Ukrainian influencer Alex Tillen or better known as Aletinsky posted a video where he burnt a $35K Putin NFT art piece to reach the digital world and raise funds for Ukraine.
The NFT was on the presale of an upcoming collection named Meta Stellar (https://meta-stellar.io/) and the second market price went all the way to 11ETH or $35K. The deleted NFT is not visible anymore on the collections page. People don’t burn NFTs because once it happens it’s impossible to restore and the value is lost. The owner becomes the Etherium NullAdress, an address that no one owns.
What he didn’t realize at the time is that he might have just made NFT history, as this was the highest value NFT that was ever burnt.
Symbolically Putin was exiled and imprisoned on the blockchain forever by Alex representing Ukrainians. Completely destroying the value of the $35K NFT and removing Putin from the 10.000 most powerful peoples’ list. He says this also symbolizes his feelings towards all the horrible things that Putin has done in his country, but the main reason is fundraising.
By posting the videos to his 4.5 million followers he wishes to reach the whole NFT world and raise funds for the Ukrainian people.
The Ukrainian government – and an NGO providing support to the military – have raised $63.8 million, through more than 120,000 crypto asset donations since the start of the Russian invasion. This includes a $5.8 million donation by Polkadot founder Gavin Wood and a CryptoPunk NFT worth over $200,000.
On February 26th, Twitter accounts belonging to the Ukrainian government posted pleas for crypto-asset donations. To date, the Bitcoin, Ethereum, TRON, Polkadot, Dogecoin, and Solana addresses listed in the tweets have received donations worth $54.4 million.
The donations include a single transaction worth $1.86 million, which appears to have come from the proceeds of the sale of NFTs created by Julian Assange and the digital artist Pak, written by The Guardian. A CryptoPunk NFT worth approximately $200,000 has also been sent to the Ukrainian government’s Ethereum account.
Several million dollars in crypto donations have also been received by Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian NGO which supports the military – as described in previous Elliptic research. On February 24th, the membership platform Patreon announced that it had suspended Come Back Alive’s page due to policy violations as a result of its military activity.
Come Back Alive looks set an additional major donation. UkraineDAO has auctioned off an NFT of the Ukrainian flag for $6.5 million in ETH – the 10th most expensive NFT ever sold. The proceeds are to be donated to the NGO.
The majority of donations received to date have been in Bitcoin and Ether, although US dollar stablecoins contribute a significant proportion. But it’s not only crypto assets that are being donated; people are also sending NFTs to the Ukrainian government’s Ethereum account. One such NFT has a value of approximately $300.
