I would like to preface this story by first noting that what is happening in Ukraine is a tragedy, and should not be taken lightly. I am not a geopolitical expert. Do not take what I say as the final word, especially when it's an issue so impactful and delicate as the Ukraine situation. The purpose of Inside Crypto is to entertain and inform.
That being said ...
Ukraine may have just pulled off the greatest rug pull of all time. First off, we gloss over the subject of rug pulling quite often on Inside Crypto but have never truly explained it.
So say you and your date go on a picnic. You lay down your blanket and set up everything nice. I'm talking wine, cheese, the works. Everything about the day just seems so perfect. But then, just as you are about to dive in, your date gets up, grabs the edge of the blanket, yanks as hard as they can, and then runs away.
Well, this happens in crypto too.
You want to buy into a project, whether it be an NFT or a fungible token. You do your research and everything checks out. The team looks great, and hey, the project might even be led by an NBA point guard or perhaps a well-known porn star!
So you buy into the project, and then a few days later, the team walks away.
You have been rugged.
Well, Ukraine just kind of did the same thing. Now, the monetary contributions were donations, so the donors shouldn't have expected anything in return anyway, right?
Right?
Ideally yes, but as we pointed out in yesterday's edition of Inside Crypto, people definitely did. A Dune Analytics dashboard tracking Ukraine donations tells the story. Prior to Ukraine's announcement that it would reward donors with a token airdrop, the government's crypto wallet received around 60-100 donations a day. After the announcement was made, that same address was receiving thousands.
Now Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov just tweeted that the country has no plans to issue any fungible tokens.
Luckily, even though the donors, including Justin Sun, won't be getting an airdrop, those donations, which so far total over $50M, will still go a long way.
