This week in crypto. Crypto initiatives to help Ukraine, charity NFTs and more...
Crypto initiatives to help Ukraine
Dear friends,
first of all, please excuse us for missing last week’s newsletter.
The person who assures D.Center’s editorial part – me, Marie – is Ukrainian and the heinous war that Russia started on my homeland has impacted me profoundly.
After the first shock, however, it is time to take action. For me, as for many other people outside Ukraine who condemn this aggression, it means figuring out how we can help. It turns out that crypto can be a great tool, so I decided to dedicate this newsletter to the numerous ways it can be leveraged to help Ukrainian people in this tragic times.
Ukraine’s official crypto wallets
Ukraine is a crypto-friendly nation, and it has a clear legal framework regulating the crypto industry, which surely helps when it comes to donations.
In one of our earlier newsletters we wrote about Come Back Alive, an NGO providing military equipment and medical supplies for the Ukrainian Army, which has a Bitcoin wallet.
When the war started, this initiative has been echoed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation in the person of Mykhailo Fedorov (also serving as Vice Prime Minister). Helped by the local crypto exchange Kuna, he registered several crypto addresses that accept donations to help country withstand the war.
He published them on his Twitter account @FedorovMykhailo:
Crypto community reacted enthusiastically, and more donation addresses for Solana, Polkadot (its creator Gavin Wood personally donated over $5M) and even Dogecoin followed:
Link to the tweet (@Ukraine is the country’s official touristic account which in the beginning was also publishing crypto addresses)
With official crypto wallets revealed, it has become easy for any other crypto player to launch their own initiatives, asking their users to help:
Decentralized exchange Uniswap created an easy interface allowing to donate to Ukraine.
Centralized crypto lender Nexo pledged to match 100% of customer donations to the official Ukraine’s addresses, and 200% of employee donations and seeded the campaign with an initial contribution of $100k.
Some industry players chose other means of donating:
Binance exchange committed $10M via its Charity Foundation and has set up an Emergency Relief Fund on its platform, allowing its users to donate to a number of humanitarian organizations helping support displaced children and families in Ukraine and its neighbouring countries ($6M were already seeded in by Binance).
Crypto derivatives exchange FTX decided to give $25 directly to every Ukrainian user on its platform.
DAOs for good
DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, is a great way for people to bring together their efforts and their reputation: DAO’s funds are managed collectively. Ukraine is home to a burgeoning IT industry and many talented developers, and it is not surprising that a number of industry-vetted DAOs have appeared to raise funds for Ukraine.
Ukraine DAO : organized by PleasrDAO (famous notably for buying Snowden’s signature NFT), NFT creator Trippy Labs and Russian protest art group Pussy Riot together with Ukrainian activists, Ukraine DAO auctioned off a simple NFT of the Ukrainian flag for an impressive amount of 2’258 ETH ($6.75M). The funds were sent to Come Back Alive and Ukrainian government crypto adresses.
Unchain : a charity DAO created by a group of well-known blockchain actors (engaged in NEAR, Atlantis World, Harmony DAO, zkSync…) who manage it via multisig addresses on numerous networks (Bitcoin, Ethereum, BSC, Near, Polygon, Avalanche, Celo, Terra…). Donations go to a number of non-lethal humanitarian efforts, including medical help, evacuation support, helping the refugees.
Aid for Ukraine: together with the government of Ukraine and Ukraine-based staking platform Everstake, Solana ecosystem members have set up a DAO using the nation.io tool. DAO’s address ukraine.sol accepts SOL and SPL token, as well as NFTs that will be sold. Aid for Ukraine DAO partners with FTX to convert some of the funds into fiat when needed. DAO’s multisig wallet includes 2 representatives from the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation, 3 representatives from Everstake, and 1 representative from Distributed Lab. The funds go to the government’s official crypto/fiat accounts.
Crypto donations pour in
The response of the crypto community to the horrors of the war has been impressive. According to the crypto analytics firm Elliptic, the official crypto addresses of the government and Come Back Alive have received almost $60M so far.
Most donations were made in ETH and BTC, but a number of smaller cap cryptocurrencies have also been used. Someone even sent a $200k-worth Cryptopunk.
Crypto is a great tool for donations: fast, cross-border, transparent. However, war in Ukraine showed not only the ways crypto can be leveraged, but also the incredible solidarity and resolve of the crypto community.
This is particularly hart-warming in these tough times, I thank you all people from the bottom of my heart. If you want to donate to Ukraine, please be sure to double check that the addresses are legit (use the links to official Twitter accounts/websites).
NFTs and Metaverse
The NFT community did not stay aside from the Ukrainian suffering, and many charity projects have popped up. They were undoubtedly helped by the fact that Ukraine has official crypto addresses, which are easy to code into NFTs’ smart contract, ensuring that the funds go directly to the country and not into fraudsters’ pockets.
👉Ethereum-based NFTs (proceeds to go the official Ukrainian government’s address):
Soul of Ukraine is a beautiful project featuring 5000 Ukrainian dolls in traditional costumes, priced at 0.03ETH.
The Holy Water initiative gathered Ukrainian artists who created 80 unique artworks, made into 120 NFT editions each, priced at 0.08ETH.
Art Under Artillery is a collection of pictures drawn by Ukrainian children in bomb shelters; minimal bid 0.03ETH.
A Russian national Olive Allen, who felt ashamed at what putin’s Russia did to Ukraine, has created an NFT of her burning passport, auctioned off at SuperRare, with the proceeds going to humanitarian aid.
The FLUF World, a famous NFT project, has created a special “Fuck the war” background that users could mint for their Flufs, raising over $400k that will be used to the provision of essential humanitarian aid.
👉Solana-based NFTs (proceeds to go the official Ukrainian government’s address):
SolAID UKR: launched by Solana Secret Society NFT platform and SolSea NFT marketplace, the project allows to mint 10’000 3D Ukrainian flags for 0.34 SOL
Underground Royalty Society: the digital art collective presented 23 NFT artworks with the proceeds going to ukraine.sol address.
Markets
Bitcoin
This week has been a rollercoaster for Bitcoin price. Rising 21% in the beginning of the week, it then plummeted to $38k, erasing most of the gain.
The markets are oscillating between risk-off attitude taking over the world in the wake of after-Covid inflation, Fed and ECB interest rates hikes, consequences of the Ukrainian war… and the increasing understanding that crypto may be the very tool that could help secure ownership in these uncertain times. Russians cut off from SWIFT, as well as Ukrainians facing numerous credit card failures can witness to that.
Long-time crypto skeptics like the Citadel’s CEO Ken Griffin now admit they were wrong underestimating its role, and the amount of BTC held in funds has hit an all-time high, as did the amount of BTC in small (0.1-1BTC) retail accounts.
Ethereum
Ethereum price essentially followed Bitcoin’s, but surprisingly with a smaller amplitude, ending the week at around $2’500.
Quote of the week
#standwithukraine