Inside Ukraine’s Crypto Donation Campaign

How Ukraine managed to pull off an unprecedented crypto donation campaign in a time of war.

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ABOUT

The Ukrainian government kicked off an impressive crypto donation campaign, receiving over $50 million in cryptocurrency contributions in just a few weeks.

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Kim Bazak of blockchain PR and marketing firm Market Across has an inside perspective on the campaign. Bazak joins “Opinionated” hosts Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson to explain the story of how Market Across worked with the Ukrainian government to organize some of the first and largest crypto donations, including Polkadot founder Gavin Wood’s $5 million contribution.

The donation campaign has spotlighted the power of borderless money. Ukraine continues to support the proliferation of crypto assets in the country with the decision to make Ukrainian cryptocurrency exchanges as legal as banks. How will crypto continue to develop in Ukraine?

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This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is by Elision.

HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Benjamin Schiller

Benjamin Schiller is CoinDesk's managing editor for features and opinion. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at BREAKER Magazine and a staff writer at Fast Company. He holds some ETH, BTC and LINK.

Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

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