Ukraine stunned the globe with the announcement of a crypto airdrop. While the original airdrop was scheduled to occur today at 6 pm Kyiv time [UTC/GMT +2 hours], it appeared to have taken place earlier than expected. Several noted that a token labeled “Peaceful World” was distributed by the Ukrainian government. However, it is being speculated that these tokens could have been a spoof.
As a result, the Vice Prime Minister of the country announced that there would be no airdrop.
The world is currently witnessing what is considered the third world war. With Ukraine grappling with violence infused by Russia, scammers wanted nothing but to make money off the affected country. In a similar attempt, scammers tried to spoof Ukraine’s imminent airdrop.
Etherscan went on to mark the address as a scam as they were pretending to be the Ukrainian government. All the transactions were reportedly managed by a third party and not Ukraine.
Furthermore, several in the community pointed out that there were still 6.5 hours for the snapshot. However, the ill-doers started airdropping way before the scheduled time.
The chances of individuals losing money were high as they would trade the asset on decentralized exchanges and further engage with the fraudulent smart contract. This would again increase the risk of having their wallets emptied.
The airdrop scheduled by Ukraine created quite a buzz. A huge divide was caused in the community as some believed that the country should just use the money instead of increasing crypto adoption via airdrops.
Crypto scammers take advantage of the Ukraine – Russia war
Soon after Ukraine affirmed that it was accepting crypto for payments, a slew of impersonators began sharing fake wallet addresses. YouTube was infiltrated with scammy videos. Several videos entailed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seeking donations. The videos came with QR codes of fake wallet addresses.
As the number of crypto donations for the war-torn country surged, the government decided to onboard more crypto assets. Polkadot [DOT] and Dogecoin [DOGE] were the latest cryptocurrencies to join Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH], and Tether [USDT].