On February 26, the Ukraine government’s official Twitter account wrote that it would start accepting cryptocurrency donations. As the Russia-Ukraine war intensified and entered its sixth day on Tuesday, people have taken up the call: around $22 million in crypto has been raised to help Ukrainians buy everything from arms to medical supplies, including more than $3 million raised through NFTs.
Because of the relative liquidity of cryptocurrencies, as well as the transparency that the blockchain ledger provides, NFTs have predictably become a tool for art communities looking to support Ukrainian defense and humanitarian ventures. In just under a week, several sales of non-fungible tokens cropped up, with NFTs stepping in as the 21st-century war bond. In the words of the Washington Post, the conflict in Ukraine has become “the world’s first crypto war.”
During major wars, like the Second World War, states would issue wartime bonds and securities to finance their military expenditures, sometimes in the form of stamps. The exhortations to buy these would be…
