![]() Your everyday crypto enthusiast is rarely an expert in international relations or humanitarian aid. To unilaterally decide to ban people’s access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists.” US exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken have stated they wouldn’t comply with Ukrainian requests to cut Russians off from their crypto wallets unless they were legally compelled to do so by the US government.Įxamples from around the world suggest that donating crypto to governments can have unexpected consequences. ![]() Cayman Islands–based exchange Binance has justified its stance, stating, “Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe. But the ideological underpinnings of crypto become clearer with recent refusals by major exchanges to freeze Russian accounts. Anarchic CapitalismĪs for Bitcoin, it is usually associated with a right-wing anti-statist brand of libertarianism - which might make it seem odd to support one government by donating cryptocurrencies that are purposefully designed to subvert governments in general. They changed their minds after upsetting Justin Sun, crypto’s Houdini of tax evasion and owner of blockchain project TRON. The Ukrainian government considered an official NFT project and token “ airdrop” reward program of their own. Shevchenko urged owners to keep hold of their LOVE tokens as a “reminder of our world’s ongoing humanitarian needs.” Doing so would also keep the token price high. The project aims to issue buyers with shares in the DAO called “LOVE tokens.” Shareholders will be able to vote on future sales of the project’s NFTs. It has since received over $1.3 million worth of cryptocurrency from adult content sharing platform OnlyFans. UkraineDAO’s founder, Alona Shevchenko, received a celebrity endorsement from Nadya Tolokonnikova, member of the Russian activist group and feminist punk band Pussy Riot. The project was launched as a distributed autonomous organization, or DAO, a kind of automated company administered as a computer program on Ethereum, the rival network to Bitcoin. A group called UkraineDAO has raised nearly $7 million for the war effort by auctioning NFTs of Ukraine’s flag. Popular non-fungible token (NFT) projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club have also donated $2 million worth of Ether. ![]() The California-based exchange Kraken announced that it would distribute $10 million to Ukrainians opening new Kraken accounts. Crypto exchanges around the world have also been quick to benefit from the conflict, using it to onboard thousands of Russian punters in financial pickles and desperate Ukrainians seeking refuge elsewhere. So far, $108 million worth of crypto has been donated to the Ukrainian government. It’s no wonder that within hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, requests for international donations meant crypto. Even after the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych - widely accused of electoral fraud and corruption - trust in Ukraine’s financial systems didn’t improve. The value of daily cryptocurrency transactions totaled $150 million, exceeding the volume of interbank exchanges. Until a few weeks ago, roughly $8 billion worth of Bitcoin entered and exited the country annually. Despite the boom in crypto markets globally, Ukrainians remained some of the most avid cryptocurrency users. Nearly half of all the world’s Bitcoins were made here. At the height of the Euromaidan protests in 2014, “mining” Bitcoin was so prolific that Ukrainian miners nearly brought down the whole global network. For the many crypto-cult followers of the book, war is an opportunity - providing “validation of their increasingly radical beliefs.”īelief in Bitcoin is not a new thing for Ukraine. Writing in the 1990s, the authors specialized in profiting from a world gone mad - and made impressive predictions on the rise of cryptocurrencies. The book’s authors argue that out of the wreckage of war will emerge a “cognitive elite” rising to power as a class of sovereign individuals, no longer subject to the power of sovereign states. Inspiration for their nightmare utopia comes from an obscure libertarian manifesto, The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State. For them, war in Ukraine brings hope that their planning was worthwhile. They’ve been busy acquiring land on remote islands and building subterranean Jerusalems all powered by Bitcoin. Influential Silicon Valley venture capitalists like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Tim Draper have all given careful thought to the importance of crypto for when the shit hits the fan. Die-hard fans of cryptocurrencies have an impressive knack for turning nightmares on their head.
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