Cryptocurrency donations and payments become an important "flash point" in the Russia-Ukraine conflict

During the Russia-Ukraine conflict, U.S. stocks and currency prices have not yet experienced the sharp collapse that was previously feared. On the contrary, cryptocurrency has become an important bright spot as a means of donation and payment.

Ukraine, where the war took place, is one of the countries with the highest cryptocurrency adoption rates in the world. Brookerchooser's 2021 survey showed that Ukraine has more than 5.5 million citizens who own cryptocurrencies, equivalent to more than 12.7% of its 44 million population. A report from Chainalysis shows that Ukraine, Russia, and Venezuela are the three countries with the highest cryptocurrency adoption rates and the three countries where retail investors are most active.

The Ukrainian government announced the official BTC ETH and USDT donation channels on February 26. SlowMist released the statistics of crypto donations in Ukraine. As of the early morning of February 28 (UTC+8), donations to Ukraine (from community individuals rather than centralized institutions) have exceeded 20 million US dollars. The UkraineDAO 1000 ETH fundraising, which Vitalik strongly supports, has also exceeded 1255 ETH.

According to Nansen data, RELI3F NFT casting once raised Ethereum GAS fees by more than 1.3k gwei. It is understood that RELI3F is a humanitarian aid program initiated by the Web3 community, and the first collection series is to support the Ukrainian people. The official Twitter account stated that through the sale of NFT MINT, more than one million US dollars were raised for the Ukrainian people in 30 seconds.

A small episode during the process was that the Ukrainian official Twitter account deleted the donation address twice and then republished it, causing the crypto community led by Vitalik to question whether the account had been hacked. But then a large number of Ukrainian government officials confirmed the authenticity of the account, and Vitalik also said that he had confirmed the authenticity of the address. Vitalik also focused on supporting a DAO donation form that raised 1,000 ETH to buy the Ukrainian flag.

In contrast, the attitude of centralized institutions is more cautious, after all, they are worried about the risk of offending Russia and related countries. FTX was the first to announce an airdrop of $25 to each Ukrainian account; Crypto.com announced a donation of $1 million; Justin Sun announced a donation of $200,000 USDT; Slush Pool, one of the top ten Bitcoin mining pools, announced the launch of a computing power donation account, starting with 10BTC and 2.5P computing power.

As the situation became clearer, Binance announced the largest donation from a centralized organization in the early morning of February 28, totaling $10 million, and opened a channel for individual donations. Compared with other organizations, Binance made more detailed plans and introductions, showing the professionalism of its charity department.

Binance said it has donated $10 million to major intergovernmental organizations and local non-governmental organizations in response to the crisis to provide emergency relief to refugees and children to support services such as providing food, fuel and supplies to refugees.

Binance clearly introduced three key areas of support: 1. Protect children: As part of its ongoing cooperation with UNICEF, it is donating to protect the welfare of 7.5 million children in Ukraine. As the conflict escalates, so will the needs of children and their families. The funds will be used for medical supplies, safe drinking water, social security, and emergency education resources; 2. Support refugees: It is working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide emergency relief such as food, water, medical supplies, and strive to improve living conditions in temporary shelters. 3. Protect internally displaced persons. The International Rescue Committee reports that there are more than 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine. These people are at the greatest risk, so providing assistance domestically is also crucial.

In addition, due to the lack of cash in Ukraine, Bitcoin has also become a payment tool to a certain extent. According to Ekstra Bladet, two reporters from the Danish media in Ukraine said that since cash is a scarce commodity, car transactions have to be replaced by cryptocurrencies. They spent 0.059 Bitcoin to buy a Mazda 3 car.

Cryptocurrency payment has given hope since the birth of Bitcoin, but it has always been in an awkward situation. Even some applications related to the crypto industry do not support cryptocurrency payment. However, since last year, with El Salvador's support for Bitcoin as legal tender, the legal development of stablecoins, and the promotion of cryptocurrency payment by large companies such as Tesla, cryptocurrency payment has gradually begun to improve.

It is foreseeable that after the widespread dissemination of cryptocurrency donations and payments in the Russia-Ukraine incident, the transparency, convenience and active community atmosphere of cryptocurrency will play a significant positive role in the industry, and cryptocurrency as a means of payment will be more widely recognized and used. In the future, more friendly policies in various countries may appear, and even more Salvadores may appear.