According to a high-ranking Ukrainian government official, Ukraine is aiming to become one of the top five countries in the world in terms of crypto legislation, and the efforts have the “complete support” of both President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the government.
“We want Ukraine to be one of the top 3-5 countries in the world in terms of crypto legislation,” said Alexander Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation.
The deputy minister went on to say that the Ukrainian government fully supports the plan to position Ukraine among the world’s leaders in crypto.
Furthermore, Bornyakov mentioned non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as a topic of particular interest to both himself and the government. He stated that the government believes one of the purposes of NFTs and blockchain is to document history, which he believes is especially important now that Russia “tries to erase our history.”
Deputy Minister Bornyakov made the remarks during a virtual panel discussion on Friday hosted by MetaHistory, a collaboration project between the Ukrainian NFT community and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation.
Dmitriy Buterin, the father of Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin, also took part in the discussion, focusing on the opportunities that cryptocurrency could bring to Ukraine.
“I’m personally looking forward to Ukraine becoming the world leader in crypto,” Buterin said, adding that he sees “tremendous opportunities” for the country if it embraces crypto.
Buterin specifically proposed that Ukraine serve as a “testbed” for new crypto projects. He stated that this is desperately needed, given all of the “interesting experiments” taking place in the crypto world, and suggested that a form of crypto-based universal basic income (UBI) could be included.
Meanwhile, Buterin discussed the role of blockchain in preserving history, arguing that while history is often considered “far away from our regular life,” blockchain can bring it closer to modern day-to-day life.
He claimed that the former Soviet Union “perverted” and “lied about” history, but that blockchain technology now provides “a new opportunity to preserve history.”
Other participants in the discussion included Alona Shevchenko, co-founder of UkraineDAO, who stated that her organization has so far raised USD 8 million in cryptocurrency donations in support of the Ukrainian people. This resulted in the sale of an NFT of the Ukrainian flag for close to USD 7 million, according to Shevchenko.
UkraineDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) founded by Pussy Riot, a Russian feminist punk protest group, and the NFT collectives Trippy Labs and PleasrDAO.
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