A battlefield without gunpowder: Twitter wars

Crypto Twitter Division

When the first battle of the American Civil War began, countless excited spectators poured out of Washington, D.C., and rushed to the hillside to watch the battle on foot, on horseback, or in carriages. Many people expected an easy victory for the Union Army and even brought picnic baskets with them when they watched the battle.

However, the Confederates broke through the Federal lines, and the shocked onlookers hurried back into the city in a panic.

The battle was an early sign that the war would be longer and more terrible than expected.

The unexpected length and huge cost of the war forced the government to choose financial innovation. For the first time, the government printed "dollars", paper money not backed by gold.

Financier Jay Gould effectively created a bond market to absorb new government bond sales, with $2.2 billion in bonds issued during the war, even though the Union Army's deficit was only $77 million at the start of the war.

The war also popularized a new medium of information: photography. Photos of battlefields littered with dead soldiers brought the horrors of war into the homes of civilians outside the battlefields.

People learned about war and realized it was not like a picnic. New forms and uses of media and finance began to influence subsequent wars.

Judging from history, the current war in Ukraine will be similar .

Make a change

There were propaganda films during World War II (starring a young Ronald Reagan) and the rise of Keynesianism. There were burning villages on the nightly news during the Vietnam War and the end of the gold standard. There was the Gulf War, when General Schwarzkopf “held court” on CNN like a talk show host and ushered in an era of aggressive economic sanctions.

New forms of media and finance shape perceptions of war and their course. In the current war in Ukraine, Twitter is clearly reshaping perceptions and reality.

This microblogging site also happens to be home to much of the cryptocurrency community, so the new information medium in this war became entangled with the new financial medium for the first time.

Of course, compared to the SWIFT and central bank sanctions that have dominated the headlines in recent days, the scale of cryptocurrency finance is certainly relatively small, and the US dollars involved are far smaller.

But it is intertwined with media perception, and I expect crypto Twitter has had a huge influence on events.

When I checked yesterday, I saw that about $4 million was sent to BTC and ETH addresses posted by the @Ukraine Twitter account. The account announced an upcoming airdrop this morning, causing the number to rise again.

Sending money to a cryptocurrency address posted on Twitter usually seems a bit unorthodox to me (but Ukraine had Vitalik’s approval).

Pussy Riot and PleasrDAO are supporting the more organized @Ukraine_DAO campaign, which raised $6.7 million in four days by selling NFTs of the Ukrainian flag.

The most reassuring and more legitimate one is the Aide for Ukraine DAO, which was built at lightning speed by Solana developers. It has raised $1.4 million to date and is “ directly aiding local Ukrainians .”

These cryptocurrency donations will be converted into fiat currency by FTX and deposited into the bank accounts of NGOs and governments.

Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko said in a podcast that FTX was the only financial institution that immediately agreed to help — a sign that the cryptocurrency industry has transformed the humanitarian response to the war.

In total, more than $31 million in cryptocurrency has been donated to Ukraine so far. Of course, it’s not just Web3 that’s being mobilized.

Airbnb is providing temporary housing to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.

Elon Musk launched a satellite into orbit over Ukraine at the request of the country’s prime minister to ensure its internet connection remained stable, and most notably, pledged to keep the International Space Station in orbit after Russia threatened to crash it into a country opposed to the war.

Given Russia’s recent history of retaliation, these struck me as admirably courageous acts, especially for a high-profile mission with so much to lose.

Both actions were sparked by events on Twitter.

Heart and Mind

In a way, Twitter has been weaponized.

Putin successfully used social media to disrupt the US presidential election, but he seems to have ignored its potential impact this time. Perhaps he expects that this war will be unpopular in Russia and hopes to downplay it by minimizing exposure on social media. Or maybe it was just an oversight on his part.

For whatever reason, Putin left the field of mass opinion to his opponent Zelensky, leaving Zelensky without any rivals on Twitter. As a result, Ukraine has won the media war through Twitter.

Of course, this provides little solace to ordinary people directly affected by the war. But it has a real impact on the course of the war by rallying support from formal and informal channels around the world. Thanks to cryptocurrency, some of this financial support is reaching civilians affected by the war at a rapid pace.

Putin launched a 19th-century war but got a 21st-century response. He may win the former, but he has already lost the public opinion.

Public opinion mobilized by social media could become the hallmark of an avoidable and unnecessary war.

In one of history's inevitable wars, Joseph Stalin was able to deny the Pope's influence by asking him how many divisions he had.

However, Putin now ignores the impact of Twitter and, in retrospect, may ask himself in frustration, “ How many followers do I have on Crypto Twitter ?

Written by: Blockworks ＆ KAIKO

Compiled by: TechFlow Intern