Over $69 Million, Led by Ethereum Donated in Cryptocurrencies in 2021

The report from The Giving Block highlighted the increase in philanthropic use of cryptocurrency where funds from native tokens and NFT projects alike pushed the bar higher than before. 

Crypto Philanthropy

The Giving Block, which in a way acts as a medium for raising cryptocurrency funds for non-profit organizations. This year received over $69.6 million in cryptocurrency which is 16 times more than the $4.2 million donated in 2020.

Not only did the total amount increase but the average size of each donation also rose by 236% to $10,455, which is significantly bigger than the 2020s $3.1k.

Surprisingly this year the most donated cryptocurrency turned out to be not Bitcoin, but Ethereum with over $30.7 million in donations. This was followed by Bitcoin at $25.8 million and stablecoins such as USDC and DAI followed with $2.2 million and $1.4 million respectively.

Interestingly, the breakup of month-wise donations makes it clear that about 29% of all donations, which translated to about $20.1 million, came in December. And about 50% of the $69 million were received just in November and December. 

However, not only did the donations come in as these cryptocurrency tokens but also in the form of NFTs. As it is well known NFTs witnessed a boom in 2021, thus it is not that surprising to know that many NFT artists and projects sold some of their NFTs to give the money to charity. 

According to the report, about 17.7% of the donations worth over 12.3 million were the result of these NFTs. In one of the donations, the philanthropist donated about $3.5 million worth of NFT.

But Why Ethereum?

As mentioned above Ethereum was the highest donated cryptocurrency in 2021. The reason behind this is the DeFi and NFT capabilities it presents to the people which have become a crucial part of the crypto world.

Ethereum was the first smart contract capable chain and it currently hosts over 500 DeFi protocols and has witnessed over $17 billion in NFT sales.

This is why people naturally opt to be a part of Ethereum over Bitcoin and will continue to do so when web3 and Metaverse become more mainstream.