Vitalik Buterin donates $227k to help earthquake victims in Turkey

Published at: Feb. 13, 2023

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has now made at least two substantial contributions to help the victims of last week’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

The Turkey-Syria 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck on Feb. 6. Its death toll has now risen to 33,000 — one of the nation’s worst in decades.

Over the week, the Ethereum co-founder has been one of many actively donating Ethereum to support relief efforts in Turkey. His latest donation on Feb. 12 was for 50 ETH, or approximately $77,000, to Anka Relief as reported by blockchain security firm PeckShield.

Anka thanked the Ethereum co-founder for his donation and said that crypto donations had been flowing since the first day.

“Since day 1 of the disaster, we witnessed donations piling in the wallets of a handful of major NGOs. Great that they have attracted and will be attracting more funds,” said the organization.

We want to thank @VitalikButerin for donating 50 ETH ~$75k to Anka Relief, a crypto aid fund & community to support Türkiye after the recent earthquakes. https://t.co/kGwXSGWL8JDive into the thread below to better understand our mission and ops https://t.co/92CkxevI5e

— Anka Relief (@AnkaRelief) February 12, 2023

Anka provided a list of crypto wallets than can be used for donations. The Web3 relief support organization has also spearheaded the Ukraine DAO project to raise crypto donations to support efforts in the besieged country.

The latest donation adds to another 99 ETH that Vitalik sent in support of earthquake victims. On Feb. 11 the vitalik.eth address sent around $150,000 worth of ETH to Ahbap, a non-governmental and nonprofit organization dedicated to relief efforts in Turkey.

Ahbap has also provided several crypto addresses for various tokens it can accept as donations.

To date, it claims to have received $4.3 million in crypto donations with stablecoins being the most popular tokens sent. According to Etherscan, the Ahbap wallet contains 409 ETH worth $622,000 at the time of writing.

Late last week, London’s Financial Times reported that crypto donations had been pouring in from across the globe. More than $10 million in crypto had been sent by companies with Binance alone donating $5 million in support of Turkish relief efforts.

Binance also announced $100 in BNB airdrops to those in the hardest-hit areas last week.

On Feb. 7, just a day after the devastating quake, Cointelegraph reported how the Web3 community was coming together to arrange crypto donations for NGOs and support.

It is not the first time crypto has been used for earthquake relief donations. In 2015, Bitcoin donations were sent to relief organizations following the massive quake in Nepal.