Dogecoin, other cryptocurrencies accepted for donations

Ukraine has expanded the number of cryptocurrencies it is accepting for donations toward its military as Russia’s invasion continues.

On Wednesday, Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine, said people can send dogecoin as a donation. Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency which originally started off as a joke and has been talked up by Tesla founder Elon Musk.

It is often dubbed a “memecoin,” referring to popular internet jokes.

“Now even meme can support our army and save lives from Russian invaders,” Fedorov tweeted.

On Tuesday, Fedorov tweeted about a project called Aid For Ukraine. It is a collaboration between the Ukrainian government, Everstake and a cryptocurrency blockchain platform called Solana.

People can now donate solana cryptocurrency as well as any other digital tokens based upon Solana.

Ukraine is also accepting non-fungible tokens or NFTs as donations too. These are unique assets such as a piece of digital art stored using blockchain technology to verify and track each NFT.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap has built a function that allows people to convert any Ethereum-based digital currencies into ether and send it to the Ukrainian government. Ethereum is a blockchain platform that developers can build apps on top of.

Fedorov also said that Gavin Wood, the co-founder of a blockchain platform called Polkadot, sent $5 million worth of the DOT cryptocurrency to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government has raised $35 million, through more than 35,000 cryptoasset donations since the start of the Russian invasion, according to Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company.

On Feb. 26, Ukraine began accepting cryptocurrencies for donations and began with bitcoin, ether and a stablecoin called tether. Stablecoins are digital currencies tied to real-world assets such as fiat currency.

Now Ukraine is stepping up the number of cryptocurrencies that it will accept for donations. It comes as military experts expect Russia’s attacks to increase in ferocity and destructiveness.

While cryptocurrency donations are adding some money to Ukraine’s resistance effort, the country has raised more via war bonds, which have brought in about 8.14 billion Ukrainian hryvnia ($270 million).

On Wednesday, an official Ukraine government account tweeted that an “airdrop” is confirmed and would take place on Thursday. An airdrop is usually when an individual or entity gives away cryptocurrency for free. But details were scarce and it’s unclear what digital currency would be given away and to whom.

Cryptocurrencies have become a prominent feature of the war between Russia and Ukraine. There has been speculation that Russians could use cryptocurrencies to get their money out of the country to evade sanctions, though experts said this could be extremely difficult.

Last week, Fedorov called on major cryptocurrency exchanges to block the accounts of Russian users. Binance, the world’s biggest exchange, said it would block addresses of any users that had been sanctioned, but not accounts of all Russians.