Ukraine holds crypto airdrop

Ukraine will hold an airdrop on Twitter to donors that have contributed funds to its official crypto addresses, the country announced today, CoinDesk reported.

Ukraine started accepting cryptocurrencies as donation on February 26 as Russian troops invaded its territory in what Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling a “special military operation,” prompting a series of memes about declaring World Military Operation II in 1939.

What is an airdrop?

An airdrop is where a project gives its community free tokens with the purpose of encouraging adoption. El Salvador held an airdrop of Bitcoin (BTC/USD) in 2021. Ukraine’s airdrop tomorrow will be the first one by a nation for crypto donations made.

Ukraine’s official Twitter account posted:

Airdrop confirmed. Snapshot will be taken tomorrow, on March 3rd, at 6 pm Kyiv time (UTC/GMT +2 hours). Reward to follow! The people of Ukraine fighting for our freedom are forever grateful to Gavin Wood for the generous donation of $5M of $DOT as promised publicly. Thank you from all of us here in Ukraine working for a peaceful future.

Since announcing it was accepting donations in Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH/USD), USDT, and Polkadot (DOT/USD), Ukraine has received some $33 million in crypto donations.

Ukraine receives CryptoPunk NFT worth $200K

In related news, Ukraine’s ETH wallet received CryptoPunk #5364 on Tuesday, adding a potentially sought-after and lucrative cap to the promising donation campaign. According to crypto tracing firm Elliptic, it’s worth around $200,000.

The NFT was last sold for $31,300. The donor’s wallet address shows they have a collection of Punks. The valuable donation was the icing on the cake: on Tuesday alone, Ukraine accumulated over $10 million, the biggest amount since the country started asking for donations.

Almost a third of funds spent on military equipment, food, gas

Ukrainian Michael Chobanian, who founded crypto exchange Kuna, is helping the Ministry of Digital Transformation disburse the donated funds.

He shared at least $14 million of the funds donated had been spent on military equipment, food, and gas, adding that the majority of spending was in crypto. Kuna operates the wallets used by the Ukrainian government.  

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