Tt’s been a week since Russia invaded Ukraine. On day-8, the capture of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was confirmed. Other key cities like Kharkiv and the capital Kyiv have witnessed non-stop shelling by Russia.
A couple of hours after the invasion, the Ukrainian government announced that they were accepting donations in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT.
Since then, the Ukrainian government received more than $22 million worth of assets, some in bulk from crypto geniuses like Gavin Wood. Moreover, this is not the only channel where crypto users can support Ukraine.
Even though Ukraine legalised the usage of Bitcoin before the invasion started, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister still mentioned that they can not accept cryptocurrencies as official donations by saying, “National legislation does not allow the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to use other payment systems (“Webmoney,” “Bitcoin,” “PayPal.”
It landed amid a banner streak for Ukraine’s fast-accelerating crypto campaign: over $10 million raised in ETH, DOT, USDT, BTC and other crypto tokens on Tuesday alone, the single-largest day since Ukraine began asking for donations on Feb 26.
Earlier Tuesday, Michael Chobanian, a Ukrainian crypto exchange founder who is helping the Ministry of Digital Transformation handle donations, said that at least $14 million of donated crypto had already been spent on military hardware and supplies for civilians, including food and gas.
“The majority of spending is actually done in crypto,” Chobanian said at the time. Earlier, He said that Kuna, his exchange, operates the wallets used by the Ukrainian government.
Wallet addresses linked to the Ukrainian government and nongovernmental organizations supporting its military have received nearly 60,000 donations since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine early Thursday, including an all-time high of more than 10,000 on Wednesday morning, according to blockchain analytics firm Merkle Science.
The donations include $6.5 million in proceeds from a Ukrainian flag NFT auctioned off Wednesday by the Ethereum-based group Ukraine DAO—marking the tenth most expensive NFT ever sold, according to Tom Robinson, chief scientist at blockchain analytics company Elliptic.
Ukraine’s government has made use of a large portion of proceeds, it’s still unclear whether it has yet sold any of the NFTs it’s received. Despite the booming support in cryptocurrency, the large majority of aid is still expected to come in the form of traditional currency.
