Binance Donates $1 Million Towards Victim Relief for West Japan Floods

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, pledged $1 million for the victims of the floods in West Japan.

In an official post, Binance stated:

“To help out the victims in West Japan that were affected by the heavy rains on 7/7/2018, Binance is donating $1,000,000 USD and calling for our crypto friends and partners to join us in the relief initiative.”

On Saturday Japan has been hit with unprecedented rainfall causing floods and landslides. According to a BBC report, More than 60 people have died and about a dozen people have been missing since. PM Shinzo Abe has ordered the evacuation of two million people in the disaster-prone areas.

Binance has urged users who’d like to donate to the cause to send ETH or ERC-20 tokens to the wallet mentioned in their official post.
“Send ETH or ERC20 tokens you want to donate directly to the Binance donation address 0xA73d9021f67931563fDfe3E8f66261086319a1FC”
They stated that all outgoing transactions would only be used for charity purposes and will be explained by Binance.
Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, tweeted out calling the crypto community to contribute towards this fund. He stated that the exact logistics would be figured out shortly and his team is contacting local authorities to figure out final delivery logistics. “Given the short time, we had to keep this very simple for this time. We will build something more systematic later.” he further stated.
He also mentioned that projects which donated to the cause would get “bonus points for future listing requests” and that they might consider the donation towards the listing fees.
The Ethereum wallet mentioned has received about $90,000 worth of ETH and $1.05 Million worth of ERC-20 tokens as of writing.
Cryptocurrencies have been long used to donate for charitable causes especially due to the transparency of transactions on the public ledger. The Pineapple Fund, run by an anonymous donor, has supported over 60 charities, ranging from clean water initiatives to open source projects, by donating $55 million dollars worth of Bitcoin. As CCN reported earlier, Ripple has donated $29 million in XRP to DonorsChoose, a charity which helps public school teachers raise money for educational resources such as books and school supplies. Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit aimed to protect journalists and whistleblowers, has recently started accepting cryptocurrencies for donations and has already recieved half a million dollars in various cryptocurrencies so far.