Official Ukrainian BTC wallet has $2M and is growing thanks to global donations | Hacker News Reader

Official Ukrainian BTC wallet has $2M and is growing thanks to global donations

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Their ETH address has nearly $5M.

https://www.blockchain.com/eth/address/0x165CD37b4C644C29214...

It has $5M in ether alone, plus over $1M in USD stablecoins.

Official tweet: https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1497594592438497282

Good luck trying to spend it on anything meaningful. Assuming it’s not impersonation in the first place.

Don't you think some fuel tankers in Poland would be happy to take that money (with permission and insurance from the government)? A tanker can carry about 8000 gallons, so that's maybe $32,000 per tanker. The driver might have to be a brave Ukrainian though, if Russia isn't worried about attacking civilian targets.

It still could be impersonation but a couple different people have confirmed it's real:

- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-26/ukraine-s...

- https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/149760858882246656...

You think it's hard to sell $2M BTC for fiat? I think they could find a trading desk at a bank to take it for reasonable fees.

Five years ago you would have been right. Today, many corporations in neighboring countries will gladly accept a million dollars in bitcoin as payment.

I don’t know what delusional dream world you live in, but back in the real world cash exchangers in Kyiv have been processing bigger amounts on a daily basis.

Just a few months ago I was able to get 100k USD in cash a couple of hours after contacting a local exchanger. Fee was around 1%.

Of course they can also sell at any regular international exchange.

Well if they didn't close down all the anonymous BTC marketplaces they would have been able to turn they cryptomoney into defense like weapons and LSD.

Is crypto currency useful to them right now? Like, are they able to use it and spend it on things they need?

If not, and they come out of this surviving maybe they can use it for reconstruction?

conversely if russia flips the regime what happens to the money?

Yes, it’s very easy to spend cryptocurrency.

> Yes, it’s very easy to spend cryptocurrency.

Only once you convert into regular currency.

Which is trivial.

If you’re paying someone millions, the recipient can also take care of this.

They're sending some to themselves for optics, I guarantee it.

Is it possible to send them my NFTs to boost morality? I would love to lend it out. I hope Opensea implements a feature like that in time so our NFTs can fight on our side.

“Thank god someone sent this picture of a penguin. Now I have the will to repel the invaders”

Is this parody or sincere? You want to lend a receipt for a monkey picture? What does that even mean, why would you want that, and why would they want that?

It is already happening:

https://mobile.twitter.com/SilvermanJacob/status/14977824579...

I am torn between upvoting you for the timeliness of your observation, and downvoting what you observed so that I can remove it from my conception of what is going on, as a coping strategy in this, the worst of all timelines.

Clearly I'm living in a different reality from those folks...

The owner could have exchanged it for crypto first before sending it, but maybe a buyer in the future pays more for the NFT now that it was used to support Ukraine. So it might result in them getting more money than they would have otherwise. The jury is still out on this.

A donation I understand, if you think the NFT has value. The OP seemed to think the magic of NFTs meant they could somehow lend their NFT to Ukraine for a bit.

Why on earth do people think donating money for a war would help? The interest of powerful people and companies created this war because they profit from it. They used your taxes to make sure both sides have weapon so a war can happen and now people are naive enough to donate even more money so the war can go on for longer?

Your donation will be used to finance destruction and death at worst and at best some random person with access to it will run away with it. And I would not even blame someone for doing that. I would chose a few BTC as a kick start for a new life somewhere else over laying dead in the street too.

> The interest of powerful people and companies created this war because they profit from it.

Russia started this war and the brave people of Ukraine are fighting back with our help. Please don't spread lies to further your political agenda.

Ukraine would not exist today and/or if it would exist would not have anything to fight back if it wasn't given to them by the rest of the world. AKA there would be no war. Would that mean they "lost" yes obviously, that is the reality. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. This is not propaganda I dont pick sides. If you think a pointless war is better, well fine you are doing the propaganda for the warmongers out there then.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine is a free democrat country all people participating in this war are either brainwashed or forced to fight and die for people (dictators) who do not represent western values and have no respect for human lives.

Ukraine is not a dictatorship, their most recent election was widely recognized as fair by international observers.

By western standards they are both pretty similar and far from what we would call a democracy. They (both) support terrorist put journalist in jail or let them disappear. If you wanna pick a side fine I dont care but no matter which side you pick its not the moral high ground you probably think it is.

You expect perfection on day one of a democracy? High standards for someone that doesn't believe in fighting for a cause.

No I dont. And you are deflecting and make up things I didn't say.

Also if you want to fight for a cause go there do it I'd respect that. What I dont respect is people giving money for something thy absolutely would not fight for.

> No I dont. And you are deflecting and make up things I didn't say.

I'm not deflecting at all. You are posting lie after lie.

> Also if you want to fight for a cause go there do it I'd respect that. What I dont respect is people giving money for something thy absolutely would not fight for.

You don't respect people that fight for their lands but you respect uninvolved parties joining in? Why don't you go there yourself and convince them you are right instead of posting on HN?

Wont further reply you obviously intentional twist everything I said to the opposite. Have a nice day.

Good.

And from their perspective you are brainwashed and a liar. Or as one woman put it:

https://youtu.be/7-1uPRur6kw?t=29

I just watches a bit and dont see what point from me this even targets.

I never said anything about who has the right to own which land or anything the like. The woman is correct but how do you help her by donating for war? You dont. The more money people put into this war the more endangered this woman is.

As I said above this is not about picking sides its about stopping to financially support wars. The vast majority of the people in Russian and Ukraine are against this war.

By default you support the aggressor. You want Ukraine to surrender. This woman has an opinion on your opinions.

> The vast majority of the people in Russian and Ukraine are against this war.

You are being dishonest as you well know. Ukrainians are against the war Russia has started but they support the war effort as it defends their lands.

I am AGAINST this war. Quote that "support the aggressor" part if you can find that anywhere. You can't because I never did support either side.

You want Ukraine to surrender. You support Russia.

Where did I say that? I didn't. Anything else?

You could have replaced your two paragraphs with two words, "Ukraine, surrender".

However I disagree. To broad-brush it, I think Ukraine's war is a just war (as in morally justified).

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