Key Takeaways
- Round half of the greater than 50 crypto-donation campaigns for Ukraine had been flagged as “apparent scams.”
- The rip-off campaigns solely obtained a small portion of whole crypto funds, although.
- Greater than $135 million value of crypto has been raised in assist of Ukraine in an solely five-week interval.
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Round 50% of the crypto donation campaigns purporting to assist Ukraine’s efforts of withstanding Russian aggression are “apparent scams,” in line with a brand new report. Nonetheless, these scams solely accounted for a small portion of the cash raised because the invasion roughly started.
Crowdfunding Scams
These wishing to assist Ukrainian warfare efforts in opposition to the Russian invasion ought to be cautious to not fall for scams, in line with a brand new report.
Nonetheless, in line with a brand new report by the blockchain intelligence agency TRM Labs, round half of the greater than 50 crypto-donation campaigns analyzed had been “apparent scams” that didn’t ship the donations to fund humanitarian or army efforts as purported. Whereas considerably bleak, the authors famous that rip-off campaigns solely “accounted for a small proportion of general commerce quantity.” In different phrases, donators largely had a discerning eye for scams versus respectable crowdfunding efforts.
The report broke down campaigns by sort, as effectively. The forms of campaigns included non-government organizations, non-state actors however concerned (army or cyber), personal, for-profit campaigns, and official governmental or army campaigns. Non-government organizations had been the most typical, elevating $48 million from the 2 crypto majors, Bitcoin and Ethereum, alone, although they represented round half of the roughly 50 campaigns analyzed, whereas official authorities or army campaigns, which solely accounted for a small portion of the campaigns, accounted for greater than $50 million raised.
Ukraine’s protection efforts have more and more been supported by crypto donations, even previous the Russian invasion, totaling over $135.7 million value from between Feb. 22 and Mar. 28.
33 totally different crypto property had been utilized throughout the over 50 campaigns that TRM scrutinized.
The authors opined that nameless or semi-anonymous actors in crypto, inherent to the expertise’s “decentralized nature,” create uncertainty which may partly clarify the handfuls of rip-off donation campaigns.
The Ukrainian authorities’s official donation website might be discovered here.
Disclosure: On the time of writing, the creator of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and a number of other different cryptocurrencies.
