Ukraine accepts dogecoin, other cryptocurrencies for donations as funding rises to $35 million

cnbc.com:

Ukraine has expanded the number of cryptocurrencies it is accepting for donations toward its military as Russia's invasion continues.

On Wednesday, Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine, said people can send dogecoin as a donation. Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency which originally started off as a joke and has been talked up by Tesla founder Elon Musk.

It is often dubbed a «memecoin,» referring to popular internet jokes.

«Now even meme can support our army and save lives from Russian invaders,» Fedorov tweeted.

On Tuesday, Fedorov tweeted about a project called Aid For Ukraine. It is a collaboration between the Ukrainian government, Everstake and a cryptocurrency blockchain platform called Solana.

People can now donate solana cryptocurrency as well as any other digital tokens based upon Solana.

Ukraine is also accepting non-fungible tokens or NFTs as donations too. These are unique assets such as a piece of digital art stored using blockchain technology to verify and track each NFT.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap has built a function that allows people to convert any Ethereum-based digital currencies into ether and send it to the Ukrainian government. Ethereum is a blockchain platform that developers can build apps on top of.

Fedorov also said that Gavin Wood, the co-founder of a blockchain platform called Polkadot, sent $5 million worth of the DOT cryptocurrency to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government has raised $35 million, through more than 35,000 cryptoasset donations since the start of the Russian invasion, according to Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company.

On Feb. 26, Ukraine began accepting cryptocurrencies for donations and began with bitcoin, ether and a stablecoin called tether. Stablecoins