Russia vs Ukraine: A new way for crypto scammers to benefit.

We might just be witnessing the early stages of World War 3. In the last few weeks, relations between Russia and Ukraine have escalated beyond anyone’s imagination.

This has resulted in an all-out assault on Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and the Russian military forces. As of today, Chernobyl has been captured by the Russian military forces. But what does this mean for the crypto ecosystem you might ask. In recent months, Russia and Ukraine are two economies that have led the way in embracing cryptocurrency as a new form of money.

To put this in perspective, there have been over $400,000 in cryptocurrency donations raised by a Kyiv IT professional alone to support the Ukrainian army. There have also been efforts from cryptocurrency activists in the West to create crypto platforms to enable crypto donations in support of the Ukrainian people. As Tom Robinson (chief scientist and co-founder at the crypto analytics firm Elliptic) rightly put it, “Because there is no central controller who can impose their morals on its user, crypto can be used to crowdfund for the Ukrainian army or help Russia evade sanctions,”.

Crowdfunding the Ukrainian military is a wonderful idea; however, I can’t help but worry about crowdfunding scams or fraudulent crypto platforms which are created for the sole purpose of defrauding altruistic crowdfunders. To reduce the risk of falling victim to one of such scams I would like to suggest that anyone with a plan to donate to the Ukrainian people via crypto exchanges should leverage on crypto platform/exchange verification application RiseUp V2 to verify the authenticity of that crypto exchange.