Ukraine raises over $10M in cryptocurrency donations

By Aysu Bicer

ANKARA (AA) - Ukraine has raised more than $10 million through thousands of cryptocurrency donations since the beginning of the war with Russia, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said Sunday.

The Ukrainian government's official Twitter account provided two crypto money accounts Thursday -- one for solely receiving Bitcoin and the other for taking Ethereum and Tether.

"The addresses mentioned in the tweets have already received $10.2 million across 12,799 transactions," according to an analysis by the firm.

Elliptic noted that total crypto donations to the Ukrainian government and NGOs supporting the military now stand at $16.7 million

It said that nearly $1.86 million of the money donated to Ukraine’s government was generated through the sale of a non-fungible token, or NFT, originally intended to raise funds for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"Several million dollars in cryptocurrency donations have also been received by Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian NGO which supports the military," it said, adding the Patreon content creation platform announced that it had suspended Come Back Alive’s page due to policy violations as a result of its military activity.

The majority of the donations received to date have been in Bitcoin and Ethereum, despite US dollar stablecoins contributing a remarkable proportion, it noted.

"But it's not only cryptocurrencies that are being donated -- people are also sending NFTs to the Ukrainian government's Ethereum account," it said.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies seem certain to attract even great discussion in the future, with the latest use of them in the Russia-Ukraine conflict opening a new page in such debate.