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Ukrainian Government Receives Nearly $10M in Crypto Donations After Russian Invasion

The Ethereum wallet listed by the government has received almost $10 million in crypto so far.

Updated May 11, 2023, 6:00 p.m. Published Feb 26, 2022, 4:58 p.m.

The Ukrainian government is seeking donations in cryptocurrency as the country seeks to repel the invasion by Russia.

The Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets listed by the government on Twitter have already received around $9.4 million worth of crypto in total. The Ethereum wallet has received just over $5.2 million in donations as of 22:39 UTC. The Bitcoin wallet has received $4.2 million as of the same time, with some of the bitcoin having already been sent out.

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Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT.

BTC - 357a3So9CbsNfBBgFYACGvxxS6tMaDoa1P

ETH and USDT (ERC-20) - 0x165CD37b4C644C2921454429E7F9358d18A45e14
— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) February 26, 2022

Stand with the people of Ukraine
Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. Ethereum. Bitcoin and Tether (USDTtrc20)

BTC — 357a3So9CbsNfBBgFYACGvxxS6tMaDoa1P

ETH — 0x165CD37b4C644C2921454429E7F9358d18A45e14

USDT (trc20) — TEFccmfQ38cZS1DTZVhsxKVDckA8Y6VfCy
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 26, 2022

The official Twitter accounts of the Ukrainian government and Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov provided wallet addresses for donations of bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and the stablecoin tether (USDT).

Funds were initially trickling into the listed addresses over fears the Ukrainian government account had been hacked. While Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed doubt as to the veracity of the appeals, the tweets came from verified accounts. (Buterin later said the accounts were "legit" and he'd be deleting his warning.)

Representatives for the Ukrainian government weren't immediately available for comment and the country's official website appeared to be down.

When this article was first published, the wallets contained about $435,000 in crypto but just over an hour later, the Bitcoin wallet contained around $500,000 or 13 BTC, while the Ethereum wallet had around $3.6 million or 1,090 ETH in total. That may not be the total donated, however, as there are indications that some bitcoin has already been removed from the respective wallet.

This is not the first instance of using cryptocurrencies to aid Ukrainians in their battle against the Russian invasion. A digital wallet raising funds to support the Ukrainian army has received almost $6 million in bitcoin.

UPDATE (Feb. 28, 04:29 UTC): Updates the amount of total bitcoin and ethereum donations received to $9.4 million.

UPDATE (Feb. 26, 18:29 UTC): Updates the amount of total bitcoin and ethereum donations received to $3.6 million.

UPDATE (Feb. 26, 20:22 UTC): Second update on the amount of crypto donated.

UPDATE (Feb. 26, 22:44 UTC): Updates amount of crypto donated in headline and body of story.

Ukraine Donations

Kevin Reynolds

Kevin Reynolds is editor-in-chief at CoinDesk. Prior to joining the company in mid-2020, Reynolds spent 23 years at Bloomberg, where he won two CEO awards for moving the needle for the entire company and established himself as one of the world's leading experts in real-time financial news. In addition to having done almost every job in the newsroom, Reynolds built, scaled and ran products for every asset class, including First Word, a 250-person global news/analysis service for professional clients, as well as Bloomberg's Speed Desk and the training program that all Bloomberg News hires worldwide are required to take. He also turned around several other operations, including the company's flash headlines desk and was instrumental in the turnaround of Bloomberg's BGOV unit. He shares a patent for a content management system he helped design, is a Certified Scrum Master, and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He owns bitcoin, ether, polygon and solana.