Thread by @gladstein

1/ 50 surprising facts from my essay on Bitcoin use in Ukraine + Russia 🧵

82: percent the Ukrainian hryvnia has lost in purchasing power since Satoshi released the white paper

30: percent of Ukrainians that have fled their homes since Russia's invasion

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/curren…

2/

3 days: time it can take to do a bank transfer from abroad to Ukraine

10 minutes: time it takes to send Bitcoin

3 seconds: time it takes to send Bitcoin over the Lightning network

10 minutes: time it takes to convert BTC to fiat using a Telegram app like Alice-Bob

3/

5.3 million: number of Ukrainians who have become refugees since February

6.5 million: number of Ukrainians internally displaced

$110 million: amount the Ukrainian government has raised in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency for its defense fund

4/

2012: year Ukrainian deputy minister of digital transformation Alex Bornyakov started mining Bitcoin

$20 million: amount in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency raised by the Ukrainian government in the first 48 hours of its online fundraiser, before any official foreign aid arrived

5/

4: number of BTC raised by Bitcoin developer @ffstls in the first few weeks of the invasion to support humanitarian work in Ukraine

3: minutes it took for CNBC to send $20 from Miami to a refugee in Poland in Bitcoin and for her to withdraw it from a BTC ATM into cash

6/

100,000: number of Ukrainian refugees estimated by the government to have left the country while holding Bitcoin or cryptocurrency

1,900: number of missiles Russian forces have launched into Ukraine

600: number of people killed in Russia's attack on the Mariupol theater

7/

1 in 5: number of residents of the town of Bucha who were murdered by the Russian military

3,200: number of Russian military equipment (tanks, ships, APCs, etc) verified as destroyed by open-source investigators

20,000: leaked Moscow estimate of Russian troops KIA or MIA

8/

76%: rise in the price (in rubles) of onions in Russia since the invasion

45%: rise in price of sugar

32%: rise in price of white bread

9/

658: BTC raised by Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) since 2015

Negative one billion rubles: balance in FBK's bank account after the Russian government froze it in 2018

10-15%: amount of monthly donations to FBK made in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency

10/

77: number of years before the USA that Ukraine published its own constitution, separating executive, legislative, and judicial powers

2-4 million: Ukrainians estimated to have starved during the Holodomor as a result of Stalin's collectivist agricultural policy

11/

33,761: number of Ukrainian Jews murdered in two days by the Nazis at Babi Yar

1 million: lower-bound estimate of Ukrainian Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust

12/

15: percent of Ukrainian population who perished during WWII

700: number of cities destroyed

28,000: villages destroyed

40: percent of nation's wealth destroyed

80: percent of industrial and agricultural infrastructure destroyed

13/

500: number of Hiroshima bombs' worth of radiation released during the Chernobyl disaster

5: days later Gorbachev held May Day parade in Kyiv despite the radioactive cloud

346 of 348: Ukrainian MPs who voted to declare independence from the Soviet Union five years later

14/

99: percent of Ukrainians in the western part of the country who supported independence on December 1, 1991

83: percent who supported independence in Donetsk

54: percent who supported independence in Crimea

15/

2,500%: peak inflation rate in Ukraine in 1992

60%: amount Ukraine's GDP fell between 1991 and 1997

30%: amount America's GDP fell during the great depression

16/

$70 billion: amount stolen by President Viktor Yanukovych during his rule

298: number of passenger and crew killed when Russian separatists shot down Malaysian Air Flight 17

123%: percent of people in Crimea's Sevastopol who voted to join the Russian Federation in 2014

17/ Read the full essay "Currency of Last Resort" at @BitcoinMagazine here:

bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/curren…