While concerns about the mass abuse of cryptocurrencies by the Russian side to circumvent sanctions have not yet been confirmed, although individual purchases for the Russian ruble drove the price of bitcoin over $ 40,000 last week, cryptocurrencies have proved more than a form of rapid assistance to Ukrainian citizens and soldiers.
The country’s official government and non-profit organizations raised over sixty million dollars through cryptocurrency collections. Owned by the Ukrainian government, even the NFT token ended up with one of the legendary cryptopunks.
Although these are amounts that are negligible compared to the financial support that flows to Ukraine through NATO allies and which goes into the billions, these are quite interesting amounts of practically instantly available aid from below. This is also admitted by Alex BornyakovDeputy Minister of the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation.
“In times like these, timely response is crucial. The cryptocurrencies played a role in this regard, giving us the luxury of a flexible response, thanks to which we were able to deliver the required support to our army very quickly, “Bornyakov said.
Just two days later, after this statement, everything started to take on an official character. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov first posted on Twitter a bitcoin and ethernet address where contributions can flow to support the country in times of conflict.
According to blockchain analyst firm Elliptic, the Ukrainian government and affiliated non-profit organizations have so far managed to collect cryptocurrencies for $ 60.5 million. There should be a total of 120,000 cryptoactive assets, which include, for example 298 367 DOT tokenů(about $ 5.8 million at the time of the transfer) from co-founder Etherea and author of blockchain Polkadot, Gavina Woodaor the already mentioned non-fungible token CryptoPunk #5364 worth over $ 200,000 thousand, sent to a published government Ethernet address.
So far, however, the Ukrainian government has encountered it a bit, because it has proved (not surprisingly) to be very inadequate. Speaking of NFTs, donated cryptocurrencies also include a $ 1.86 million transaction, which, according to transaction history, probably came from NFT sales revenues generated by Julianem Assangem and a digital artist Grip. The AssangeDAO project gained 17,422 ethers from NFT sales in February.
According to Bornyakov, the only flaw in the beauty so far remains the fact that not all suppliers of the Ukrainian army accept cryptocurrencies. The government must first convert all donations into euros and dollars, using the stock exchange Since, the largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange in the country. It also serves the government as the main depository of funds.
However, a number of money (in the order of millions of dollars) were also raised by the non-profit organizations Come Back Alive, UkraineDAO, Unchain.Fund and AidForUkraine through cryptocurrencies. The Ukrainian non-profit organization Come Back Alive arrived on February 24 about your site on Patreonbecause by supporting Ukrainian military operations violated the terms of the platform. Nevertheless, he is now one of the main contributors in support of the Ukrainian case, a breakthrough made possible by this cryptocurrency.
The UkraineDAO project has become another important contributor to our list. A group of activists, including a founding member of the protest art group Pussy Riot Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, created in cooperation with Trippy Labs, CXIP and the decentralized organization Pleasr DAO “Ukrainian DAO”, a non-profit project auctioning the tokenized Ukrainian flag. The auction ended last Wednesday and yielded a total of 2,250 ethers, which was about $ 6.75 million at the time of the sale. Interestingly, this is the 10th most expensive NFT that has ever been sold. Contributions to the auction came from really unusual places, one of which was 500 ETH, which came from the address only.eth belonging to the site OnlyFans. Proceeds will go to support civilians affected by the war, again through the non-profit organization Come Back Alive.
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Probably the strangest act of the Ukrainian government in connection with raising money through cryptocurrencies was the idea of encouraging donors with their own airdrop (free distribution of cryptocurrencies to specific addresses). The Ukrainian government caught this idea twice from the cryptocurrency community, when it came up with the idea in public and then when it withdrew from it.
The community first designated an officially announced and subsequently canceled airdrop rug-pull scam (a situation where a real project arises at first sight, and the moment the authors already have enough funds in their wallets, the project unexpectedly ends or leaves). The government did not iron it too much by letting Fedorov say that he would rather issue his own military NFT instead of airdrop. However, one thing cannot be denied the idea, it was the announcement of the planned airdop, which catapulted the volume of crypto Ukraine to the current heights.
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