As the devastating war continues in Ukraine, people around the world have started to contribute and support in ways that they can. To date, Ukraine has received over $50M in crypto donations and even received a CryptoPunk #5364 last week from an anonymous user. This donated CryptoPunk is extremely valuable; only 5% of CryptoPunks have the feature of a headscarf and is holding a cigarette (only 10% of CryptoPunks have cigarette features). It is speculated that the value of this NFT should exceed 68.9ETH. Ethereum coder Gavin Wood also promised to donate $5 million in $DOT tokens if Ukraine creates a new Polkadot wallet.
How is the Ukrainian government using these funds though? Most of the crypto received have been tracked as outgoing to Kuna, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Kyiv. Kuna founder Michael Chobanian even started a Twitter account to keep people up to date about how the donations are being used. In an interview with TechCrunch, Chobanian said that Kuna is acting as “the technical provider [for the Ukrainian Government]. Basically, [they] are acting as the crypto bank for these funds. [They] collect, make sure that the money is clean, then, depending on the requirements for payments and currencies, [they] either convert or pay directly” to vendors.