Hello Wall Street, Jordan, New York. This is Michael Chebanion.

Michael is the founder of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Ukraine.

I'll be sounding a bit tired, stupid and slow. Sorry for that. Only sleeping for a couple

of hours a day. So yeah, that's the reality I have to live in.

Michael's exchange is called Kuna Exchange and it's helping the Ukrainian government raise

donations from around the world to help the war effort. Those donations are in cryptocurrencies.

We launched the fund for the government. It's the backbone of a fund is run on the Kuna

Exchange which is owned by me. The Ministry of Digital Transformation approached me and

asked me to set up the fund for the government. So that's what we did.

Michael sent this audio message last week to our colleague Paul Vina. Paul covers all things

crypto and has been watching what role crypto is playing in the conflict. So he went to

Kuna Exchange's website and saw the request for donations along with this message.

Let's stop the war. Let there be peace in crypto we trust for Ukraine we pray.

Using crypto to help pay for supplies during a war is something Paul hasn't seen before.

The most surprising thing is probably to see an actual nation-state government, in this

case Ukraine, appeal for donations via cryptocurrencies. And within a couple of days I think they

have 30 million dollars. Welcome to the journal our show about money, business and power. I'm

Kate Limbaugh, it's Thursday, March 10th.

Coming up on the show, how Ukrainians and Russians are turning to crypto in a time of war.

After Russia invaded, Ukrainian leaders stepped up their urgent requests for financial help.

And they were willing to be creative, which was evident two days after the invasion on Twitter.

They literally just put out a tweet from their verified account and they said we're raising money.

...