(Bloomberg Markets) -- Like most Ukrainians, Michael Chobanian is reaching for weapons to defend his country from the Russian invasion. Instead of rifles, he’s taken up something much more modern: crypto. Chobanian, 38, oversees the country’s growing digital currency war chest, which exceeded $60 million in late March, the result of an international outpouring of support.

For the past six years Chobanian led Ukraine’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, KUNA, and became known as the father of his country’s crypto scene. Now he’s tasked with converting and spending those tokens to help equip Ukrainian forces. Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister for digital transformation, said in mid-March that crypto donations had enabled the army to buy 5,500 bulletproof vests, 500 helmets, night-vision goggles, and medicine.

Chobanian replied to questions from Bloomberg Markets through voice recordings on the messaging app Telegram on March 12 and March 18. The interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell me what life was like for you before the invasion.

I am the founder of an exchange. Before the war we had between $1 million and $4 million of volume per day. I am also the head of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine, which was created back in 2016 to protect the businesses in crypto because at that time we ran the risk of the government raiding the offices of crypto companies. And we had some problems with the special services.

I have heard you described as the father of Ukraine’s crypto scene. What did you do to earn that moniker?

I was the first guy who started publicly speaking about crypto. There’s actually a lot of stuff that I did first: the first ATM, the first public trade, the first crypto company, first exchange, first OTC firm. I was also the loudest and most public one, so I was the first crypto guy whose apartment was raided by the police. The first time I got into crypto was 2011, and I have been full time in crypto since 2013.

What was Kyiv’s crypto scene like before the invasion?

It was wild. Ukraine is, per capita, the No. 1 crypto country in the world [according to the Chainalysis 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report], and Kyiv was the center of it. We had probably a couple of thousand developers. A lot of big companies in the crypto space had offices in Kyiv. We have big gatherings of crypto guys—hackathons or just general meetups—pretty much on a weekly basis. Before Covid there were literally thousands of people at the meetups.

Ukraine is really, really big on crypto, and now it is even bigger. Now everyone knows about it.

I read that you met President Volodymyr Zelenskiy before and have spoken to him about crypto. Can you tell me about the ­conversation?

Yes, I met with the president before he was the president. At the time I was the president of the blockchain association. He was only a candidate. Now we’re both presidents.

I was at a meeting with other IT companies, and we were talking with him about what is needed in Ukraine for IT and crypto. He didn’t know much about crypto then, but now he knows a lot about it because crypto is saving our country. I haven’t spoken with him since then so I don’t know what his opinion is right now, but it’s probably very positive.

What do you remember about Feb. 24? Where were you when you heard that Russia had invaded Ukraine?

I can recall every single hour of the day, unfortunately. I woke up at 5 a.m. like most of my fellow citizens because of the really, really loud noises. I immediately went online to check the news. I knew that there was a big risk that this could happen, so I evacuated most of my team two months prior to the war. I was just sitting staring at the monitor, analyzing what’s happening. At about midday, when I saw that everything was escalating, I just said “OK, that’s it, we’re going.” We had a plan that if something happens my team—whoever is left in the country—would come to my house. So by three o’clock in the afternoon, everyone came. We just packed our stuff, threw it in the cars, and we immediately shot off to the western part of Ukraine to safety with all our children and wives.

How are you coping?

I’m OK, considering the rest of the population, I’m actually probably really good.

What are you doing now? Have you joined the army?

I didn’t join the army because I am not really a good army man. My job is being a crypto banker for the government. So I’m in charge of collecting, fundraising, and storing crypto, and also exchanging crypto to crypto and crypto to fiat, opening bank accounts for intermediaries or for the government, and then buying whatever is required by the Ministry of Defense. We also find the suppliers who are willing to sell us humanitarian goods, or helmets, or bulletproof vests for crypto. So I’m in charge of this virtual government crypto fund.

My role is to supply my people with all the necessities that they require and make sure that we can pay as fast as possible. It takes 10 minutes for a Bitcoin block to close [average confirmation time for a Bitcoin payment]. And it takes about three days to do the same thing through the banking system, because first we have to receive U.S. dollars in a bank account, that’s at least one day. On the second day, the bank makes sure that they have received the monies on the account and then it takes another day for the SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, the message system used by most of the world’s financial institutions] payment to actually reach whoever the supplier is. So three days vs. 10 minutes—therefore, we prefer crypto. And you can understand that time is money for my country right now. So if we can save a minute, it means that we can save at least someone’s life, so we are trying to speed up the process and crypto is helping us here.

How has daily life for you changed since the war began?

The most notable thing is probably that time flows totally differently. So I can’t really recall whether something was two weeks ago, two days, or two years ago. The other thing that I feel is that if something loud bangs around me I immediately go to stress. You know, it reminds me of that day, of that morning. And the same happens to all my family members. So loud noises are not good for our stress.

Are you in Kyiv? What is life like in the capital now?

I can’t tell you where exactly I am. I can’t disclose that—that’s classified, but I’m not in Kyiv.

Have you been surprised by the amount of crypto donations and variety of tokens donated?

I knew that people would help. I know a lot of rich Ukrainian crypto guys who live abroad, so I definitely knew they would help. A lot of the locals are helping, and we are now united. Yesterday we were competitors, now we are all one big family. I knew that a lot of big crypto billionaires from around the world would definitely help us because they knew us personally. I’m sure more donations will come because it’s quite obvious that this is just the beginning.

Has this experience changed your view at all on the usefulness or utility of crypto?

No. You could say that I was preparing for this. I knew that there would be a time in the future when crypto would play a vital role. I never imagined it would be because of a war, that was definitely not my plan. I had hoped there would be a more peaceful way. We have a saying here: “You can’t stop an idea, the time of which has come.” So I think crypto is exactly like this.

What have been your frustrations?

In crypto you’re always prepared for the worst. You’re prepared for the hackers or for police raids, or something like that. Health issues, stress, and internet access—for me personally—was the hardest. The rest was just business as usual.

The state of the crypto market obviously has changed a lot. Cash, U.S. dollars, in Ukraine are pretty much useless. No one wants them. Prior to that, dollars were the main payment method for the OTC market. Now considering that you can’t really move cash outside of the country and you cannot store it securely, no one really wants it.

Now the most valuable form of money in Ukraine is crypto. Everyone wants crypto because this is the fastest, the most flexible, easiest, and least bureaucratic way to store and spend your money. Crypto is the new king of money in Ukraine.

One of the reasons crypto adoption has been so high in Ukraine is the history of instability of the late Soviet era, corruption, and a weak currency. What do you think will be the long-term legacy of this war?

The fundamental change is that, before the war, there were a lot of skeptics, especially in the government, in the banks, and in the military. Now there is no skepticism because they understand that we save lives every single minute with crypto. You can try to ignore it, but you cannot ignore when their families are actually fed with crypto, or when the soldiers are dressed in bulletproof vests and helmets with crypto.

You cannot ignore that, especially considering that there is nothing you can do with the cash. So all the skeptics now understand that crypto is here to stay and it’s really convenient. So I guess that’s the biggest fundamental change.

Marsh writes about ESG investing for Bloomberg News in London. He previously covered cryptocurrencies.

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