People all over the world have come together once again to donate Bitcoin to help others. We saw the same thing happen with Canada and how they used Bitcoin to fund things, but what are Ukraine using the $100+ million worth of Crypto for? But firstly...
What's been donated?
Not just Cryptocurrencies are being donated. Non-fungible tokens (NFT) have too been donated. CryptoPunk #5364 was donated to the Ethereum wallet of Ukraine's. The CryptoPunk has an estimated worth of around $200,000 which was previously sold for $31,300 in February 2021
The Decentralized autonomous organization Ukraine DAO raised 2,258 ETH (around $6.75 million) by selling the Ukrainian flag as an NFT.
A donation of $5.8 million (298,367 DOT) was singlehandedly donated by Gavin Wood, a British computer scientist most commonly know for being the creator of Polkadot (DOT)
OnlyFans have also donated 500 ETH ($1.3 million) to UkraineDAO
War comes with a heavy price. Supplies, equipment and medical are a critical necessity and these things cost. Here's a list of what Ukraine have been using their Crypto donations for.
What's being bought?
- Fuel
- Military-grade food
- Bulletproof vests (5,550+)
- Night vision goggles
- Helmets (500+)
- Medical equipment (tourniquets)
Michael Chobanian (Kuna founder) tells CoinDesk - "We are evacuating people so we are sending money to buy petrol, to buy food and water for the people who are evacuating. We are sending some money to the local military personnel who can buy some supplies locally. The government is also buying drones and heat vision goggles”
An important thing to realise is that all of this is possible thankfully to the vendors and military suppliers to Ukraine being accepting to Cryptocurrency payments. This is just another forward step in the right direction for the adoption of Cryptocurrencies even though the circumstances could be better.
Michael Chobanian stated that "due to vendors accepting crypto in exchange for supplies, crypto is proving to be more efficient than traditional payment methods"
Using traditional methods of payments leads to unnecessary barriers. They are slow, that can take a few days for funds to be sent from one place to another especially with such big amounts of money.
To get an idea of different Cryptocurrencies that have been donated, here is a informative image put together by Michael Chobanian, the founder of the KUNA Exchange of Ukraine.
*this is the latest informative post that he posted to his twitter as of the 9th March 2022
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