Yesterday it was exactly one year ago that Russia entered neighboring Ukraine with tanks and soldiers. During this year, a huge amount of donations have been made to Ukraine, and it now appears that cryptocurrencies played an important role in this.
crypto donations
Ukraine’s ‘digital deputy minister’, Alex Bornyakov, made this known in a interview with Yahoo Finance. According to him, as much as 60% of all weapons donated by private actors to the Ukrainian armed forces have been paid for with cryptocurrencies!
According to Bornyakov, this was partly made possible by the fact that the suppliers of the weapons decided en masse to accept cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. This is to avoid the hassle associated with traditional payment transactions.
“If we used the traditional financial system, it would take days. […] We were able to secure the purchase of vital items via crypto in no time at all, and what is amazing is that about 60% of the suppliers were able to accept crypto, which I did not expect. […] Companies that produce goods such as bulletproof vests, helmets and various types of rifle scopes, even they could receive crypto,” Bornyakov said.
Ukraine is widely supported
Within 24 hours of the outbreak of war, millions of crypto donated to Ukraine. A week later, the total amount donated in crypto had already passed $50 million. The Ukrainian government even had one at the time official government wallet set up for people to donate their crypto to.
Deputy Minister Bornyakov also indicated in the interview that donations have come from a wide variety of organizations and individuals, including many Russians. However, donated cryptocurrencies that were donated by organizations that are on a blacklist have been returned.
“Donations to Ukraine range from one dollar to millions of dollars. […] Crypto offers an anonymous way to transfer money in certain cases. We saw that some Russians donated a considerable amount to us. The Russian people who donated sent significant amounts of money,” Bornyakov said.