Ukraine

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Within hours, the Ukrainian government posted its Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT wallet addresses on Twitter and asked for donations.

The response was immediate and significant. Within the first week, over $50 million in cryptocurrency donations had arrived. By the end of the first month, that number exceeded $100 million. The donations came from individuals around the world who wanted to help but either couldn’t navigate traditional donation channels quickly enough or wanted to avoid the fees and delays of international wire transfers.

The donations were used to purchase military equipment, medical supplies, food, and communications technology. The Ukrainian government converted crypto to local currency and dollars as needed. The transparency of the blockchain allowed donors to verify that funds were being received and moved.

Bitcoin also provided individual Ukrainians with a way to preserve savings during the conflict. People who had converted hryvnias to Bitcoin before the invasion found their savings accessible anywhere — on a phone, reconstructed from a memorised seed phrase, sent across borders without bank transfer restrictions.

The wartime use case for Bitcoin is among the most human. When infrastructure collapses, when banking systems become unreliable, when borders close — a form of money that exists on a global network, accessible from anywhere with internet, becomes genuinely important rather than theoretically interesting.

Tomorrow: the unbanked — 1.4 billion people and what Bitcoin means for them.

— The Daily Bit