Every bitcoin helps: why Ukraine is soliciting for cryptocurrency donations
He would bristle at the term but you might describe Dylan Schultz as a crypto bro. He runs Lavender.Five, a crypto validator service that authenticates transactions on the blockchain (imagine a deregulated branch of the Securities and Exchange Commission).
On 25 February, he issued a plea to his 1,700 Twitter followers, “We’ll match any donation made to a charity in support of Ukraine, up to a total of $1,000.” The next day, Schultz posted the fruits of his initiative; 0.028 bitcoin, equaling the total donations of about $1,100, sent to a crypto wallet operated by a Ukrainian military NGO called Come Back Alive. He’s one tiny part of a chorus of countless other crypto holders all over the world who’ve raced to back Ukrainians in the face of an invading force. Reports claim that more than $30m in cryptocurrency has been funneled to the country since the war began. So has charity finally become decentralized?
“I decided early on that Lavender.Five would use its platform to make a positive difference, no matter how small,” says Schultz. “Crypto is inherently worldwide. To donate using traditional currency often requires intermediaries. You can’t donate USD directly, you first need to convert it in some way, or find an intermediary. … Cryptocurrency solves this by simplifying the process. If you have the address for the charity, you can simply enter the address, enter the amount to donate, and hit send.”
Ukraine, like many former Soviet states, has battled corruption and a severe dearth of international funding since gaining independence in 1991. So maybe that is why the Ukrainian government took the unusual step of tweeting out crypto wallet codes for global financing through both bitcoin and Ethereum – the two most popular
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