In this conflict between Russia and Ukraine, U.S. stocks and cryptocurrency prices have not collapsed as feared, but instead cryptocurrencies have become an important flashpoint as a means of donation and payment.

Ukraine, where the war is taking place, has one of the highest rates of cryptocurrency adoption in the world. According to Brookerchooser’s 2021 survey, Ukraine has more than 5.5 million citizens owning cryptocurrencies, equivalent to more than 12.7% of its 44 million population. Ukraine, Russia and Venezuela are the three countries with the highest cryptocurrency adoption rates and the most active retail investors, according to a report by Chainalysis.

The Ukrainian government announced the official donation channel for BTC, ETH and USDT on February 26th. SlowMist released Ukrainian crypto donation statistics, and as of the early morning, 28th February (UTC+8), more than $20 million has been donated to Ukraine (from individual communities rather than centralized institutions). UkraineDAO 1,000 ETH, which Vitalik is focused on supporting, has also raised more than 1,255 ETH.

According to Nansen data, RELI3F NFT minting at one point pulled up the Ether GAS fee by more than 1.3k gwei. RELI3F is a humanitarian aid project initiated by the Web3 community, and the first collection is to support Ukrainians. NFT’s sale raised more than $1 million in 30 seconds for Ukrainians, according to the official tweet.

A hiccup midway through the process was that the official Ukrainian Twitter account was deleted twice in a row and reposted with the donation address, leading the crypto community, led by Vitalik, to question whether it had been stolen by hackers. Vitalik also highlighted its support for a DAO donation that raised 1,000 ETH to purchase the Ukrainian flag.

Centralized institutions, by contrast, are more cautious, wary of offending Russia and other countries after all. FTX first announced an airdrop of $25 per Ukrainian account; Crypto.com announces $1 million donation; Sun Yuchen announced a $200,000 donation; Slush Pool, one of the top 10 bitcoin mining pools, has announced the launch of a hashrate donation account, starting with 10 BTC and 2.5 PH/s.

After the situation became clear, in the early hours of February 28th Binance announced the largest donation from a centralized institution, totaling $10 million, while opening a channel for individual donations. Compared with other institutions, Binance made a more detailed planning and presentation, showing the professionalism of its charity sector.

In response to the crisis, $10 million was donated to major intergovernmental organizations and local NGOs to provide emergency relief to refugees and children to support services such as food, fuel and supplies for refugees, Binance said.

Binance identified three key areas of support: 1. Protection of children: As part of the ongoing collaboration with UNICEF, donations are being made to protect the welfare of 7.5 million children in Ukraine. As the conflict escalates, so do the needs of children and their families. These funds will be used for medical supplies, safe drinking water, social security and emergency educational resources; 2. Support for refugees: Ongoing collaboration with UNHCR to provide emergency relief such as food, water, medical supplies and and efforts to improve living conditions in temporary shelters. 3. Protection of internally displaced persons: The International Rescue Committee reports that there are more than 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine. These are the people who are most at risk, so providing assistance at home is also vital.

Additionally, due to the lack of cash in Ukraine, Bitcoin has become somewhat of a payment tool. According to Ekstra Bladet, two journalists from the Danish outlet in Ukraine said they paid 0.059 bitcoin for a Mazda 3 car because cash is such a scarce commodity that car transactions have to be replaced with cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency payment has given hope since the birth of Bitcoin, but have been in a rather awkward situation, even with some crypto industry-related applications that do not support cryptocurrency payments. However, since last year, with El Salvador supporting Bitcoin as a fiat currency, the development of compliance of stable-coins and the promotion of cryptocurrency payments by large enterprises such as Tesla, cryptocurrency payments gradually began to take off.

It is foreseeable that after the widespread spread of cryptocurrency donation and payment in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the transparency, convenience and active community atmosphere of cryptocurrency will play a positive role in the industry, and cryptocurrency will be more widely recognized and applied as a means of payment. More friendly policies of countries and perhaps even more El Salvador may appear in the future.

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