Around half of all cryptocurrency contribution campaigns to boost Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression are “obvious scams,” according to a recent report from blockchain research company TRM. However, such frauds took up a tiny part of the funds received since the onset of the armed conflict.
Ukraine’s war efforts have increasingly been aided by cryptocurrency donations, which totalled over $135.7 million in more than 1 month from Feb. 22. Remarkably, in the over 50 campaigns examined by TRM, there were 33 distinct crypto assets used.
However, roughly half of over 50 crypto-donation campaigns were apparent frauds that did not finance Ukraine’s humanitarian relief or military efforts as claimed. While this was pretty pessimistic, TMR also acknowledged that scam campaigns “accounted for a modest fraction of total transaction volume.” In other words, most donors could distinguish between scammers and genuine crowdfunding campaigns.
Additionally, non-government organisations, non-state actors (military or cyber), private, for-profit campaigns, and official governmental or military campaigns were typical crowdfunding efforts. Non-governmental organisations were the most popular, with $48 million from the two major cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Meanwhile, official government or military campaigns accounted for a small portion of the funds raised.
According to the firm, it is essential to support Ukraine, but contributors need to be smart and cautious. TRM recommends that individuals assess the donation campaign operator’s online presence before contributing, read reviews from previous donors, and do web searches on the contribution addresses to detect any possible scam-related flags.
There are various indicators of scam fundraising efforts, such as a crypto-donation campaign removing its website domain or Twitter account hours after launching. Donors should also look out for campaigns having an unverified Twitter handle, getting endorsements on Twitter from unverified accounts, or having many new Twitter followers, which potentially indicates bot-like behaviour.
