CryptoPunk NFT is latest donation to Ukraines $33M campaign

The sought-after NFT could be worth $200,000 according to some estimates.

Estimates of the Punks value vary: Tom Robinson of crypto tracing firm Elliptic notched it around $200,000 when he flagged the donation late Tuesday; DeepNFTvalue, a blog that uses machine learning to estimate prices for rare NFTs, placed it at $233,000.

The punk fetched a sales price of $31,300 in February 2021, the last time it was sold. The donor has a collection of several other Punks, according to their wallet address.

It landed amid a banner streak for Ukraines fast-accelerating crypto campaign: over $10 million raised in ETH, DOT, USDT, BTC and other crypto tokens on Tuesday alone, the single-largest day since Ukraine began asking for donations on Feb 26.

Earlier Tuesday, Michael Chobanian, a Ukrainian crypto exchange founder who is helping the Ministry of Digital Transformation handle donations, told CoinDesk TV that at least $14 million of donated crypto had already been spent on military hardware and for civilians, including food and gas.

“The majority of spending is actually done in crypto,” he said at the time. He that Kuna, his exchange, operates the wallets used by the Ukrainian government.

Chobanian did not immediately respond to CoinDesk when asked via Telegram what would be done with the Punk.

Russia invaded Ukraine last week, prompting the smaller European nation to solicit aid in the form of both weapons and funding to support its effort to repel its neighbor.