Donations of cryptocurrency have surged amid global efforts to help Ukraine. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic reports that $63 million through more than 120,000 donations have been donated via cryptocurrency. Most funds have gone to the Ukrainian government, with some also going to Come Back Alive Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Ukraine.
UkraineDAO auctioned a Nonfungible Token (NFT) of the Ukrainian flag for $6.5 million in Ethereum (ETH). It was the most expensive NFT ever sold, according to Elliptic.
Founded in 2014, Come Back Alive Foundation is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides support to the Ukrainian armed forces. The organization emphasizes on its website that it funds “purely defensive initiatives,” supplying more than 1,000 thermal scopes and 250 reconnaissance drones, and 1,500 tablets containing armor artillery calculation software.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s billion-dollar philanthropic pledge has contributed several million dollars in recent days to organizations aiding the humanitarian crisis after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Seven $1 million grants were added to the public spreadsheet at #StartSmall tracker on March 10, bringing his total pledges closer to a half-billion dollars in the past two years.
- World Central Kitchen
- Sunflower of Peace
- Razom for Ukraine
- Nova Ukraine
- Mercy Corps
- GlobalGiving
- CARE
Mercy Corps also received $5 million in September 2020 toward its COVID-19 Resilience Fund, focused on vulnerable people in Latin America by expanding emergency cash assistance and by conducting information campaigns on prevention and treatment.
Aling with being the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Dorsey is also founder and CEO of financial payments company Block, Inc. In April 2020, he announced that he had transferred $1 billion of shares in Square to Start Small, LLC, to fund his philanthropic efforts.
Gifts focused on pandemic relief when the fund was launched, including several $20-million grants. The fund eventually will shift focus to girls’ health education and universal basic income (UBI).
The public spreadsheet includes a running tab of the total disbursed, “total value created and total remaining (as of March 10):
- Total value created: $2,262,739,170.40
- Total disbursed: $464,946,311
- Total remaining: $1,797,792,859.40
Since the first awards in April 2020, Start Small, LLC has distributed some 284 grants. The average grant works out to about $1.637 million but donations have ranged from $6,000 to $20 million. There have been more than 100 gifts of at least $1 million and more than a dozen have been at least $10 million.
