KingData News: Ukraine plans to digitize "every single piece of art or history" it can, announced Michael Chobanian, President of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine, at Consensus 2022 on Saturday. "Today we are announcing a new project [aimed at] how we can save the DNA of the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian history," Chobanian said. "Right now, they are bombing museums, churches, and cultural sites. So before they are destroyed...we're going to digitize every single piece of art or history that we have in museums. We're going to NFT it and put it on the blockchain," Chobanian said. Ukraine has already leveraged crypto and blockchain to finance its defense against Russia's invasion, raising over $135 million in crypto from donors around the world by mid-May, analytics firm Crystal Blockchain told CoinDesk. NEAR Protocol's co-founder, Illia Polosukhin revealed that NEAR will be the first blockchain partner of the project.

Binance Plans to Support 5,000 Internally Displaced Ukrainians, Providing 75 BUSD Per Month KingData News: Binance announces support for Ukrainian migrants. The Lviv region became the first in Ukraine to launch this support project from Binance Charity and partner NGOs. The allowance is 75 BUSD (equivalent of 75 USD) per month, which will be accrued for three months, intended primarily for vulnerable groups among the IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons). At the first stage of the initiative, Binance plans to reach 5,000 internally displaced Ukrainians. 1339 of them have registered in the program and 1000 people have already received funds. The money was received within a week from the date of registration.

Crypto Exchange Whitebit Buys Ukraine’s Eurovision Trophy in Auction for Armed Forces KingData News: WhiteBit, an Estonian crypto exchange, paid 500 ETH ($940,000) for the winner's trophy from this year's Eurovision Song Contest in an online auction to raise funds for Ukraine's army. The glass, microphone-shaped trophy was among several items sold by Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra on Sunday to support the armed forces following Russia's invasion in February. The band had taken the Eurovision title earlier this month for its song Stefania. "We appreciate each and everyone of you who donated to this auction and a special thanks to the team WhiteBit who purchased the trophy for $900,000 and are now the rightful owners," the band posted on its Facebook page. (The Block)

Ukraine Doubles Down on Crypto-Friendly Regulation Efforts, Aims for Top Spot KingData News: Ukraine is aiming to become a top 5 country in the world in terms of crypto legislation, and the efforts have the “total support” of both President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the government, according to a high-ranking Ukrainian government official. “We are aiming for Ukraine to become one of the top 3-5 countries in the world with the best legislation for crypto,” said Alexander Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation. The deputy minister further said that the plan to place Ukraine among the leading countries in the world when it comes to crypto has the full support of the Ukrainian government. Moreover, Bornyakov pointed to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as an area of particular interest to himself and the government. He said that the government believes one of the purposes of NFTs and the blockchain is to document history, and opined that this is especially important as Russia “tries to erase our history.” The comments from Deputy Minister Bornyakov were given during a virtual panel discussion on Friday hosted by MetaHistory, a collaboration project between the Ukrainian NFT community and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. Also participating in the discussion was Dmitriy Buterin, the father of the Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who focused on the opportunities crypto could bring for Ukraine. Buterin proposed that Ukraine open itself up as “a testbed” for new crypto projects. He said this is something that is badly needed given all of the “interesting experiments” that are taking place in the crypto world, and suggested that a form of crypto-based universal basic income (UBI) could be part of it.