Ukraine Receives Military Supplies via Crypto Donation

Cryptocurrencies undoubtedly came to the rescue when Ukraine called for donations through it as its territories were invaded by Russia almost late last month.

With more than $100 million donated so far, Ukraine’s deputy minister of Digital Transformation, Alex Bornyakov, has detailed how much has been spent out of the donated funds thus far.

Speaking to Bloomberg recently, Bornyakov said as much as $15 million he has used in buying bulletproof vests, 500 helmets and as many as 410,000 lunch packs for the Ukrainian army. Most of these supplies were delivered just past Friday. 

The total donations to the Ukrainian war effort came in the form of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT), Solana (SOL), and Dogecoin (DOGE). Besides these mainstream cryptocurrencies, a number of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have also been donated to the Ukrainian government, including a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

The report has it that some of the military supplies received by the Ukrainian government were paid for in digital currencies, another proof of how well cryptocurrencies can be utilized. However, the government has no plans to sell off the Bored Ape NFT in its wallet. The CryptoPunk #5364 NFT was last sold for 16.2 Ethers, worth over $43,000 in current prices. However, the Bored Ape collection now has a floor price of 97 ETH worth approximately $250,000 in current prices.

“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. What’s important is people’s awareness. They see what’s going on, and they are trying to help. We will work with NFTs a little bit later. 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.”

With more crypto funds flowing into the Ukrainian government wallet, digital currencies' decentralized and censorship-free nature was well pronounced throughout this war period.