A screenshot of Crypto Punk #5364 (OpenSea)
One of the very few positives to come out of Russia’s terrible invasion of Ukraine is the way the cryptocurrency world has banded together to help the Ukranian people, proving that, unlike traditional banking, crypto does indeed have no restrictions from borders, policies or legislation and can move freely without trouble.
CryptoPunk #5364 was transferred to Ukraine’s Ethereum wallet on Tuesday, adding a potentially lucrative and sought-after cap to a donation campaign that’s already amassed over $33 million in cryptocurrencies.
Estimates of the Punk’s value vary: Tom Robinson of crypto tracing firm Elliptic notched it around $200,000 when he flagged the donation late Tuesday; DeepNFTvalue, a blog that uses machine learning to estimate prices for rare NFTs, placed it at $233,000.
The punk fetched a sales price of $31,300 in February 2021, the last time it was sold. The donor has a collection of several other Punks, according to their wallet address.
It landed amid a banner streak for Ukraine’s fast-accelerating crypto campaign: over $10 million raised in ETH, DOT, USDT, BTC and other crypto tokens on Tuesday alone, the single-largest day since Ukraine began asking for donations on Feb 26.
Earlier Tuesday, Michael Chobanian, a Ukrainian crypto exchange founder who is helping the Ministry of Digital Transformation handle donations, told CoinDesk TV that at least $14 million of donated crypto had already been spent on military hardware and supplies for civilians, including food and gas.
“The majority of spending is actually done in crypto,” he said at the time. He previously told CoinDesk that Kuna, his exchange, operates the wallets used by the Ukrainian government.
Chobanian did not immediately respond to CoinDesk when asked via Telegram what would be done with the Punk.
Russia invaded Ukraine last week, prompting the smaller European nation to solicit aid in the form of both weapons and funding to support its effort to repel its neighbor.
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