After an appeal from the Ukraine government, several crypto industry platforms, including Binance, have come out to help the country in the war against Russia.
Binance, a global cryptocurrency exchange, on Sunday announced a $10 million donation to help the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. This is by far the largest amount donated by the crypto industry. Previously, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, said it included ground logistics, food, fuel, supplies, refugees, places to stay, visas, and more.
Binance has also opened a donation channel. Binance's solutions comprise three initiatives: Protect the Children, Support Refugees and Protect the IDP. Find more details here: https://t.co/VjoOIanhxO
Notably, Ukrainian government officials urged the world to donate in cryptocurrencies on February 26. Following that, the Ukrainian government and NGOs providing support to the military have raised $17.2 million, as at 10:42 pm IST, through thousands of cryptocurrency donations since the start of the invasion, according to elliptic.co, a data collector platform.
"Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT. BTC - 357a3So9CbsNfBBgFYACGvxxS6tMaDoa1P ETH and USDT (ERC-20) - 0x165CD37b4C644C2921454429E7F9358d18A45e14," said a tweet from the official Twitter account of Ukraine.
Earlier, FTX, a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it will give $25 to each Ukrainian on their platform. The head of decentralized platform TRON DAO, Justin Sun, has donated $200,000.
Not only this, popular meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE) has extended an offer to Ukraine. "The #dogecoin community can help. Pls convert from $DOGE and send. And #dogearmy - signal boost. @Ukraine," DOGE's official Twitter account tweeted.
DOGE supporter Elon Musk on Saturday said that his company SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband service had been activated in Ukraine, after a Kyiv official urged the tech titan to provide his embattled country with stations.
"Starlink service is now active in Ukraine," Musk tweeted, adding "more terminals en route."
In the meantime, Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, tweeted, "I'm asking all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users. It's crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users."
After Fedorov's appeal, DMarket, a platform for trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and in-game metaverse items, froze the accounts of users from the Russian Federation and Belarus. "Funds from these accounts could be donated to the war effort. Nowadays Robin Hoods. Bravo,” Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine tweeted.
"Ukrainian-born startup DMarket cuts all relationships with Russia and Belarus due to the invasion of Ukraine," DMarket tweeted.