Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donates to the covid-19 relief fund for India. He contributed approximately Rs. 4.5 crore (100 ETH, 100 MKR) for COVID-19 relief in India.
Vitalik Buterin and cryptocurrency legend Balaji Srinivasan are pitching into a fund setup. Co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal tweeted saying: “Can’t take this sitting down anymore, I am going to run a Covid relief campaign in lieu of what’s going on in India. Need help from the Global crypto community. I will take full responsibility for transparency, funds usage, and regulatory compliance If you want to donate.”
Nailwal then set up a Google form for would-be donors and asked for help from some of India’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges and institutions such as WazirX, CoinDCX, and Bitbns to convert the donations into fiat.
Nailwal revealed he’d found resistance from people who wanted to donate but couldn’t because of regulatory friction. He later revealed he’d received support from one of India’s top chartered accountants, who had agreed to take care of the regulations and audits for the campaign.
Giving the scale and scope of the tragedy that coronavirus is causing in India, many relief efforts have sprung into action. Many individuals are giving their time, helping people, companies donating money for oxygen and other emergency supplies. Many people are coming across to support India. From one of those, Burterin donation should help encourage the global cryptocurrency community to make a difference here.
On his Twitter account, the technology founder posted a pair of a link to Etherscan. An Independent platform for sharing blockchain data built for Ethereum showed transactions of 100 MKR and 100 ETH. The Market value of both is over $ 600,000 or over Rs. 4.5 Crores.
In the Tweet, Buterin thanked India tech founder Sandeep Nailwal for organizing the COVID-19 relief fund. It also thanked Indian origin technology investor and entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan for signal boosting the campaign.
Srinivasan also tweeted, “Vitalik has donated to the campaign organized by @sandeepnailwal of the polygon on behalf of the global crypto community.” “Sandeep is a reputable person and has excellent accountant pitching in to make sure disbursal of funds is tracked.”
In response to the fund transfer by Buterin, Srinivasan then tweets that those who are not able to donate, for every retweet, will contribute another $ 50 to fight covid in India, up to $100k.
Nailwal then tweeted that he plans to use funds to get oxygen, food, and possibly even the cost of vacancies for poor people. And also promised that will published all spending publicly for complete transparency.
Also Read: Solution To India’s SMEs Financial Gap Can Be a Crypto Investment
Although you can’t use cryptocurrencies like this directly for fund relief as they’re not accepted as currency. Bitcoin is the largest and famous but many others like Ether, Litecoin, Dogecoin have also become very much in demand. Bitcoin price is Rs 37,12,394 while Ethereum selling for Rs 1,63,519 and Litecoin cost Rs.16,829to buy one unit. This means the fund can generate a lot of money that turns to spend on this crisis.
Buterin seems to have made this donation in his personal capacity. The Ethereum foundation had also made significant donations in the past. Last year, the foundation reportedly donated 1,125 ETH to UNICEF, which was at the time worth $ 262,000. Before 2019, the foundation donated approx $ 150,000 in bitcoin and Ether to UNICEF’S experimental crypto fund.
The fund has been used to invest in the world. The donation of 2020 was used to make investments to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, UNICEF Spokesperson said. According to a report UNICEF in startups in countries including India, China, Argentina, and Turkey.
Indian Authorities announced 370000 news cases on 26th April Monday. India also reported a daily death total of 2,767 deaths, also a record the newspaper said. Nations around the world are pitching in to help India deal with the latest wave.
What with the severity of cases, India can perhaps see that crypto can be used for good. The large donations are proving that crypto has far more potential for a good cause than it does for illicit activity.
