Millions of cryptocurrency dollars continue to pour into Ukraine in donations, and the
Ukrainian government has also set up crypto wallets directly.
But are people in the country actually able to use the currency to buy daily necessities?
These are really important questions, and at the same time, major crypto coins have
been gaining value since the attack.
What's driving their rise?
Well, joining me right now is Mark Lamb, Chief Executive Officer at CoinFLEX, a leading crypto
derivatives exchange and yield platform.
It's great to have you on the show with us, Mark.
It's great to be here.
Ok, so we are just watching the crisis in Ukraine and watching crypto donations to the
country.
It's crossed the US$54 million threshold still pouring in.
I'm sure the numbers will just keep fluctuating higher.
But given that physical on-ground infrastructure has been hit, are people actually able to
use digital coins to meet their needs of everyday items?
How is this working?
Yeah.
So one of the major payment providers that's been supporting Europe and including the Ukraine,
I think they have several Ukrainians on their team is GoCrypto, and they've been actually
really active in kind of supporting a lot of this infrastructure.
They've been supporting a lot of the donation infrastructure as well, but they offer kind
of bridges between fiat and crypto in Ukraine.
And I think the biggest thing that people on the ground need is money.
So donations are kind of extremely useful.
But then obviously, as it goes from from that donating to spending, you know, at some point
along the way it is converting back into fiat currency.
But there are enough, you know, options to be paid in crypto further down the value chain
as well that I think there there there is that actual secondary and third level transactions
happening as well.
And the donations are coming in mostly Bitcoin and ETH.
As we understand, we've also seen some NFTs actually being donated here, but stablecoins
have been missing.
What explains that?
If you think about the perspective of the people on the ground, you know, stability
from volatility is probably the thing they would need.
But if you're someone who has been a crypto investor for a long time and you've seen huge
gains, that I think that's the reason why the Bitcoin and Ethereum are being donated
is people have made money on their on their coins, and so they're feeling generous.
So it's a bit of a wealth effect going on effectively.
And and that's great.
If you think about crypto, it's created a whole ton of wealth for people.
And one of the benefits of that wealth, you know, you can't just spend it all on yourself,
you know?
People are feeling very, very generous in a time of need.
That's a great point.
One Bitcoin, once upon a time, was ex fiat, and now it's sharing the wealth in real time
where people need it most.
You know, finally, major crypto coins really rebounded from recent lows since the Russian
attack occurred in late February.
Is this driven by the need to find a reliable store of value?
What do you think?
Generally speaking, when you're looking at these sanctions, they're a double edged sword
because the U.S. is effectively using the dollar as a weapon to fight Russia.
And obviously, that's, you know, that's kind of been to varying degrees, successful in
crippling Russia.
But it's also something that, you know, it has an effect on people's perception of the
dollar.
So there's talks in policy circles around confiscating Russia's hundreds and hundreds
of billions of dollars in foreign reserves.
You know, that's a very extreme move.
It hasn't fully happened yet.
But if that were to happen, I think it would be.
It would be sort of a wake up call to a lot of other countries that maybe, you know, maybe
they should look at the only asset in the world or the only group of assets in the world
that don't have a counterparty risk.
When you hold Bitcoin, when you hold a Ethereum, when you hold these these cryptocurrencies,
there is no counterparty for the decentralized ones, at least for the ones that are significantly
decentralized there.
There is no risk to someone confiscating your funds.
I mean, in a conflict, everyone loses.
Everyone is a loser.
And that's why I think you haven't seen crypto prices go up more is because amidst some of
these positive signals for Bitcoin and for Ethereum and for for crypto, and bitcoin's
really leading that charge, you know, there's just the negative backdrop of war and war
is depressing and horrible.
It really shows that the new front lines is not only in the conflict zone, but it's also
being drawn right now in real time in the digital world.
Thank you so much for your insights.
Really appreciate this conversation, Mark.