YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Bornyakov

lines on the record: 70
first: 2022-05-24
most recent: 2022-05-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And we have a political power. And now it's down to architecture. So now we need really smart guys in the world who know exactly how to implement, I don't know, wherever else we need in this so-called new government. I don't know. So I'll have to find all of these guys or they'll find me and then together we'll just create something new. We have this opportunity. Why not? Let's just use it.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back and choose the other guy. But with the blockchain, it's a staking. So you unstake your tokens and here we go. He's not the mayor. You choose a new one. It's how you find the consensus among your neighbors. So obviously, if you see that you live in a danger zone of massive pirates, obviously you're going to use your budget on a safety first and then you're going to spend it on the rest of the stuff. But it will be your money of your neighborhood transparent without anyone stealing the money because you can see that what's going on. And there is no secrecy of how you spend your money. I mean, because we know anything like Soviet Union where everything was secret, you know. So it's possible. It's down to architecture. I'm saying I'm not the wisest guy in the world. I'm just saying that you have to understand that I'm not the wisest definitely. But I'm just saying that there is a momentum.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, good point. But again, it will be decentralized. Who says there has to be one big DAO? It could be brought down to the level of a city or it could be brought down to area of a neighborhood. That's why I said Switzerland is a good example because here everything is decentralized. So each city has its own citizen and they all vote for local changes and it's up to them how they spend their budget and who they choose their mayor. So it will be still a mayor. There will be someone, but he will be chosen transparently. And anytime the vote can be taken away and we can choose new mayor, that's a problem that we have right now with the presidents and prime ministers. And then nothing happens and you don't have any means of taking your vote.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so listen, we can do it. That's what I'm saying. There is no opposition. Not any single, especially special forces or the guys with the guns, they're not going to be against us. They're with us. That's what I'm saying. So that's unique, something unique in the world. Because with my experience, 10 years and one month in crypto, when we try to approach any government ministry or national bank and say, let's do this on the blockchain, let's do this. Let's get rid of this ministry or do that. There was always opposition from within the government because that's why this is the way the system resists because any system tries to protect itself. And I'm saying that there is no system in Ukraine. And we have a lot of political power right now to create the first crypto state. And it doesn't matter which part of the country.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I'm saying. So with a little help, we can do it. It will be the first crypto state, like what's happening in Salvador or what else they are doing. This is like crippled. I'm just saying that we could be the first crypto state in a DAO. I mean, you can call it, don't call it DAO if you like, have bad feelings for the DAO. I mean, call it something else.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today is to actually raise the awareness that it's possible in Ukraine, its ideal ways to do it because so many people are involved and so many government officials, top government officials are really pro-crypto now. They have crypto as well. So we can do it. I mean, why not just try it, do experiment? I don't know whether it's going to be good or bad. What's the outcome of it? But at least we're giving a choice and we're trying. If we succeed, great, we can copy it to other countries. If we fail, at least we tried. That's my point. So if you want to join, just help us out. Let's do it. Let's do it together. The first crypto state. I mean, no government opposition at the moment in Ukraine.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good question. I mean, I don't have answers to every single question, but the one thing that I'm doing, I'm proposing, I'm giving choice because there are no other alternatives, because the government, current government, they just want to rebuild everything that was destroyed, even the government system. And it's dead. It's useless. It showed that if not US or Europe, we would be already Russia and a lot of millions of people would be probably dead already. because our government didn't prepare for the war because it was so corrupt and it was so shit so we have nothing to lose and now we have even physically we have nothing to lose because a lot of cities are just wiped out so what's the point of rebuilding old if we can build new that's my proposition so i don't have the answer to every single question and the purpose of my podcast”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first service is taxing system. So we can implement smart contract, which would automatically deduct 2% from any commercial transaction. So we can create wallets for the merchants, we can create wallets for the people, and there could be different wallets, so it could be rules of how the tax system works. So therefore, we can save a couple of billion of grivners on just the budget of the tax service. That's one. Second service, government service, is public money. So that's a blockchain. I mean, that's the easiest thing to do. The good news is we would be able as a government or as a country, the first country, to evenly distribute tokens to every single citizen of Ukraine. And it would be mathematically verifiable.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Discussion for the past three months. And this is what I'm building right now. So I want to create the first crypto state. We're going to have the some kind of passports or ID of these crypto state. And it will be open to the crypto guys. It will be open to libertarian. The way we're going to do it is we'll start rolling out so-called government just for ease of understanding of regular people. Government digital government services and with these rollouts, more and more people will be coming on board of crypto. So as I said, now it's 10 million. Tomorrow it could be 20 million. And in a certain point of time in the future, we're going to see that most of the services are already on a blockchain and we have no need of traditional government.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Systems, you're going to have a digital currency without the national bank. You can use these currencies or governance tokens to directly vote for some changes in your government, or you can delegate or stake these tokens to someone who you trust in a specific questions. And therefore we don't need parliament or senat or congress or any other elections. We don't need the president. We don't need the IRS or the tax service because we can implement smart contracts which would deduct automatically the taxes which will go to the local governments. Everything will be transparent and the good news is the technology is here so we can already do it. So this is the topic of my”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how do you like to use this momentum? And instead of rebuilding Ukraine once the war has finished, instead of rebuilding the old bad copy of democratic society of Europe or US, instead of copying the capitalism market, the bad copy of capital or ugly copy of the capitalist market of US, why don't we just propose a Dow Ukraine You know there will be no president, there will be no prime minister if I'll just paint the picture it will be government similar to Switzerland. So it's confederation. So it's a lot of federations where there is no centralized body which takes care of the whole country. It will be based on a blockchain instead of traditional centralized”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't like them. I mean, it's a war and they're blocking the means by which we could sell Bitcoin for Krivna. Anyway, so basically they're like blocking account. It's not an account. But anyway, yes, similar things. So for the crypto exchanges in Ukraine now because they're so scared motherfuckers. But anyway, so I'm tired of trying to change someone in the government or the whole of the government. So my idea is considering that so many people are encrypted right now. Have crypto, or at least someone close to them use crypto, or they know really well about crypto is probably 10 million people in Ukraine right now. Out of 35 in total. So the third of a country definitely knows that crypto is something good. And it's meaningful and you can use it and it's much better than any government or commercial bank alternative.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, for me, it's freedom because I can't be free with the bank account, especially if I come from the developing countries. We're actually in developed countries, it's also a risk. I mean, if you go crazy in your position to the US government, they're most likely to impose sanctions in you and block your accounts and all your assets. If we look at what happens with the Russians, it's a good example of how the centralized system can behave and how we can do pretty much to anyone in this world. I mean, Putin is a public figure. All these sanction lists are a public figures. But, you know, we totally understand that this is possible. You can block anyone's asset in pretty much any part of the world. And there is no other solution or alternative. Of a platform crypto. I mean, for me, it's quite obvious, self explanatory.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two answers. The first one with the self-custody. Well, first of all, never keep your crypto on the phone that you're using for the daily basis. One. It has to be a separate device. The mnemonic phrase has to be written down on like three pieces of paper. These three species of paper should be stored in a safe location. And in totally different geographic locations. So probably ideally even to have it on different continents. There is a lot of ways how you can do it. But obviously 99% of the people would never do that because they're lazy. Some of them are even stupid. So for them, there will be always a centralized agent that would help or do it for them. So that's the truth of a life. But at least for the smart people and cautious people and forward thinking people, the result alternative, crypto on your wallet. On your wallet, your crypto with your keys. That's the only way forward. But if you're lazy or...”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because in other cases, you're just taking risk from the bank and giving it to the other guy, which is kind of stupid. So don't trust any exchange, not even mind, guys. No, I'm centralized. So until we are DAX, and even if DAX, it's still there is some risk. So as the history shows us. So I think private keys is the only way forward. In that case, you're fully decentralized and you can tell pretty much any government if it's not US to go and I don't want to swear.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is. But again, I'm the only founder of the exchange which tells my clients, guys, don't store your crypto with me because it's not your crypto. It's my crypto. You have the blessing by the God that Satoshi Nakamota came up with the Bitcoin. And you can store your crypto on your wallet with your private key. So go and do it. And that's what I publish quite regularly, probably once a month or so. So I publish with the step-by-step tutorial how to set up a wallet on your phone, how to properly store your seed phrases, how to set up Trezor, ledger, how to create it on different computer and run a full Bitcoin node, you know, how to use Electrum. So all that stuff that I'm advocating for. And I think that's only the future.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, no, no. We have our own custody solution. And then it's multi-sig and there is not just one, there is like a couple and they are geographically spread out and there is different protocols for every single wallet. And then there is different currencies which are stored differently. So yeah, it's all taken. I told you I'm in crypto since 2013.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I have my crypto with me. All my assets are with me, well, apart from the house, which doesn't cost much at all, probably in Ukraine right now. So the government has influence. So I can say anything that I want about my government. With the centralized system like Russia, he cannot say anything because the same thing will happen to him as happened to the founder of the Tinko flank. So he had to sell for two or three percent of the value of his shares, his bank because on Instagram he said that this is war and they wish it to stop it immediately. That's it. That's the example of centralized regime. And I'm a good example of decentralized regime because all my assets are in crypto. They're in the web. There is nothing the government can do to me. So there is no censorship. And that's one of the examples of how you can answer whatever you just asked me.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so he's not saying much because he says that the second he says publicly something about Putin or the army or about the war or his assets will be frozen. So if we, just for a second imagine, what would happen if There was no ruble. That was crypto instead of a ruble. Would mean that he would be just as free as I am because for me to leave the country or I had to take with me is my crypto, but it was already outside of Ukraine because crypto doesn't have borders. So my government has no influence on me at the moment at all. I'm abroad. I'm in Switzerland.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the higher you look, the more complicated it gets. Obviously, we're going to have to change. But I can give you a good example. Okay, I'll give you good examples. So I have a friend in Russia. And he has quite a large business. The reason he's still not saying much about the word, he's not calling publicly the war a war because you have to call it special military operation for some reason, well, for the Russian propaganda purpose. Yeah, for”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, listen, behind the ruble thing, let's finish with that. If every single exchange with cutoff ruble and pretty much everyone now cut off ruble, it means that ruble, the digital ruble, let's call it that way, the banking system ruble, it could be no longer used to buy crypt The only other way for them to buy crypto is actually exit the rubble zone or US dollar zone. So if they had savings within Russia, they would just spend it all on crypto and stop supporting the ruble. So, you know, there is some logic there. With regards to global sanctions and what's happening in the world, it's not an easy topic for discussion because it has so many layers.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we agree that we try to fight Russia with economic means, then okay, we fight with economic means. It was painful to my budget as well. So we immediately cut off about 40% of our revenues. But fuck that. At least I'll save the country, you know.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shit happens. It's their government that is sending troops to kill my people. And some of the people who were using my exchange, they thought that nothing bad is happening in my country. Like the troops is normal and killing children is also normal. I'm against any violence. I'm a libertarian. So I'm against violence and I think only economic means. The means that we should use to fight against the disinformation within Russia. And I think it works.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's the currency of the enemy. So if you continue using the That rubble is used for some kind of economic activity. And if there is economic activity, there is a benefit to the economy. If there is benefit for the economy, they can build more times and send them to Ukraine and try to kill more people in my country. If we as the world decided that we impose sanctions on the economy of the country, obviously the ruble should be shut down. There is definitely not a single exchange should use these currency for the moment. Well, at least until the Putin and his regime is in power and they're doing the work against my country. So that's the main idea.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything like within days it will be delivered to Ukraine, not weeks and not months, like with the Fiat system. So now we have supporters of crypto from all the military, from the police, from the special services, from the court, from well, basically all the government, like the prime minister, everyone, they know about this fund and how good we do. So everyone now knows that crypto is actually life-saving and it's really efficient and it's fast and it's convenient and so on and so on. So it's a unique situation because before the war there was a lot of skepticism among the top ranking officials in the government. Now they all know about the bitcoin and they know that they could actually save lives and it can cross the border and it can overcome any obstacles that the national bank, which is independent in Ukraine unfortunately could do.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we have an army which is highly supportive of crypto because our fund, the crypto fund that is buying all kind of humanitarian or defensive stuff for the government, we are more efficient than any of the official government military suppliers because for us it takes 10 minutes to confirm the block on the Bitcoin and we need three so it's 30 minutes to do a transaction in Bitcoin and it's done, it's paid. For government, they need about the week just to send the money because they are so bureaucratic they need like the wet stamp legal papers and you know has to be sent back and forth and it takes a week for the swift to reach US because the banking system I told you before is shit. For them it's really slow with the crypto fund we can buy”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, we have to look at the timescales. So for the Fiat system and for everything that you just said, there are different time scales. So it's not going to happen once. It would be a general degradation of Fiat system. Equally at the same time, the role of crypto would be growing, like crypto, crypto, not stable coins. So, yeah, I don't see contradiction here, to be honest. I mean, for me, it's quite logical that the one fades, another one rises, and it happens pretty much at the same time. Like it happened in Ukraine. So if you can't use the Fiat system to buy goods outside of Ukraine, there was a vacuum and the vacuum was filled with crypto. What's unique with Ukraine is we are the first country in the world where a lot of high-ranking officials are pro-crypto now.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, you have to distinguish between the money used for regular transactions and savings. If you want to save, you definitely don't keep the USDT. You invest it into any cryptocurrency, like real cryptocurrency. Because there is no point of holding on to USDT because the dollar has inflation, so you're actually losing every year. With the crypto, and especially if you're doing your investment plan for like three plus years, you're most likely to win. That's what history tells us. So again, so if you want to do transactions, you use USDT. If you want to do investment or savings, then you use Bitcoin and either or any other crypto. I would suggest Bitcoin either, but that's not investment advice.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you've got two currencies that are kind of running at once. We've got Gryvnia on the small side and most importantly dollars on the high side. And then the crypto, where crypto comes in, as you're describing it, is USTT is a proxy for dollars that is easily transacted digitally without the government getting in your way. And you don't need a bank SQL server to tell you how many dollars you have, which is right with my bank. That's effectively what's happening. They have a database and I trust the database to whatever extent I might trust the United States government. The United States government has backstopped the bank's database. So I think my money is safe. You're saying, okay, but USDT is on the blockchain. Anybody can read it. I don't need to trust anybody else. But at the end of the day, it's still dollars. It's not Bitcoin.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, if you want to buy a car, you're thinking. If it's more or less expensive, phone, it will be endorsed. If it's a cheap phone, it will be in grimness. So it's a different story. So for us, USDT is basically a bank account in US doors without the government control because you cannot open the US dollars account and easily transfer US dollars from one account to another account. It's impossible you can't do it because the banking system is shit.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because eye opening. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the banking, I used to live in US. So the banking system there works perfectly. If you're inside of banking system, you're okay. As long as you don't leave this system, you can send any amount to any other person or a company. The bank is not going to ask you questions if you have the valid money and it's in their system. If you want to use crypto, you can easily use crypto in US. You can pay for a lot of stuff with the crypto. But Ukraine is different. So if you're buying something above $500, you will be thinking in US dollars prices in terms of US dollars. But if it's, for example, a milk or a loaf of bread, or I don't know what else could be cheap, you know, like typical goods that you buy every day, you're thinking in the local current system, but once you pass the threshold of approximately $500, you start to think US dollars.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Real inflation is probably close to 20%. That's why I see if you compare prices year to year of your typical grocery store purchases. So yeah, it's closer to 20%. So what's the point of hoggling in local currency if you guarantee that inflation is going to eat it? And then the exchange rate is one to 27 it was before the war. So for you, if you want to store like, I don't know, $100,000, that's like 2.7 million Krivenas. And if you're lucky, you got the 500 nodes, which means the bag will wait approximately 30 kilos. Do you really want to carry around 30 kilos of paper? No. Have to explain this because in US, you know, like you don't have these problems.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's basically the money that devalues really quickly. There is incentive for you to spend it as fast as possible. So if you use that system, then theoretically the economy will grow because people would be spending all the time. So they have no incentive to save this currency. They have incentive to spend. So this is a good example or explanation of Ukrainian Gribna. It's devouring by 20, 30 maybe 15, 10%, like the minimum is 10% per year. That's by official statistic. But I told you before, we don't trust the government. So I guess the real...”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, so the crypto is used mainly for transactions above, I would say $1,000 to $5,000 if you're spending below that, you have local currency, which is a really good example of gazelle money. There is the term gazelle money.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How are you going to transfer dollars? I mean, in that case, I would need to get a big bag, put a lot of cash in it, which I don't have because I don't store in cash, then take that back, take a risk that someone could stop me and take away this cash from me or shoot me or something else. But what's the point if you can just press a few clicks, you convert either to use DT and then the standard used DT directly from Uniswap or from MyXchange? That's it. So it's much easier. It's fast. It's secure. I have a proof on the blockchain that I did this transaction, which is also important for Ukraine because I told you we don't trust the government, so we don't trust the representative of a government like solicitors or anyone else. So yeah, crypto is there already.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The third use case there to me is kind of the most interesting place to start, which is transfer within the country. You're describing a country where even before the war, the banking system was not trusted, perhaps not useful. You want to buy goods and services in Ukraine. Maybe this is the push where cryptocurrency actually becomes the currency of a country. We haven't really seen that happen before. But what you're describing is people move their money into USDT, they travel, and then they sell their USDT for dollars, and then they transact in dollars. Are people actually transacting directly in cryptocurrency there yet?”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The risk that they just printed a lot of tether, which is not backed by anything, there is a risk that if that's true, then it's a big problem. The second question is reputation. Media shows Tether as an evil corporation, which is grayish. So it's not as valid as, for example, USDC by Coinbase and Circle. So these two companies are public, they're like regulated, and Tether is like, you know, the big, but it's from someone who was in trouble beforehand. So I think there could be problems in the future. Hopefully not, but”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I would just say broadly in the market, right? We're watching stablecoins experience a great amount of struggle. Tara and Luna are in what appear to be a death spiral. Are you seeing that for USDT and Ukraine as well, that that is a real risk?”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“USDT. People trust USDT, unfortunately, here. I can understand why. I mean, for this use case, yeah, but I would prefer DAI from MakerDAO. I don't trust the USDT as a token or the company Tether have a lot of questions. But yeah, anyway, it's the most popular stablecoin here.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The third probably transfers within the country. So for example, if you want, as I said, you have cash in one city and you want to take out cash in another city instead of driving and being at risk, you could use crypto. So you buy crypto in one city and then you arrive to the other city and you sell crypto for cash and here we go. It will cost you 0.3 to 0.5% depending on the cities. That's it. You use crypto just to transfer cash from one point to another.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You probably lost half or maybe 30% of that value, but you haven't lost everything. And there is a very good chance that this might go up just mathematically because Bitcoin is limited in supply. So that's much better scenario than owing square meters in Kiev or in Kharkiv or in Mariupol because that doesn't cost anything. So my house, I have a house outside of Kiev. It doesn't cost anything. There is no demand. Zero, zero. Doesn't matter what the price is. I hate to lyrph it.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But people store in cash US dollars because it kind of be easily taken away by the government or they store in crypto. Or they used to buy houses or apartments in big cities, which was a big, big mistake. These are the only three options. So we don't have a stock market, so you kind of buy stocks. So the only option is cash like you physically store cash, but it devalues because of inflation. You have crypto. And the third option is square meters. So from this point of view, even if you bought the Bitcoin or either like two months ago with no...”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shit happens, but it's much better than, well, first of all, the way the people do in Ukraine savings is not when they carry money to the bank and they put it in the deposit in the bank. No, it doesn't work like that. We don't trust the banks, I told you. So if we have a lot of money, by a lot of money for Ukraine, I mean probably $100,000 and above. So if you have that kind of money, the last thing you will think about is actually bring it to the bank. Because once you bring it to the bank, that's it. The likelihood that you're going to get them back is very slim. They'll find a way why to tell you you can't take them out. You could sell them to Grivna, then they will give you Gryvna, but again, you kind of take out this whole amount because they can ask you 50,000 questions. Well, you're going to use the cash for, then they'll find the law saying that you kind of take out certain amount of cash, blah, blah, blah. So people don't bring it to the bank.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, if the war started in late February and you said, oh my gosh, I got to put my Rivnians to Bitcoin, your savings would have plummeted precipitously from now until then. Do you think it's a good savings vehicle?”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cashed money into crypto. It's much safer. It's easier to carry. You can take your phone or ledger or written down mnemonic phrase with you. It doesn't weigh anything and cash weighs a lot of kilos and it can be easily taken away from you by the bad guys. So yeah, savings. Two major use cases.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yeah, like three main currencies that we use in the fund. It's a Bitcoin either and USDT on Tron Network. These are the two currencies and one token. These three are used to pay for bulletproof vests, for example. The reason that people are using the funds, the volunteers, the regular people, they're using crypto for the very simple reason. There is no other way that you could pay for something outside of Ukraine because the foreign exchange market is closed to very specific companies. So if you're not in the petrol business or in a food or in wherever the government is requiring at the moment, you won't be able to buy US dollars. So if you can't buy US dollars, obviously you can't import anything. So the only other solution to buy something outside of Ukraine is only using crypto. So that's the first use case. We use it as international payment, means of international payment. The second use case is savings. A lot of people converted.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As you're looking at the Bitcoin market, now you're obviously seeing the prices fall. The rest of the crypto market is, I would say chaos at this moment in time. And then you take out speculation and you take out gray market transactions. What is Bitcoin being used for in Ukraine right now?”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't want to call them investors. Crypto holders, they came in the past year, and obviously these are not the richest people in the world. So when the war happened, the last thing that we're thinking was crypto. So they wanted to buy some food for their families. They needed the new shelter because most of the city, like big cities, had to flee to the other countries or western part of Ukraine. The relocation means you have to spend more money. So basically the speculation volume is probably 10 times down from the pre-war time.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So obviously the volumes are down probably three to four times. The reason for that is before the war, most of the gray market and gray market in Ukraine is probably 60% of GDP was using crypto as the core banking system. You couldn't use traditional banks if you're in the gray market. Not that many people actually use banking for business because it's useless. You can't buy US dollars. You cannot easily send Swift and so on. With crypto, no one asks you a question if you want to do it. You just do it. So therefore a lot of businesses worked on crypto and now since the war these huge markets, they're closed. Some of them are destroyed. So therefore there is no import, there is no demand for crypto. That's why it has fallen. And the second reason people don't really speculate right now because most of the crypto”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just wanted to give people that foundation before our break. As you said, you have an educated population with faster internet. They're already interested in using crypto. Then the war happens. Tell me what has happened with crypto in Ukraine since the war began.”
2022-05-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT