The Ukraine Government Reaping the Benefits of Crypto

Yesterday, amid the ongoing invasion by Russian military forces, Ukraine's official Twitter account (@Ukraine) issued direct appeals for cryptocurrency donations.

Wallets have been shared for bitcoin as well as ether/USDT. The donation addresses were also shared by Ukraine’s vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov's verified Twitter account as well as in his verified Telegram channel. Initially, most people thought it was a hack as Buterin initially wrote "There have been a lot of hacks alongside this invasion, this could easily be a hack,".

"This info environment is as hostile as it gets, exercise extreme vigilance." But when contacted via the contact email on its website, The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation confirmed that these were true appeals.

In their own words “the communication channels of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and Minister Mykhailo Fedorov are secure. We are not hacked.

This is [the] official position and messages we want to share." This same appeal has also been shared by Ukrainian diplomat Olexander Scherba. Buterin has long taken back his message and deleted his tweet. Hence, we can confirm the veracity of those addresses.

Blockchain data shows that the shared BTC address has garnered a total of 9.78612041. Rumors also have it that roughly 85 ETH has been sent to a shared address yesterday.

Reports from Elliptic (blockchain analytics firm) indicate that $5.1 million worth of crypto has been donated in recent days across nearly 3,000 donations.

However, there have been concerns about scams. Fraudulent exchanges have been rumored to have been created for the sole purpose of defrauding unsuspecting donors of their coins.

We must be vigilant even while being generous and altruistic. I suggest we only use the confirmed addresses for donations and we must use new exchanges, we verify them using the RiseUp v2 app before donating coins.