Bitcoin is helping both sides in Ukraine conflict, but it won’t wreck Russian sanctions
War is expensive. The United States spent about US$1.1 trillion (£830 billion) on the 2003 Iraq war in today’s money, while the Falklands war cost the UK the equivalent of about £2.6 billion.
Funding is therefore an important resource in any conflict, similar to that of artillery, fuel and boots on the ground. The burden of finance traditionally falls to governments, often in the form of issuing war bonds.
Ukraine is currently issuing US$270 million in war bonds for that very purpose. Interestingly, however, Ukraine is also drawing on options that were not available until very recently.
Several days after the Russian invasion, Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine and minister of digital transformation, called on people around the world to show solidarity with Ukraine by making crypto donations.
