War is expensive. It always has been – that’s why governments throughout the ages have had to find so many ways to fund them.
In times gone by, for instance, kings would often rely on a handful of super-rich financiers to support their campaigns. In World Wars I and II, countries turned to war bonds to build up their finances, essentially getting millions of micro-loans from the public to shore up funds.
It’s a new century now, and while Ukraine hasn’t forgotten war bonds to help it fend off the Russian invasion, they’ve also embraced some of the more modern finance options available in 2022.
Not only has the Eastern European country reportedly received more than $50 million in cryptocurrency donations, but the government has announced they will soon be issuing NFTs to fund the country’s armed forces.
“Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the aggression,” wrote Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice-prime minister, in a tweet Thursday. “Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon.”
“We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens,” he added.
NFTs, or “non-fungible tokens,” are some of the wildest aspects of the already bonkers crypto world. They’re essentially receipts of "ownership" of some kind of digital item – mostly in relation to artwork, or at least pictures, but in theory, you could have an NFT of anything.
In the same tweet, Fedorov said that previously announced plans to “airdrop” cryptocurrency had been canceled. It was not clear exactly what this would have entailed, though – airdrops are usually where people are given free crypto tokens in an effort to increase usage.
At the moment, we don’t know exactly what NFTs the Ukrainian government is planning to issue either. The tokens are somewhat notorious for their use in scams and thefts, terrible for the environment, and neutered at the conceptual level by the existence of the right-click button.
But maybe, just maybe, events in Ukraine will see people forget all that – perhaps this time, victory will look like a bored ape.
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