‘The cryptocurrency world will help in this war’: Kuna CLO breaks down Ukraine’s digital asset law

cointelegraph.com:

While many parts of Ukraine are still facing threats from Russia’s military, some residents, industry leaders and government officials are turning to digital assets for help in relocating people, funding humanitarian aid projects and getting supplies to its own soldiers.

On Feb. 17, exactly one week before Russian forces began their attack on Ukraine, the country’s legislature adopted the “On Virtual Assets” bill. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later signed the bill into law, establishing a legal framework for Ukraine to operate a regulated crypto market.

Ganna Voievodina, chief legal officer of Ukraine-based crypto exchange Kuna and one of the bill's authors, told Cointelegraph that the ramifications of the legislation came at a critical time when the country needed legal access to crypto.

“A lot of Ukrainian government [officials] have a lot of funds in their accounts, but according to the laws, they couldn’t invest in cryptocurrency,” said Voievodina. “Now they can exchange, they will have opportunity to take their funds to buy crypto, to invest and to buy some trades and some goods for the Ukrainian army, for Ukrainian people, because we understand that cryptocurrency is much easier to be invested in any legal goods.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, crypto users from around the world have sent around $70 million in digital asset donations to government wallet addresses through a recently launched website. Michael Chobanian, founder of Kuna and president of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine, told U.S. lawmakers on March 17 that it only took “about 10 minutes” to set up crypto donations for the government, while arranging fiat transfers through the National Bank of Ukraine took roughly 10 days.

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