contract or some sort of agreement that once a crypto hit or F-DX account,

they able to transfer it. And so our national bank going to get a dollar, U.S. dollar. And how would you say, are there any stories about individual Ukrainians using crypto that you've heard? Is there any like experiences that you've heard in the last like, you know, three weeks about how crypto is, how individual Ukrainians are using crypto? Well, yeah, that's the, that's a sad story, but three million people left Ukraine. There are three million refugees. And I know that, I know some individual stories where people from, from, like families from Ukraine were separated.

So men stayed here and the rest of the family fled to Poland, to other countries. So they were sending them crypto because there's so much rush and they didn't have any money. So crypto became a sort of an easy way to help your family being a refugee in the country and feel safe again, feel comfortable. So I know of such stories. I believe there are much more stories about business that, again, dealing with their distant part of inside a country. So they send crypto because banks put some limits and they can exchange it. I know some stories about that. But it's not many of them, but yeah, there's still.

A couple. Alex, do you think that is kind of the role of crypto here? I'm wondering, because you have a unique perspective on crypto, given everything you've gone through recently. Is crypto a technology and like a money system that is here for the world and for the people and for governments when the banking system fails? Is that its role? What do you see is the main value proposition of crypto?

Well, I don't think. at this point, it could really substitute banking system, but it's definitely an option. And I believe that, again, after some time, maybe even in the close future, we're going to see more examples of companies or even countries who are moving from this. I know, what we get used to the banking system to crypto, crypto. I think there's some parts of missing in terms of crypto. And David mentioned that. There was a lot of assumptions on complications with crypto.

And there are really, and there's some in the beginning. So I think that what the world introduced, decades ago with the banking cards is just the concept of having a card that you don't need to log in anywhere. You didn't have to study anything, anything made this mass adopt. There was a way to mass adoption. So I think there right now, crypto community and the companies that build perfect tools like exchanges and companies that operate on blockchain, and they've built pretty much solid concept of how it's going to work.

What is missing from my standpoint is easy entrance. And once the way for easy interest will be found, personally, I believe there's a bright future for crypto. I'm curious about this dependency because crypto, of course, is dependent on a country having electricity grid, a power grid up. And it's also dependent on internet reliability. And obviously, in the conflict right now, I'm not sure how certain those things are for the people of Ukraine. And yet the banking system, now that it's moved to digital electronic, is also dependent. on those two things as well.

I'm curious, a lot of people who criticize crypto sort of say things like, well, but what happens when the internet goes down? What is the internet reliability like in Ukraine right now? And is this a concern for the financial system at large and also for the digital transformation, the crypto initiatives that you guys are pursuing? I think people should realize eventually

that today's banking system not able to work without electricity grid as well. Maybe that's a hard true. Everyone has to learn. I don't know how to send a wire transfer without because it's built in a SWIFMASG system

and SWIFMess system servers. And again, it's a sort of a ledger. It's maybe this far from blockchain, but again, it's a ledger. And that's the first That's my observation and the conclusion in that.

But about Ukrainian communication system, apparently one of the major tasks of the ministry worked for was improving digital, improving communication infrastructure of Ukraine. For the last two years, we were working on better cell reception on delivering high-speed broadband, internet to every corner of Ukraine eventually we're supposed to cover 95% of the territory with a great internet. So this was one of the goals and we were moving towards it. So Ukraine is internet and Ukraine pretty much cheap, especially relatively to US. So in Ukraine, you can have like great internet connection speed for $10, $20 a month. So, and it was everywhere.

So like 4G, we were moving slowly from 3G to 4G, but then we obtained new pregnancies from the military, and the speed of switching up new standard was tremendous. So for last year, we completely moved to 4G in a country and even started testing 5G. It was attempted. In the ministry, there's another person in charge, but it's another deputy minister who's in charge of communication, Alexander Schellis. But again, so this was a tax test to the ministry. And right now, it appears that we did good because, in the most terrorist order of Ukrainians are not still working and the connection is fine.

Alex, one of the things I've talked to Ryan about with these crypto donations is that typically humanitarian aid from foreign countries can only be spent on certain things. And, you know, usually just like, you know, food and medical supplies. But when it comes to crypto, you know, this can actually be spent on a bulletproof vest that soldiers would wear. And that's definitely something new on this on this world that we've never seen before. We've never seen the interaction of permissionless crypto payments and and war and buying resources. I'm wondering if there's been any conversations from inside Ukraine about this or any sort of like, one thing I'm interested is in when we're looking at externally from like

the perspectives of the United States or the EU, they're watching Ukraine. not have to actually follow the typical humanitarian limitations on donated funds. I'm wondering if there's any conversation that's being had in the Ukrainian government about this particular aspect. That's a very relevant question. But you have to understand what's their mood in Ukraine at this moment. Like, imagine if you're home being invaded and you're really on the second floor hiding from, I don't know, people who have armed and are looking for you.

And in this situation, I think you want to take any measure and you're going to use any means to protect you. So I think that's, of course, it's unprecedented. And in a peaceful time, it was just no one's going to allow this. But we are, we were in a desperate position. Right now, it's like, more stable, more controlled. But during the first day, we were afraid that we're going to lose our country in three days.

So why do you need this bureaucracy if you might lose the whole country and lose everything? Like, everyone will flee. And of course, we were not thinking about this part. We were thinking how to survive. and this pushed us to any means to help us to protect ourselves. Today, of course, it's a bit different, but still it's already like it's a reality. And again, president signed the law, so it's totally illegal in Ukraine so we can use this. Yeah, according to the law, crypto cannot be a means of payment.

But again, we also want to be complete, like for the rest of the world, that's fine. And as long as it's fine for the rest of the world, it's fine for Ukraine. And once the world over, I think we will reconsider your approach. But we in this reality. Certainly. Yeah, you touched on the new crypto policy law that got signed into place. Let's talk about that a little bit more. Just the question is, how has these events changed Ukraine stance towards crypto?

And the answer, I think, is generally pretty positively. Can you go into the details about the law that was passed and kind of what that means with the relationship between Ukraine and crypto moving forward? Well, first of all, it's the first time in the history of Ukraine where we put, what exactly is crypto, how we should treat it from, from, from, level of relationships standpoint, how government treated. Also, we define who are professional service providers, which is VASPs, right? So what kind of AML procedures has to be taken by those companies who want to be licensed as VASPs?

There are many more aspects that this law covers, including KYC of the companies, KVC of the customers, how this would be done, how to protect investors, how you should mint tokens and what kind of tokens could be. There's no, I'm sorry, it's just about minting. We don't specify what kind of, like, what, what exactly, like what kind of crypto exactly is legal or not legal. So there's no, in this law, we don't say like Bitcoin is, we don't mention Bitcoin. We don't mention any cryptos.

We just define the broad, it's in a broad range of, so we say this is possible. This is a, those are virtual assets. And we should treat them like this. Also, this law defines how we can, for example, inherit it or, how we can sell it or how we can exchange between physical persons, because this becomes an asset, it became an asset. So once it became an asset, then government basically defined the basic rules of how it should be treated inside a country and, of course, outside a country. Alex, you think it would have happened without this crisis? I know the legislation was put forward.

I believe in the past it was kind of vetoed by Zelensky previously. And I think maybe the reason was there were other priorities, of course. But now it seems to have been accepted. Maybe as a result of this crisis, or do you think it would have happened as quickly independent of the conflict that you're now in? It would have happened at much slower pace. So I think we would have spent another. I don't know, year or so. But now it's much, much faster.

Do you have any advice on the back of this for other countries who are, you know, an advocate's digital transformation leaders in their respective governments on what it takes to like help put something like this together and to push it through and to promote it? Any lessons learned along the way? Yeah. Well, my advice will start from what we realized in Ukraine at some point. We realize that there's a huge blockchain community. There are a lot of people that's using crypto, and you can't ignore it. I mean, you can, but it's going to be like a black market anyway, because people want to use it.

So if you're a truly leader of your country, if you're really take care of your people, want to take care of people, make it official. Give them right to possess crypto, give them right to pass it to others. to conduct a business with crypto, to create companies, because they want to do that. And they will, anyway, we'll do that. They'll find, they'll find a way. So that's probably the advice. So don't deny, but rather allow. Yeah, you can allow on your terms because you're government. And you can say, listen, all right, you can do this under specific circumstances with They're under our strict supervision, but I don't think it's right to you just deny the fact that script is being used about the majority of the countries in the world so far.

So this is absurd. Alex, one thing that's been interesting is we've observed all of this play out in our respective governments and jurisdictions, at least one conversation in the U.S. is how effective, relatively effective sanctions have been in the conflict so far. And some lawmakers in the US are saying, well, if we move to a world of crypto, then these sanctions would be less effective in the future. Because of course, it's much harder to, you know, it's easier to block the SWIFT system for the EU and the US. And it's very difficult by design for sanctions to go into effect across crypto. Do you see that as a downside of crypto from your perspective, like relinquishing the power

to block sanctions? I can completely see the alternative. In Ukraine, of course, you're saying, hey, we could create a fund and get donations from all over the world when the banking system wasn't working very well in its instant money. On the other hand, some of the sanctions that have been put into place wouldn't have been effective in such a system. What are your thoughts on that argument. Well, I think that the purpose of crypto and the fiat currency is not about sanctions. It's just one case of such things. And they want to control, not because

only of sanctions, but they generally want to supervise the financial system of many reasons, not because they want to just suppress someone, but also there are many times for the government that they have to do because because we want to feel safe too. I respect

my government, I respect the US government and when they say listen, we have to be careful. I would rather listen because I remember the mass during their depression in the United States almost

100 years ago then it was financial crisis. So those are examples of what could be if government just sleep out everything from their hands. So I think that it's a really hard question. It's a great question, but it's really hard to me to say that, well, let's stay with the current system. But in the same time, I also see potential in crypto. And I think that that could be a corporation. That could be a win-win situation when we still can use, we can move to crypto.

But whether, again, under certain circumstances when we say, when we basically acknowledge that there should be some fail safes, the failed safes, yeah. Alex, what do you have as a call to action for all the bankless listeners out there? We will obviously put the link of the donation page into the show notes. So maybe a call to action is to go donate crypto to Ukraine. But also, what do you want the bankless listeners to know and what do you want the bankless listeners to do? Well, of course, we depreciate if you put this link and we encourage people to gnat. we still have a lot of needs and we're thankful to everyone

is going to do that. I don't know, to listeners of the bankless I think we my message would be that we all doing something that never was done before so we should be proud that we bring together as a community at some point, at someday in future, everyone's going to be dealing with it and saying,

like, listen, there was a lot of evolution in this. And we know that those people were in the beginning of such a great thing, things that we use today as a common thing. Alex, in addition to the over $60 million of donations that have come from the crypto community, some NFTs have gotten donated as well to the to the Ukraine address including a Cryptopunk. I was wondering if there's an official policy as to what Ukraine is going to do with that Cryptopunk. We now working on separate section on our website, donate. The digital.gov.

So they're going to be separate section, the section called NFT. So we're going to list all the NFTs that was donated for the full time. and we'll probably go for the auction. NFTs are not priority at this point. We still have money to just to get from other cryptocurrencies. But I think once we see what we have and show this to community and start auction, those money will be directed to the phone. Well, I would imagine that the NFTs auctioned off by the kind of,

country of Ukraine might fetch a nice premium for just the token value of that. So that's going to be pretty interesting to watch. Alex, there was at one point talk of Ukraine doing a token as well itself. Is that still on the table or is that not happening? It depends on if we talk about NFT, yeah, we have a project which is going to be like a museum of war. We want to call it never again. and it's going to be our piece of it's going to be NFTs as a containing piece of art

and some specific event connected to the every day of war so from day zero to the day on the war we're going to put we're going to create an FT connected to

this same day and every day going to have unique NFT so So people who will see this collection will be able to observe how the war was going forward till the end. And this is the project that we're working on together with, again, with a private partnership. It's public private partnership.

But we never intended to create some cryptocurrency. But in the same time, we're working with our national bank working on CBDC. So it's going to be, at some point it's going to be electronic gruevna under National Bank of Ukraine. And they're going to issue talkings, of course. It's going to be CBDC. That is fascinating. And Alex, I really appreciate you spending.

We really appreciate the crypto community, the bankless community appreciates you spending. time with us to tell us what's going on. I know you've got to be busy in all sorts of various domains, but I could say on behalf of all of us that not a day goes by that we're not thinking about the people of Ukraine during this time. And we appreciate you spending some time with us today. Thanks a lot. Thank you, David. Thank you, Ryan. Cheers, Alex. Of course, guys, risks and disclaimers. Of course, I don't think we have to get into. Obviously, none of this was financial advice. I think we will include a link to a place to donate for the Ukraine fund that we were talking about with Alex. So that is the action item from this episode is go check that out, look at what they're doing,

and donate if you have the means and you have the funds. Thanks a lot. We appreciate you guys.