The Ukrainian government announces that more than $60 million in cryptocurrency was raised within a week since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, revealed on Friday that the government has spent $15 million raised crypto donation on military supplies, including bulletproof vests, the purchased military gear was delivered on Friday.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the vice prime minister of Ukraine and the minister of digital transformation, tweeted that most of the donations were in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Now, he aims to double the funds raised to $100 million.
The Crypto Fund of Ukraine raised $50M in crypto in a week to support #Ukraine 👊🏻 An incredible unity before Putin's encroachment on freedom and democracy. Aiming for $100M this week. We WILL win! 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) March 4, 2022
The ministry has also received donations in Tether, Polkadot, Solana and memecoin Dogecoin. The government also received hundreds of NFTs, including a valuable CryptoPunk.
His ministry found suppliers in the U.S. and Europe for the army, including vests, food packages, bandages, and night vision devices, two days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
In addition, the deputy minister of digital transformation of Ukraine noted that about 40% of the suppliers are willing to accept cryptocurrency payments. The rest are paid with crypto converted into euros and dollars.
The ministry is also working with two companies to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) collection to raise additional funds, it could be ready in less than two weeks.
No one was ready to do military NFTs, the war just started eight days ago, they are still trying to figure out how to do this in terms of design – said Bornyakov.
The ministry has no plans to sell its donated CryptoPunk #5364, showing a person in a blue bandanna smoking a cigarette, or others of the hundreds of donated NFTs any time soon.
“Yes, someone donated us a CryptoPunk, but it’s so hard to sell, we haven’t used it at this point,” Bornyakov said. “We are going to keep it for now. We appreciate every support that people are trying to give. we are focused on things we can deal with right now. There’s no time to figure out how to convert them. Maybe once things settle down we’ll figure this out.”
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