Ukrainian football team Dynamo Kyiv is launching its own fan token and digital marketplace powered by blockchain technology. According to a Monday announcement, the team has partnered with Moonwalk, a company specializing in creating digital economies for brands, to release a set of loyalty initiatives for its fans. Dynamo Kyiv fans will be able to earn digital tokens for “social actions” such as playing prediction games or engaging with the club on social media. The tokens will then be spendable as reward points for accessing merchandise drops, joining VIP events or receiving discounts when purchasing goods at the stadium. The …

The Stellar Development Foundation has signed an agreement with the Ukrainian government to facilitate the creation of a digital asset ecosystem, including a framework for a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation announced Monday that it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Stellar Development Foundation. The MOU outlines Ukraine's strategy for developing digital assets and CBDC infrastructure. This includes providing support to projects specializing in digital assets, implementing and regulating stablecoin circulation, and promoting the development of a CBDC. A press release from the Stellar Development Foundation on Monday confirmed that the …

A newly appointed official in Ukraine has officially declared his cryptocurrency holdings, including a significant amount of privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR). Rostyslav Solod, a 19-year-old deputy of the Kramatorsk regional department and the son of Ukrainian politicians Natalia Korolevska and Yuriy Solod, reported holdings of 185,000 XMR, worth about $24.5 million at publishing time. According to a declaration published on Dec. 2, Solod became the owner of this Monero fortune back in March 2015, when he was 14 years old. At the time, Monero was trading at around $0.50 per coin, meaning that the market price for this acquisition was …

The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation released a web series to educate citizens about cryptocurrencies, blockchain and Bitcoin (BTC). The show premiered on Wednesday and was developed in collaboration with Binance, Hacken and Crystal Blockchain as part of the Ukrainian government’s “Diia.Digital Education” program. The show consists of eight episodes of six to 12 minutes each that explain the basic concepts of cryptocurrency and blockchain. The show is hosted by Andriy Onistrat, an entrepreneur and former banker, who interviews guests working in the blockchain industry. The first episode, available on YouTube, introduces the concept of cryptocurrencies as a permissionless, unstoppable …

Ukraine is ranked as the world’s leader in the Global Crypto Adoption Index 2020, according to a research published by Chainalysis earlier this fall. Despite this, cryptocurrencies still remain a gray area in the economy. Since 2014, Ukrainian authorities have been trying to implement crypto legislation that would transform the country into a competitive jurisdiction for running crypto-related businesses, but the efforts did not yield any results. Finally, just a few months ago, the Ukranian government presented a new bill on digital assets to legitimize the sector — and this time, the attempt may well be successful. The fintech strategy …

Following two years of pilot testing, a blockchain trade and financing platform for global agricultural trading has seen its commercial rollout from Swiss developer Cerealia SA. The launch follows extensive prelaunch trial implementation with firms from Algeria, Brazil, Dubai, Japan and Ukraine. In November 2018, Cointelegraph reported on the platform’s early use to conduct a pilot transaction of Black Sea wheat from the Russian port city of Novorossiysk. Cerealia told reporters that it has sought to address the need for a fast trading platform in the global Russian wheat market and to combine this with a more reliable, transparent and …

The COVID-19 pandemic has served both as an x-ray onto existing vulnerabilities in the global financial system, and as an accelerator for destabilizing tendencies, including higher sovereign and consumer debt in emerging markets. At an online meeting of the Central Bank Governors' Club, hosted this week by Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina, representatives were unanimous in their expectations of the far-reaching consequences of the current crisis. At the meeting, the 26 central bank representatives that convened from Central Asia, the Black Sea region, the Balkan countries and beyond, also noted the pandemic-induced expansion of e-commerce, as well as digital …

Blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis has found that darknet markets exert a disproportionate presence in Eastern Europe’s crypto sector. In an excerpt from Chainalysis’ 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, the firm asserts that Eastern Europe is responsible for “more global darknet market activity than any other region,” with the anonymous free market Hydra comprising the region’s sixth-largest crypto service. Regional shares of global darknet market transfer volume: Chainalysis The report estimates that Hydra generated more than $1.2 billion in crypto revenue between June 2019 and July 2020. The platform is among the world’s largest darknet marketplaces despite solely servicing the Eastern …

Taras Kulyk, Senior Vice President of Blockchain Business Development at Core Scientific, says that the countries competing to become leaders in the Blockchain space vary greatly in what they can offer to crypto miners. During an interview with Cointelegraph, Kulyk stated that global diversification of hashrate has been increasing as countries around the world vie for control of the crypto mining industry. Kulyk believes that China has been a desirable hub for crypto mining due to specific factors it enjoys, specifically the low cost of labor, access to units, and decreased cost of power during the rainy season, but he …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note The political machinations of Eastern Europe have dominated recent headlines. Protests unprecedented since the fall of the Soviet Union have rocked Belarus for weeks. Outrage over the Aug. 8 election that has seen challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya flee the country has threatened the longtime dominion of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, the so-called “last dictator in Europe.” Protestors are calling the 80% win for Lukashenko a fraud. The regime has tried to crack down with its traditional tactics of disinformation and …

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is collaborating with law enforcement authorities in Ukraine to take down some large-scale money laundering schemes. Working with the exchange, Ukraine’s cyber police identified and arrested a group of criminals involved in a $42 million ransomware and money laundering operation, Binance told Cointelegraph in a criminal investigation report on Aug. 18. According to the report, the criminal group has been laundering millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies since 2018. A Binance representative said that the suspects were all Ukranian nationals, and were arrested in June 2020. According to Binance, the group was primarily operating in …

The Ministry for Digital Transformation of Ukraine, a major government authority behind local crypto regulation, will be implementing Bitfury’s crypto analytics tool to track crypto transactions. As officially announced on July 23, the Ministry has signed an agreement with Birfury’s crypto compliance product known as Crystal. Bitfury’s Crystal to provide crypto analytics expertise to the Ukraininan government Launched by Bitfury in early 2018, Crystal is a software stack that is designed to fight crimes involving cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). Crystal employees will now provide the Ministry with crypto analytics expertise, Crystal elaborated on its website. The executives at the Ministry …