Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has made two substantial contributions to help the victims of last week’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
It has been reported that the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck on Feb. 6. Its death toll has now risen to 33,000, one of the world’s worst in decades.
However, over the week, the Ethereum co-founder has been one of many actively donating Ether to support relief efforts in Turkey. His latest donation was on Feb. 12 for 50 ETH, or approximately $77,000, sent to Anka Relief, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield.
The report said that Anka thanked the Ethereum co-founder for his largesse and said that crypto donations had been flowing since the first day.
The organization said:
“Since day 1 of the disaster, we witnessed donations piling in the wallets of a handful of major NGOs. Great that they have attracted and will be attracting more funds.”
Likewise, Anka provided a list of crypto wallets than can be used for donations. The Web3 relief support organization has also spearheaded the Ukraine DAO project to raise crypto donations to support efforts in the besieged country. The latest donation adds to another 99 ETH that Vitalik sent in support of earthquake victims.
On Feb. 11 the vitalik.eth address sent around $150,000 worth of ETH to Ahbap, a nongovernmental and nonprofit organization dedicated to relief efforts in Turkey. Ahbap has also provided several crypto addresses for various tokens it can accept as donations. To date, it claims to have received $4.3 million in crypto donations, with stablecoins being the most popular tokens sent.
According to Etherscan, the Ahbap wallet contains 409 ETH, worth $622,000, as of Feb. 13. On Feb. 10, London’s Financial Times reported that crypto donations had been pouring in from across the globe. More than $10 million in crypto had been sent by companies, with Binance alone donating $5 million in support of Turkish relief efforts.
Thus, on Feb. 7, just a day after the devastating quake, the Web3 community was coming together to arrange crypto donations for NGOs and support. It is not the first time crypto has been used for earthquake relief donations. In 2015, Bitcoin donations were sent to relief organizations following a massive quake in Nepal.
Source: Cointelegraph
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