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Cryptocurrencies are being tapped for one of their most important use-cases – charities.
Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal Launches COVID Relief Campaign for India
In a bid to give financial aid to India which is battling a severe COVID crisis, Polygon (formerly Matic Network) co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has launched a COVID Relief Fund for India.
Shortly after sharing the Tweet thread, support came pouring from all over the global crypto community. According to the Tweet, Nailwal will use the funds raised through the campaign to procure oxygen, food, and even vaccines for the needy in India. Thanks to the transparent nature of blockchain technology, all details pertaining to the campaign will be published publicly.
Nailwal urged fellow Indian crypto thought leaders and institutions such as cryptocurrency exchanges WazirX, CoinDCX, and others to support the campaign by helping in converting the donations into fiat and donate to ground people.
Can't take this sitting down anymore, I am going to run a Covid relief campaign in lieu of what’s going on in India.
Need help from the Global crypto community.
I will take full responsibility for transparency, funds usage and regulatory compliance
If you want to donate.. 1/n
— Sandeep – Polygon(prev Matic Network) (@sandeepnailwal) April 24, 2021
The Tweet prompted Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and board partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz to donate $50,000 in ETH and called others to contribute too.
Notably, Ethereum co-founder joined in Nailwal’s efforts by donating 100 ETH and 100 MKR worth more than $600,000 at the time of transfer.
Thanks for organizing this @sandeepnailwal and thanks a lot for pointing this out @balajis!https://t.co/2PBOQKYuZqhttps://t.co/uOzQ15sZnL
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) April 24, 2021
Encouraged by Buterin’s contribution, Balaji posted another tweet stating that for every retweet he gets, he will donate an additional $50 to combat COVID in India up to $100,000.
Regulatory Dark Clouds in India
Despite Sandeep’s noble efforts to improve the dire pandemic situation in India, it would be interesting to see how the execution of the campaign plays out as reportedly India is said to be considering putting a blanket ban on all private cryptocurrencies – including bitcoin and ether – in the country.
At the time of writing, the COVID Relief Fund for India has already amassed over $1 million in donations and continues to grow with every donation big or small.
However, what remains to be seen is whether the Indian government welcomes the campaign for its humanitarian purpose or continues to stick with its anti-crypto stance and scrutinizes the campaign from the regulatory end.
Whatever the Indian government does, the campaign is a good reminder to the world pointing out the significance of cryptocurrencies for the very reasons they were created.