British MP Matt Hancock launches NFT charity project for Ukraine
UK MP Matt Hancock is continuing his mission to support blockchain technology through a new NFT collection called “From Ukrain with Love”, according to a statement provided to CryptoSlate.
From Ukraine with love
The NFT collection consists of works painted by pre-war Ukrainian artist Oleg Mischenko and will be sold at The NFT Gallery in London’s Mayfair on Monday 27 February. Funds from sales will go to CARE International UK’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. The collection, “From Ukraine with Love,” was curated by Irina Korobkina, who fled Kiev with her 5-year-old daughter after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Hancock’s involvement stems from having hosted Korobkina in the UK since April 2022. Mischenko remained in Ukraine, painting as “shells rained down around him” before joining his family in December.
“My husband’s paintings and this NFT collection give my family and my country hope. Each piece depicts the nature of our wonderful Ukraine. It was a beautiful, thriving, peaceful country until Putin waged this illegal and barbaric war.”
Matt Hancock masters crypto
Regarding the NFT collection, Hancock commented;
“I am incredibly proud of Irina and Oleg and honored to support the family with their NFT charity collection[…] Oleg is an incredibly talented artist and his collection ‘From Ukraine, With Love’ is truly amazing.”
Hancock has been vocal in supporting the blockchain industry with calls to make the UK a “crypto hub”. The MP for West Suffolk has previously focused on advocating a “growth-maximising view where the revenue in the future will be far greater” in relation to crypto tax and regulation.
However, the launch of this new NFT collection demonstrates Hancock’s desire to not only champion blockchain as a technology, but also advance its use cases.
Speaking at Zebu Live in London on 23 September 2022, Hancock revealed that he had no crypto assets, including Bitcoin. MP claimed that by not keeping crypto personal, he was more able to be objective about the future.
However, this approach is unusual in the space as a whole, with the majority of influential figures in the crypto space personally investing large sums in digital assets.
Hancock has been bullish on blockchain for some time. In 2016, when he was Paymaster General, he stated,
“The government cannot bury its head in the sand and ignore new technologies as they emerge[…] That’s partly what happened in the past in government with the web … We can’t let (it) happen again by standing still.”
While most of Hancock’s efforts to promote crypto in the UK took place before 2020, he re-emerged as the political face of crypto in the UK government in 2022, making many appearances supporting UK crypto.
The NFT collection is hosted on Coinbase’s NFT marketplace and launches on February 27th.
