A few words about the new payment service that appeared in FUIB. This is the “Smart Op!lata” service — it allows the seller to generate a QR code or payment link, and the buyer pays for goods or services from their smartphone via Apple Pay, Google Pay or by entering payment card details, just like in an online store.

The main advantages of Smart Op!lata are simplicity and mobility — you can activate the service by filling out a simple form, and the service itself is always at hand and accessible from phones, tablets or computers, requiring no additional equipment or maintenance.

It is also possible to issue an invoice by specifying the amount in a message to the Telegram bot — in response you receive a QR code and a payment link that needs to be shown to the buyer to make the payment.

Our client can add any number of assistants (waiters, sellers or cashiers), and they will be able to quickly create QR invoices in the bot or through the payment dashboard.

Unlike a POS terminal, Smart Op!lata has no subscription fee — sellers pay only when they receive payments from their customers, and therefore pay only when their business is working. In our view, this is very important during the war. It also encourages card payments in these difficult times, and thus stimulates the Ukrainian economy.

And finally — a one-minute video to see that everything is very simple :)

Elixir application for Microsoft Translator API.

https://g.tulz.dev/translate/microsoft_translator

Elixir application for Yandex Cloud Translate API.

https://g.tulz.dev/translate/yandex_translate

Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi is a city of museums. But at the same time, the infrastructure is very poor — decent places to eat can be counted on one hand. The drive from Kyiv is about 80 km and took a little over an hour. The road is mediocre, but bearable if you’re not in a hurry.

Ukrainian nature on the road from Kyiv to Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi looks something like this:

What museums can you visit in Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi?

Ethnography, history, archaeology and local history museums:

1. Folk Architecture and Life of the Middle Dnieper Region (Letopysnaya St. 2, +38(04567)52936, open-air museum).

2. Trypillian Culture (Shevchenko St. 10, +380(4567)51675).

3. Archaeological Museum (Shevchenko St. 17, +380(4567)51574).

4. Architecture of Pereyaslav during Kyivan Rus (Moskovska St. 34, +380(4567)51612).

5. Kobzar Art (B. Khmelnytskogo St. 20, +380(4567)53641, +380(4567)51552).

6. Ukrainian Folk Clothing of the Middle Dnieper Region (Novokiyivske Shosse 5, +380(4567)51612).

Interestingly, all museums of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi are located at two addresses — you can go to Shevchenko Street, buildings 6 to 12 and to Letopysnaya, 2 where there is a whole cluster of museums about everything under the sun :)

1. History of Ukrainian Folk Rituals and Traditions, +380(4567)52936.

2. Ukrainian Orthodox Church, +380(4567)52936.

3. History of Beekeeping, +380(4567)52936.

4. Ukrainian Rushnyk (Towel), +380(4567)52936.

5. Decorative and Applied Arts, +380(4567)52936.

6. Bread, +380(4567)52936.

7. Post Office, +380(4567)52936.

8. Medicinal Plants, +380(4567)52936.

A colossal number of famous historical personalities are connected with Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi: Taras Shevchenko, Hryhoriy Skovoroda, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, Sholom Aleichem:

Here are the museums connected with them:

1. Taras Shevchenko’s “Zapovit” Museum (Shevchenko St. 8, +380(4567)54103, +380(4567)54203).

2. H. S. Skovoroda Memorial Museum (Skovorody St. 52, +38(04567)51448).

3. Architect V. I. Zabolotny Memorial Museum (Mazepy St. 9, +38(04567)51552).

4. Sholom Aleichem Jewish Literature Classic Memorial Museum (Letopysnaya St. 2, +380(4567)52936).

You can also visit the diorama “Battle for the Dnieper near Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi in Autumn 1943” (Skovorody St. 54, +380(4567)51879).

Here’s a short video from Taras Shevchenko’s “Zapovit” Museum, where for some reason they told more about Bohdan Khmelnytskyi’s uprising.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel if you liked the video :)

A few thoughts on the 1C situation, though competitors are not talked about out loud.

On the one hand, it seems that yesterday the state dug a hole for 1C, and they are our competitors, and I, as the head of the Smart Accounting project, should be happy and cheerfully take a piece of the accounting market for individual entrepreneurs. But I am not happy — I believe that strong competitors allow us to grow and develop faster and more logically. And 1C today is the only adequate player in the accounting market. And 1C’s monopoly position in the market is not a consequence of collusion and administrative resources, but a consequence of the availability of management accounting and compliance with regularly changing legislation.

Many will say: there are a million alternatives à la SAP, but in everything made in Europe and the United States, the very concept of management accounting is absent as a class. They simply don’t work there with schemes and “off the books”, and therefore don’t automate these processes. And today, unfortunately, this is the reality of Ukraine, and without liberalization of tax legislation, the economy will not come out of the shadows. By the way, a note to the Presidential Administration: liberalization should have been the starting point.

Thus, for now everyone needs management accounting, which is not available in products for the European market. Therefore, I assert: there are no products for legal entities on the general taxation system in Ukraine today. Now about the victory speeches and statements that tomorrow national Ukrainian solutions will appear. We have spent more than one year to create and maintain a convenient product for a very narrow niche of individual entrepreneurs on simplified taxation, and we understand that the market capacity of accounting products for Ukraine is negligible by world standards, and the cost of programmers who can just as well write products for Europe and the USA is very high.

And with the expansion of the product to the segment of legal entities on the general system, the complexity of the product — and as a consequence, the development time — grows exponentially. Legislation in Ukraine changes with every change of power and exclusively in the interests of whoever is at the top of the food chain in Ukrainian politics at the moment. And supporting the product at such a speed of changes to the tax code, in such a small market as Ukraine, is possible only when Ukraine is 25% of the total product market, and all the other 75% of the market have approximately the same taxation system as ours.

Therefore, I do not believe that someone will go write a national product with a very real probability of tomorrow running into a new tax code and wasted money and time. As European taxation standards are established and business adapts to tax responsibility and increasingly strives for accounting according to IFRS standards (so if we go to Europe, we liberalize and bring the country’s tax system to European standards, teach business to pay taxes), major European players come in — SAP for example — and then 1C gradually loses its position (after all, 1C has no market share in Germany). But it’s silly to start from the end.

And the situation with 1C will not affect Smart Accounting, Smart Showcase and Smart Help for entrepreneurs in any way, because for individual entrepreneurs on simplified taxation, 1C was never really there and never will be, because 1C is primarily for the accountant, and we are primarily for the entrepreneur.

Wandered around the Eurovision fan zones on Khreshchatyk and Sofia Square. It’s great that Ukraine is hosting this contest in Kyiv thanks to Jamala. The bad thing is that the organization leaves much to be desired.

Main complaints:

• Uncomfortable location of screens and stages

• Security checkpoints on Khreshchatyk are a madhouse with complete absence of adequate inspection — you can carry anything through

• The main street food product on Khreshchatyk is beer, and there is no variety at all

• At Sofia Square there are no security checkpoints at all and no police (at 10 PM on May 9)

• No entertainment besides the stage and screens, table tennis being the exception

The good:

• Eurovision is cool and it’s another chance to show Ukraine to Europe

• Food is decent

• Sound and lighting are good

Video conveys the overall atmosphere better than text:

Subscribe to the YouTube channel if you liked the video :)

So in this review I continue to tell you about where to buy Bitcoin in Ukraine. Interest in Bitcoin among Ukrainian users continues to grow.

There are three main ways to buy Bitcoin:

• Buy bitcoin on an exchange (pay with a VISA or MasterCard debit card)

• Buy bitcoin for Yandex Money, WebMoney, OKPay and other online money (in exchangers)

• Buy bitcoin for cash hryvnias (in top-up machines)

In early March, the bitcoin rate jumped past the $1,200 mark per 1 BTC. Then the rate fell. Currently the rate is at 26,107 UAH (approximately $960 USD) per 1 BTC.

For those who believe it’s worth buying Bitcoin as an investment, here is a list of platforms for buying/selling BTC.

Buy Bitcoin on a cryptocurrency exchange by paying with a card

Ukrainian cryptocurrency exchange “BTC-Trade”

Convenient and reasonably priced to deposit/withdraw bitcoin if you are a PrivatBank and Privat24 client. There is withdrawal via LiqPay.

Exchange “CEX.io”

Identification requirements

You can provide a scan of your passport, ID card or driver’s license as identification. A photo with the ID document in your hands is required.

To confirm your address, you need to provide one of the following documents:

• Utility bill;

• Electricity bill;

• Bank account statement;

To link a card, you need a photo with the card in your hands and a photo of the card with an ID document.

Buy bitcoin for online money in exchangers

A few general points when buying Bitcoin through exchangers:

1. Most exchangers transfer money to your wallet with a delay of up to 3 days.

2. Many exchanges frequently lose payment methods.

3. The probability of getting scammed is higher than when buying on an exchange. What is listed below I checked personally, but everything is at your own risk.

4. Naturally, the rate is worse than on exchanges.

5. A big plus — no need for personal identification for small amounts.

Here are the exchangers I’ve personally tested:

Bitcoin exchanger “Arbitrcoin”

ArbitrCoin supports exchange of the following cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, Dash for money in Advanced Cash, OkPay, Perfect Money and Yandex Money, and back.

Bitcoin exchanger “Bitcoin Obmen”

Bitcoin-Obmen.com supports the following cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin(BTC), BTC-E Litecoin, DOGE, EXMO, Dash, LiveCoin.

It differs from the previous one by the important (for Ukraine) support of payment services via Privat24 and Webmoney (WMZ and WMU) and the ability to pay with a plastic card in hryvnia without converting the payment to USD.

Buy bitcoin for cash

Provider btcu.biz allows you to buy bitcoin without a bank card. You buy a voucher code at an iBox self-service terminal, enter it on the website, and Bitcoin is credited to your account.

To buy bitcoin for cash at an iBox terminal, go to the “electronic money” section, find BTCU.biz, enter your mobile phone number, and get a receipt with a code. After entering the code on the BTCU.biz website, the amount in hryvnia will be credited to your account. There you can exchange UAH for BTC. The minimum payment amount is 50 hryvnias.

Convenient services unavailable for Ukrainian cryptocurrency users

Bitcoin wallet and exchange “Coinbase”

I include this site as an example of how convenient an exchange and related services for buying/selling Bitcoin can be in terms of interface. But unfortunately, this system is not available to users from Ukraine. Support for Ukraine is promised after bringing Ukrainian legislation to international norms for working with cryptocurrency.

//P.S. As I check deposit mechanisms and new exchanges appear, I will try to update this post. Suggest in the comments what else is worth trying.//

Bitcoin is not backed by anything

For some reason everyone thinks bitcoin is a currency. In the good old days, coins were minted from gold and silver. Then money was backed by precious metals and stones (gold reserve + paper currency). Today, currency is backed by confidence in the economy of the state that owns the currency.

Bitcoin has no central issuing authority, no notional treasury — it is not controlled by a specific state or government. That said, it has value and can be used as currency. It is based on blockchain technology. Bitcoin’s value lies in its convenience, partly in its anonymity, partly in its cross-border nature.

Bitcoin is limited in the number of currency units (coins) and cannot exceed 21 million. And this limited quantity implies deflation of this currency in the long term.

Potential bugs in blockchain technology

At the heart of the risk is the assumption that a critical error in the code will lead to the devaluation of bitcoin. Critical bugs have not been observed during the existence of this digital currency. But it is certainly possible. Any IT system is potentially error-prone.

There is a very real risk of a bitcoin exchange being hacked. But the protocol itself, the code that runs everything, has never been hacked. If that were to happen, bitcoin would presumably collapse.

Investors can be advised to be careful when buying and storing bitcoins. Large amounts of bitcoins should be stored in hardware bitcoin wallets.

Bitcoin is used by criminals for illegal transactions

Criminals do use cryptocurrencies. The anonymity of bitcoin makes it possible to conduct illegal transactions. Yet bitcoin and blockchain startups have received over $1.5 billion in investments. And the fact that bitcoin and blockchain are being developed by IBM, Intel, Microsoft and other IT giants, and invested in by J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs makes one reconsider the controversiality of these claims about bitcoin’s criminality.

Bitcoin is not regulated

It cannot be said that bitcoin is not regulated — the management of bitcoin exchanges in China essentially drives the exchange rate, as practice shows. And miners mining coins affect what happens to the rate. But BTC is indeed not regulated in the same way as other investment instruments.

Bitcoin exchange rate is too volatile

The price can indeed jump or drop 10 or 15% within an hour, which is considered unacceptable for a currency or most stocks.

But the fact that bitcoin functions as a currency doesn’t mean it’s only a currency. More importantly, it is a way to seamlessly transfer money over the Internet. Bitcoin also allows you to verify ownership of funds when making a transaction.

P.S. A couple of useful links about Bitcoin in Ukraine

Exchanges, BTC wallets

• Coinbase

• CEX.io

• BTC-Trade

BTC exchangers

• Arbitrcoin

• Bitcoin Obmen

You can read more about conditions, features, exchange limits and identification in the post “Exchanging and buying Bitcoin in Ukraine”

Talked to presenters about cloud software products, data storage, and cloud security.

About the capabilities of Smart Accounting and the necessity of bookkeeping for individual entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Radio Vesti interview about Smart Accounting

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