hi this is Charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny Colorado always warm Always Sunny sometimes Colorado today is March 3rd 2022 and I'm making a video about uh the situation in Ukraine specifically donations uh to Ukraine uh so as many of you know people have started setting up donation addresses and Bitcoin and ethereum and uh I believe Gavin wood from polka dot donated five million dollars worth of value to people in Ukraine and some people over Twitter have been asking hey are we going to do the same for cardano uh so I'm not the guy on the Coronado side to ask for that if you as the cardano community think there's some value in trying to establish a donation pipeline uh for Ada holders to donate to some entity that's credible my recommendation is go talk to the Cardinal Foundation that's their place and purpose in this but more broadly just a little bit of a discussion of donations uh some people say Hey you know you're this really rich guy you have all this money 10 million dollars is nothing to you throw all this money at these people and if you don't you're a bad person um there are over 25 conflicts in the world today uh Ukraine is certainly a huge one and it's it's a huge human tragedy but there's also a Civil War in Ethiopia plenty of violence occurring all throughout Africa the Middle East and other places uh issues in Southeast Asia so the world is at any given moment always going through someone somewhere a crisis and and usually what ends up happening is people who have the capacity to broadcast that crisis tend to get over represented in financial contributions to resolve that for example the earthquake in Haiti because former and current U.S presidents participated uh and the media made a big deal of it I believe over 16 billion dollars of value was sent that way and in retrospect a large majority of that money was not well used or misused the situation Ukraine is incredibly complex because it's an act of aggression so it's an act of War uh and you have a situation where Russia is attempting to decapitate the government kill the president and replace him with someone that they've chosen so it is entirely possible if that decapitation is is successful uh that in the next few weeks the Ukrainian government will now be controlled by uh a actor who is basically a puppet of the Russian people in which case it's not clear to me if money is donated to the this country if that money will actually even go to Ukrainian citizens or not or will actually be under the control of a puppet regime and yes there could be some sort of rebellion state that fights like the Northern Alliance fought in Afghanistan for all those years against the Taliban but none of this is clear furthermore there's a lot of direct and indirect foreign subsidies that are currently going and it's incredibly hard to understand use of funds if I was to donate 10 million dollars to some sort of official Ukrainian account how do I know that that money would be spent just on evacuating refugees and taking care of diaspora in Poland and other places versus buying weapons and missiles and and using them in armed conflict we don't and no one donating right now can with a straight face say that they know a certainty it's a difficult situation uh and it's not even clear who's the management is going to be in the next few weeks what is clear is that the major population centers of Ukraine appear to be getting encircled by Russian forces and at the current rate of progress even with the delays it is likely that Russia probably will win the conflict that's not saying the ukrainians aren't fighting they're fighting like hell right now and there's an enormous amount of Bravery on the side but it's just the reality of the actors involved the technology the Weapons Systems and the fact that the West seems to think the only thing they can do is sanction Russia is prepared with or without sanctions to prosecute and win this act of aggression and the reality for Putin is that if he was to back down now there's a high probability that there would be an attempt to kill him from his own people a coup so this is an existential conflict on both sides in this respect and there's no reality where Putin is going to unless he's forced to militarily or some by some miracle defeated on the field of battle back down uh his act of aggression so I'm not entirely sure what 10 million dollars or 5 million dollars or any of these other things is actually going to accomplish any more so than sending money to the rebels right now in Afghanistan fighting against the Taliban government or rebels in any other conflict that are Freedom Fighters fighting to handle things I will also remind people that corruption is Extreme during war this is not a Ukrainian problem this is a human problem anytime there's an armed conflict rule of law is gone and very quickly people start devolving to a mindset that it's a game of get as much as you can for yourself and make sure that you get away with it this has always been the case in all of human history in every conflict if it gets to a certain escalation point the only people can worry about are those you love and care about in yourself uh and so that's that now when peace comes because I hope somehow Ukraine is going to Prevail uh of course because we have a vested interest in the jurisdiction we have employees there uh and uh we love the country it would be very nice in the Reconstruction of Institutions to in specific cases do things but we would do that when we have assurances that there's not going to be corruption misuse of funds and the money donated won't result the loss of human life it is not the job of me or my company or the people that work with me to go fight Wars this company is trying very actively to pursue the technology of peace so we're obviously not going to contribute to a conflict one way or the other however you the community if you personally feel that donations should be made it does make sense to try to create some sort of official Channel and again The Entity to facilitate that if you demand it would be the Cardinal Foundation as we've seen with other cryptocurrency foundations and certainly a lot of money has gone that way but I figured I'd just make this quick video as kind of a not just a comment on the Ukrainian crisis but an abstraction to all of these crises the world has problems and you can either solve it by giving a man a fish or you can solve it by teaching a man to fish it's a lot longer harder and more work to teach someone but if you pull it off it creates a reality where you've solved the problem permanently it's a lot easier in in the short term much more satisfying to give someone fish but the reality is that the you have to keep doing it um and in my experience dealing with conflict zones because I have been doing this job for a while uh you for the first few weeks seem to know what's going on and then as the conflict goes on facts and circumstances change and in some cases even the people that you're dealing with turn out to be different people than you thought that they were I and we've seen this all throughout Africa we've seen this in Asia and now we're seeing this uh very clearly in Eastern Europe I and it's not clear what the Western powers are going to do and it's not clear how far uh Putin is prepared to take this conflict if the ukrainians for example continue to feel the very strong resistance with U.S support and weapons uh then it's very likely that the Russians will retaliate with thermal Barrack weapons and weapons of mass destruction if that's the case we could see in the next few weeks casualties in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of people as these population centers are taken over uh which goes beyond just a regional conflict or a changing of management it goes to genocide it's not clear to me what the Western world would do in those circumstances uh maybe I know fly zone maybe NATO will actually invade I don't know it depends on the leaders and we're not in a position to know so yeah funds could potentially be useful but it's uh very difficult to even know if they're going to be properly used furthermore prices are not normal in war zones yeah Merchants take advantage of these situations and you'll see things that used to cost a dollar cost a hundred dollars uh there's an enormous amount of theft and Corruption funds could disappear given the nature of cryptocurrencies it's entirely possible if the Ukrainian government's invaded for the wallets that hold those funds uh in Kiev to just basically disappear and people assert that the keys have been lost or the people who knew them are dead in reality they actually were stolen this is a reality it could happen it's not a hypothetical and it could happen in a matter of weeks so when you really start digging deeply into what's actually going on and the nature of this in historical events uh it it's actually not so wise to immediately rush to cutting a check you have to take a step back and and really ask what's going on now there are some charitable organizations that I imagine can have a huge benefit for those who are suffering the most for example all of the diaspora who have fled the country and have gone into other countries surrounding Ukraine currently many of them do not have access to their bank accounts and probably just have the shirts on their backs in a small amount of belongings the governments who have received these refugees are likely overwhelmed and desperately need support volunteers and assistants so I think uh if there are charitable organizations that are directly involved in those on the uh the western side uh dealing with diaspora they can certainly use your help and they certainly can take care of people and these are among the most vulnerable people uh women children elderly these are the ones that really need a lot of assistance and they're currently living under an enormous amount of uncertainty it is the case that almost all of these families are starting to get separated there is a moratorium on men who are 18 to 60 leaving Ukraine from the Ukrainian government which means that if people are a family unit and they're fleeing the husband is in war the wife and children and probably grandparents and extended family are living in a refugee camp or with relatives in Europe and because communication is getting more difficult that family has no idea if the husband's actually going to come or will die I can't imagine how traumatizing that experience is for people and if there are organizations that are trying to lighten that load a little bit or trying to find a way to help out there I think they're definitely worthwhile to donate to but because of how quickly things are are happening it is Again difficult to know if funds will be properly used and what will end up happening sadly as with all of these events when we look back at it years later it will be just like the article that I tweeted about what happened with Haiti where some people who are evil who lack ethics will use the money that people donate basically to enrich themselves instead of take care of the people who are hurt so our thoughts and prayers are certainly with those impacted and affected and after this is over we'll do what we can as a company and as an ecosystem to help out if you do want to donate please do so so at your discretion and my recommendation is see if the foundation can find a way to create a stable Avenue to some entity that has legitimacy my recommendation would be not directly to the Ukrainian government because it's not even clear if that government is going to survive the next month or two but to organizations that are dealing specifically with the refugees because there they will have the biggest and most immediate impact uh and can really help people and then those relationships connections can be leveraged and used when peace returns to help rebuild the country so I hope this video helps thank you
