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The world is crafting a plan to save nature. Will Indigenous people get a say?
For some Indigenous Maasai tribes in Kenya, birdwatching is not so much a leisure activity as it is a survival tactic. The sight of an oxpecker, a gray and white bird with vivid yellow eyes, often indicates that dangerous water buffalos roam nearby. Meanwhile, the brown flash of a honeyguide bird might be the ticket to a calorie-dense meal — these birds can literally guide humans to honey.
The honeyguides and oxpeckers of the world illustrate a key tenet of Indigenous knowledge, according to Kimaren ole Riamit, a member of the Maasai community in Kenya. “Nature takes care of us when we take care of it,” said ole Riamit, who has on several occasions followed honeyguides to beehives.
Lessons like this are essential as the world faces a crisis of wildlife extinction and climate change. Yet Indigenous knowledge and those who wield it are often an afterthought in major efforts to protect nature, from the Paris Agreement to a big UN treaty on biodiversity loss.
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Courtesy of Kimaren ole Riamit
Ole Riamit, the executive director of a nonprofit called Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners, is among the Indigenous leaders pushing to elevate voices like his in these initiatives. He sees himself as a bridge between the Maasai world — an Indigenous world, rooted in nature — and the Western approach to conservation, which has a history of subjugating tribes in Kenya, the US, and elsewhere.
He told Vox about growing up in a Maasai community and how the lessons he learned can make wildlife conservation stronger and more equitable. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What was it like growing up in a Maasai community, and what does your Maasai identity mean to you?
I grew up as a cattle boy, as a herds boy. But I was one of the very few who had the privilege of going to boarding school outside of the community, about 100 kilometers away.
Every time I had a break at school, I was herding cattle. I learned which pasture is healthy; which one is poisonous; which one helps cows produce more milk; which one is medicinal. So one of my identities is being connected to the landscape — the savanna pasture land of East Africa.
I learned about the different trees and species. I learned which roots are good for food, which fruit is healthy, and when they flower and when they fruit. One of my very strong identities is the Indigenous identity, as people of the land and people of the cattle.
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Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
When I think of these landscapes, I think, perhaps naively, of the iconic animals like giraffes and elephants and lions that live there. Did you have a relationship with these animals growing up?
Yes, and I continue to have a relationship with them. I grew up with elephants, buffaloes, lions, cheetahs, and leopards.
I have a brother who lost an eye because he had an encounter with a leopard, which came to steal the goats at night. I was chased by an elephant — I walked right into it in the forest. But I’m here to tell the story. I have a brother whose knee is dislocated because a hyena came into the sheep pen and tried to steal a goat. You are trained to be tough, to withstand pain, to protect the community and the livestock at whatever cost.
You need to ask the question: Why is there wildlife here and not in other communities? We have 42 ethnic groups in the country. But the highest density of wildlife is found in these pastoral areas, particularly in Maasailand. For us, it’s difficult to separate culture from nature. Nature is reflected in our culture through rites of passage — through naming ceremonies, circumcision ceremonies, graduation ceremonies when you go from a junior to a senior warrior.
There are also animals that reflect clans. You have a clan of the baboon, a clan of the elephant, and a clan of the rhino. How would you kill your clans-mate, the wildlife? There are also taboos and rules about interacting with nature that make sure we use it sustainably.
What are some of those taboos?
One of them is that if you have a lactating cow — a cow that gives milk — it’s taboo to eat game meat, to eat wildlife. You cannot pride yourself on eating game meat. The girls will run away from you. You’re not a respected warrior. Why go kill an antelope when you have an animal in the shed?
The same goes for harvesting natural products like herbal trees and medicinal plants. If the active ingredient of an herbal plant is in its roots, you are not allowed to harvest the taproot — the root that goes all the way down. You get the lateral root. And you can’t keep taking roots from one plant until it dies; you move on to the next one.
If the active ingredient is in the bark of the tree, you don’t cut a ring out of the bark, because that would suffocate the tree. You create a vertical slit, and you don’t leave it naked — you cover it with soil.
The abundance of wildlife speaks to the efficiency of these rules.
How did you learn all of this?
The landscape itself is a library of knowledge. As a young boy or girl, when you’re helping your mother fetch water or taking care of the sick, you are told what each plant is for, which ones are poisonous, and what they’re called. When this plant flowers, the rain is around the corner. Indigenous weather forecasting is associated with the behavior of plants and animals. You are in school every day, every moment.
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Edwin Remsberg / VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
You have a brother who was injured by a leopard. Does that kind of encounter create tension with wildlife?
Yes. When a lion, for example, becomes problematic and develops a taste for cattle meat instead of wild buffalo or eland, the community can organize to kill it. But it’s not a reason to kill all of the lions. When you’re attacked, you try to protect yourself with your traditional spear. You don’t surrender yourself as a snack to the lion. But in general, wild animals have learned to respect our space, and we have learned to respect their space.
Have you had any experiences that demonstrate how dependent we are on wildlife and ecosystems?
You learn that nature communicates. We learned that the honeyguide bird guides us to honey. They actually make a sound to tell you that they’ve seen a hive. If you know how to respond and follow them, they will take you to it.
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Brown Bear/Windmill Books/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The bird will look for humans in the landscape close to where the honey is, and then it comes and chirps. Over the years, Indigenous communities have learned the language and how to respond.
When you try to harvest the hive, the bees try to finish the honey. They overfeed and become engorged, so they can’t fly. Then the honeyguide feeds on the overfed bees, which can’t sting.
You’re working now to bring Indigenous knowledge to the fight against climate change and wildlife extinction. What are some examples of that knowledge?
I am privileged to belong to two worlds. I belong to the Indigenous world but I also received a formal Western education.
One lesson from the Indigenous community is that you take from nature only what you need. You don’t overstock your fridge just to throw food in the dustbin.
Another lesson is that nature takes care of us when we take care of it. We have a forest in our community that gives water to the only river that crosses the Maasai Mara [National Reserve]. Our elders set the forest aside because it’s a lifeline — of the people, of wildlife, of the livestock.
The modern conservation movement is rooted in Western ways of knowing. When did you decide you wanted to be a part of that?
I grew up in a thriving landscape, rich in biodiversity, and I was always connected to the land. When I was going to school as a young boy, I’d cross this stream every morning and arrive dripping wet. Water was always abundant.
Then I started noticing things change. I saw that some birds were no more, such as the oxpecker. I can’t remember the last time I heard of a honeyguide. This river that used to flood has been reduced to a stream that a toddler can cross, barely wetting his feet. I saw that the landscape is almost crying.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-I started questioning what is happening and became aware of climate change. Even the community itself started noticing and saying dry months have stolen water from wet months, and they are not giving the water back. The Indigenous knowledge systems of weather forecasting became disrupted, and our livelihoods are ordered around the weather.
A lot of us feel so disconnected from nature, and we are — we get our food from a grocery store, our homes are air-conditioned, and so on. It’s clear that your lives are much more directly dependent on the land.
One message we take to the world is that climate change is not a theoretical debate for us. We are on the front lines of the negative impacts of climate change. We see the water disappear.
One of the characteristics of the savannas and the rangelands of pastoral communities is that water is scarce. But if you add climate change to that scarcity, you have a severe situation.
We just recently had a drought in Kenya. We went for three or four months without rain. Many people’s herds collapsed and died, and building a herd is an intergenerational affair.
So for us, climate change is so real.
You went to grad school in Canada. What was it like to learn about wildlife issues or climate change from textbooks and Western professors?
It was strange. It felt distant and alien. One of the things that I struggled with is that every study must begin with a theoretical framework. You must think from where somebody else started thinking, and continue from there. But I’m used to observing, I’m used to experiencing things firsthand.
I also questioned how conservation was enacted. First came “fortress” conservation, where Indigenous people were pushed out of the land [in the name of protecting wildlife]. The assumption then was that people hate wildlife and are destructive to wildlife.
As we struggled with fortress conservation, a new model emerged called community-based conservation. Community-based conservation is what Indigenous communities have been doing for eons. Wildlife is there because communities are living there with it.
Then when you introduce a so-called investor into these conservation efforts, who might build a tourist lodge and has instruments of power — privileged knowledge of the market and privileged connections to state organizations. The investor ends up being the conservator, not the community. So while community-based conservation is suddenly a big movement toward appreciating what communities have done and continue to do, a lot of work is still needed to create mutually respectful partnerships.
How was Indigenous knowledge perceived when you were learning about conservation?
Indigenous knowledge was perceived as inferior knowledge. It was perceived as nonrigorous knowledge because it’s nonscientific — because it’s not documented. Never mind that scientific books are written by interviewing and researching in the field and getting knowledge from these communities, and so on. And when those books are written, this knowledge is privatized.
While Kenya is certainly progressing, the institution in charge of Indigenous knowledge is the national museums. There’s an idea that this knowledge should be preserved in the archives. It’s not active knowledge. It’s something to be gazed at, to be frozen in time.
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Yang Zheng/VCG via Getty Images
When you look at the major efforts to protect nature today — I’m thinking about the UN Paris Agreement or the new global effort to protect 30 percent of all land and water by 2030 — what role do Indigenous communities play in shaping these initiatives?
When you look at the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Sustainable Development Goals or the Paris Agreement, Indigenous people have managed to put placeholders in these decisions. For example, there’s recognition [in these initiatives] that Indigenous knowledge should inform climate change adaptation and mitigation. We have put in a placeholder that says Indigenous knowledge is grounded in collective land tenure.
But these placeholders are just text that speaks to these issues. They mean nothing if they’re not cascading down and translated into action.
So, these international climate and biodiversity treaties mention Indigenous people and land tenure — meaning, the right to land — but that’s not the same as action on the ground.
Exactly. Sometimes I call this “death by recognition.” The reality of the matter is that Indigenous people are not saying, “Write about us on paper.” They’re saying, “Address our human rights, give Indigenous knowledge space in planning and development, and allow us to sit at the decision-making table.”
They are saying, “Put resources in our hands because we are aware of the issue; we understand where it hurts. We can direct these resources to strategic actions now.”
Right now there is a lot of money flowing into climate initiatives and into biodiversity efforts as well. Is that making its way into Indigenous communities?
One of the challenges for Indigenous people is access to resources. Most of the resources come indirectly — it’s a very layered process and each layer takes a chunk of those resources. Very little arrives in the hands of our communities.
And much of the money comes by way of small grants. Why small? There is this notion that Indigenous people have no capacity to manage big grants. How would they grow to manage big grants if they can’t flex their muscles to manage big grants like everybody else?
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Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
Funds for climate change also often target specific landscapes like the Amazon or Congo Basin. These are not the only landscapes sequestering carbon. What about savanna woodlands? Savanna woodlands here sequester the most carbon.
What would you do with endless resources for conservation?
For pastoral communities, a big issue is access to water, which determines whether cattle can use a certain pasture. So I would strengthen the community’s access to water.
When you look at the issue of drought and dying herds, one way to help is by securing land tenure. It’s a technical process that requires cartographers and maps and other kinds of resources. Land tenure affects how Indigenous communities adapt to climate change and use the land.
We have learned that the State only understands the language of paper — it doesn’t communicate by spoken words, orally. Maybe we have talked too much about our Indigenous knowledge without documenting it. So we should document this knowledge and practices that are relevant to conservation, relevant to sustainable use, and relevant to climate resilience.
What would it mean to you to bridge the gap between the Indigenous and Western worlds? What is your vision for conservation?
I recognize the constraints of a crowded planet that needs to feed its growing population. But I also think we can develop integrated visions for how we relate to nature. The world will be a better place if multiple knowledge systems speak to each other, if they inform each other. We need space for mutual respect, for hearing each other out without prejudice, for not privileging some knowledge systems over others.
The case against changing clocks is less about extending sunsets later all year and more about staying consistent.
It’s happened: On Tuesday, the US Senate voted unanimously to make daylight saving time permanent beginning in 2023. Perhaps the unambiguous results were influenced by the fact that most of us just turned clocks forward on Sunday, and the disruptiveness of it is still on the lawmakers’ minds.
While in recent years various states have passed pieces of legislation that would extend daylight saving time hours, this vote by the US Senate is the biggest move yet. If the legislation proceeds to the House and then the president, Americans will no longer have to change their clocks twice a year. (It’s not currently clear that the House will take on the legislation at all.)
The benefits of extending daylight saving time all year — or just keeping standard time all year — are more widespread than avoiding the hassle of resetting the clocks (even if many timepieces these days do this automatically).
At most, it could potentially also improve our collective health, and possibly prevent some automobile accidents. It would at least prevent some groaning and hassle as people lose an hour of sleep when daylight saving time starts in the spring. And who wouldn’t want that?
Daylight saving time in the US started as an energy conservation trick during World War I and became a national standard in the 1960s. The idea is that in the summer months, we shift the number of daylight hours we get into the evening. So if the sun sets at 8 pm instead of 7 pm, we’d presumably spend less time with the lights on in our homes at night, saving electricity.
It also means that you’re less likely to sleep through daylight hours in the morning since those are shifted an hour later too. Hence “saving” daylight hours for the most productive time of the day.
But this premise never seemed to pan out. The presumed electricity savings of taking advantage of more daylight in the evening turns out to be unclear or nonexistent.
What’s more, not only is daylight saving time ineffective, the name is just confusing.
Daylight saving time — and yes, it’s “saving time” and not “savings time”— begins in the spring, just as the increase in daylight hours starts to be noticeably longer. What’s more, the number of daylight hours that fall upon our vast, beautiful country isn’t affected by the practice. Those are determined by the tilt of Earth’s axis and our planet’s position in its orbit around the sun. And those, we are quite powerless to change.
So if the House and the president actually go through with this, what will change?
Blogger and cartographer Andy Woodruff decided to visualize this with a great series of maps. The goal of these maps is to show how abolishing daylight saving time, extending it all year, or going with the status quo changes the number of days we have “reasonable” sunrise and sunset times.
Reasonable, as defined by Woodruff, is the sun rising at 7 am or earlier or setting after 5 pm (so one could, conceivably, spend some time in the sun before or after work).
This is what the map looks like under the status quo of twice-yearly clock shifts. A lot of people have unreasonable sunrise times (the dark spots) for much of the year:
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Andy Woodruff
Here’s how things would change if daylight saving were abolished (that is, if we just stuck to the time set in the winter all year). It’s better, particularly on the sunrise end:
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Andy Woodruff
And here’s what would happen if daylight saving were always in effect. The sunrise situation would actually be worse for most people. But many more people would enjoy after-work light.
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Andy Woodruff
Individuals might differ on which of the above maps they prefer. But it matters less whether we keep daylight saving time year-round or abolish it completely; the real benefits come from not flip-flopping back and forth twice a year.
It’s more this: Sleep scientists continually advocate that, for optimal health, people should stick to the same sleep schedule every night, going to bed and waking at the same hours each day. When we shift clocks forward one hour in the spring, many of us will lose that hour of sleep. In the days after daylight saving time starts, our biological clocks are a little bit off. It’s like the whole country has been given an hour of jet lag.
One hour of lost sleep sounds like a small change, but we humans are fragile, sensitive animals. Jet lag can mess with our metabolism; extreme versions of it can contribute to diabetes or obesity. But in the short term, jet lag dulls our mental edge.
And when our biological clocks are off, everything about us is out of sync. Our bodies run this tight schedule to try to keep up with our actions. Since we usually eat a meal after waking up, we produce the most insulin in the morning. We’re primed to metabolize breakfast before even taking a bite. It’s more efficient that way.
Being an hour off schedule means our bodies are not prepared for our actions at any time of the day.
One example: driving.
In 1999, researchers at Johns Hopkins and Stanford universities wanted to find out what happens on the road when millions of drivers have their sleep disrupted.
Analyzing 21 years of fatal car crash data from the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, they found a very small but significant increase in road deaths on the Monday after the clock shift in the spring: The number of deadly accidents jumped to an average of 83.5 on the “spring forward” Monday compared with an average of 78.2 on a typical Monday.
And it seems it’s not just car accidents. Evidence has also mounted of an increase in incidences of workplace injuries and heart attacks in the days after we spring forward.
Many Americans might not welcome extending daylight saving all year. There was a year in the 1970s when daylight saving time lasted for 16 months, and not everyone was pleased. Polling at the time found that just 30 percent of Americans approved of the change after it began. According to the Washington Post, “parents were suddenly sending their kids to school in the cold and the dark for months on end,” which drove the negative sentiment.
But for those thinking “I don’t want later sunset times all year long!” or “I don’t want to start my day in the winter amid darkness!” know that it’s always been possible for our society to just … gradually change school or work start times depending on the season.
In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which side is crypto helping? Both.
In times of crisis, there is no good; there’s only a best course of action, given the circumstances. Is crypto good in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Is it bad? Neutral? It’s a hard question to answer.
Cryptocurrency is now a more mainstream part of the global financial system, which means that — for better or for worse — it’s inevitably a part of international conflict, too. This is on full display as Russian forces invade Ukraine. Some Ukrainians are also turning to crypto as an alternative to Ukrainian financial institutions, which are limiting people’s access to bank accounts and foreign currency. In a scenario where governments are in chaos, it’s difficult to rely on traditional banks, and there’s fear of surveillance. So a relatively anonymous system where no government is involved is appealing.
“The fact that it can’t be frozen, the fact that it can’t be censored, and the fact that it can be used without ID is very, very important,” Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, told Recode. “And they are why bitcoin is such an important humanitarian tool.”
Millions of dollars in crypto have flowed in to support Ukraine’s army and hacktivist groups. Almost $100 million worth of crypto has been sent to support Ukrainians over the past several weeks, said Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, on March 9. The Ukrainian government itself is soliciting donations in crypto and has raised at least $54 million as of March 11. The Ukrainian government has already spent at least $15 million of the crypto it’s received, and has brought on several crypto companies to help, including FTX, Kuna, and a company called Everstake.
The government has also launched a website to centralize its crypto-based fundraising effort. This new website explains that Ukraine is indeed accepting several cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and the meme-inspired dogecoin, to support its fight against Russia, and that it’s also open to fiat currency donations, too. (“Want to HODL? Send Cash,” the site says.) Because the country’s officials can’t make all the purchases they want using crypto, they sometimes convert some of these donations back into fiat currency to buy supplies.
Just how useful an avenue crypto is for people in crisis or organizations in need of donations is up for debate. You need a relatively sophisticated understanding of technology to use crypto, and if you weren’t already set up for it, the onset of a war might not be the moment to try to do it. Plenty of donations to Ukrainian groups are flowing in just fine using more traditional currencies — though one such group was banned from Patreon because fundraising for military equipment violates the platform’s rules.
“This is not a time for disrupting things. Folks have their lives disrupted already,” said Giulio Coppi, global digital specialist at the Norwegian Refugee Council.
All of the things that make crypto appealing to those under siege apply to those doing the sieging as well. Crypto is often used by bad actors, and could be exploited by Russia to avoid sanctions, which are currently the main weapon being employed by the US and its allies against Russia. Its prevalence in cyberwarfare also means people holding crypto could be a target for cyberattacks, and although one of the main appeals of crypto is that it’s supposed to be anonymous, it isn’t foolproof.
More broadly, cryptocurrencies are quite volatile. While proponents of the crypto space often argue that bitcoin and the like are some sort of “digital gold,” they’ve lost value amid global uncertainty, undercutting the argument that they’re a kind of safe haven. If you imagine a scenario where you take $1,000 out of Ukraine in a cryptocurrency and by the time you’re able to convert it back to cash it’s lost half its value, that’s not ideal. But what if crypto is the easiest way to get money in a crisis? Is it better than nothing at all?
Right now, at least some Ukrainians escaping the country seem to be taking their crypto with them, which they hope to convert back into fiat currency once they arrive to safety. Others seem to be looking toward crypto as a way to store their wealth as Ukraine’s economy collapses; the country’s central bank suspended electronic cash transfers at the start of the invasion and is blocking Ukrainian citizens from withdrawing foreign currency for many types of transactions. In the last week of February, trading on the Ukrainian crypto platform Kuna reached its highest level since May 2021.
“In Ukraine right now, you can download a bitcoin wallet open source — totally unconnected from your ID — and you can generate an address via a QR code or an alphanumeric string,” Gladstein explained. “You can paste that to me, I can send you $1,000, and it goes through in a few minutes.”
Using crypto in the middle of a crisis isn’t necessarily easy. For one thing, you need an internet connection and a working device. You also need to know how to use crypto, which has a steep learning curve and is something people aren’t going to be able to pick up quickly in moments of crisis. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies, and they don’t all work the same way. Crypto also has to be available to buy: In February, even wealthier Ukrainians were reportedly having trouble buying Tether, a digital currency that’s pegged to the US dollar. And if you’re only converting other assets you own into crypto now, the rest of the financial system needs to be working, too.
“It might work for some people, but they need first to unfreeze their assets, transfer them into digital currency, and then manage to get out [of the country], which is actually the main problem right now,” Coppi said. “And then when they’re out, hope it hasn’t devalued too much.”
That means that for now, crypto might be most helpful to the people who already have it. That could account for millions of people in Ukraine, which has spent the last few years aggressively promoting its own domestic cryptocurrency industry. In February, the country’s parliament passed a law “legalizing” crypto, and Ukraine now ranks fourth in the world in terms of crypto adoption, according to the blockchain research company Chainalysis.
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Andriy Andriyenko/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
As the conflict continues, supporters of Ukraine are sending even more crypto into the country. On social media sites and platforms like Telegram, people — including leaders of the country’s burgeoning crypto sector — are sharing their crypto wallet addresses and soliciting donations. One NGO supporting the Ukrainian military has reportedly raised several million in cryptocurrency, and groups are using crypto to buy a motley collection of military equipment, medical supplies, and even a facial recognition app. Some of these fundraising efforts have been active for months, but picked up steam in early March.
To be sure, if you’re looking to send crypto to help in Ukraine, it’s important to check if the people on the receiving end want it and are equipped to handle it. Notably, neither the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense nor the National Bank of Ukraine appear to be directly accepting cryptocurrency donations right now.
Other aspects of Ukraine’s crypto fundraising plans are still up in the air. People were initially promised a free digital token in exchange for their crypto, but officials now say that donors will receive an NFT in support of the Ukrainian army instead. Given crypto’s volatility, it’s also worth remembering that the amount of the donation in crypto isn’t set in stone and could drop fast.
“If they don’t ask you for it, don’t send it,” Coppi said.
The heroic version of crypto in crisis — one that paints it as an alternative for people in dire situations — obfuscates the darker side of the space. It’s a very pertinent side, in particular, with regard to Russia.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States government was worried that cryptocurrencies could dull the impact of economic sanctions. Iran has used bitcoin mining to bypass trade embargoes, according to research from the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Multiple countries have hit Russia with heavy sanctions. In some corners, that’s caused concern that Russia could use crypto to circumvent sanctions and move money undetected. As the New York Times outlines, the Russian government has been developing a digital ruble, and Russia has been building tools to help hide the origins of digital transactions. Basically, if sanctions are meant to keep countries and businesses from dealing with Russia, crypto would be a way to get around them. Michael Parker, a former federal prosecutor, told the Times it would be “naive” to think Russia hadn’t gamed out a scenario where sanctions were imposed and it would have to find alternatives.
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To avoid this scenario, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, has called for crypto and blockchain platforms to block the addresses of Russian users. The Biden administration is also weighing how it might sanction Russian cryptocurrency assets, and has already urged crypto exchanges to ensure that specific, sanctioned individuals and organizations from Russia aren’t using their platforms. Four senators, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Mark Warner, wrote to the Treasury Department earlier this month to ask how crypto is impacting sanctions enforcement.
While cutting off Russia’s access to crypto could have real repercussions for the country — crypto has become increasingly popular in Russia, which is also the world’s third-largest bitcoin miner — it may not be possible. Not all exchanges confirm the identity of their customers, and it’s generally difficult to track the origin of cryptocurrency transactions. Whether a cryptocurrency exchange legally has to comply with sanctions may depend on where they’re registered and where they operate. Many exchanges have rebuffed calls for them to freeze Russian accounts, and others have argued that crypto isn’t a realistic option for people looking to evade sanctions.
Crypto can also be used to fundraise for bad actors. Just as pro-Ukrainian groups have been able to get funding via crypto, so have pro-Russian separatist groups in Ukraine, including in 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, said Jess Symington, the head of research at Elliptic. “The pro-Russian groups were particularly active around the 2014 conflict,” she said.
Russia has heavy ties to crypto-linked cybercrimes and illegal activity such as money laundering and ransomware. According to one analysis from Chainalysis, three-quarters of the money made through ransomware attacks in 2021 went to hackers linked to Russia. In January, the Ukrainian government was targeted by a series of cyberattacks that disguised themselves as ransomware that demanded bitcoin, before destroying data on government computers.
“Capital flight by economically distressed Ukrainians, or even Russians, is a very different thing than the Russian state attempting to launder money or evade sanctions,” said Alex Zerden, a former Treasury Department official under the Obama and Trump administrations.
Coppi, from the Norwegian Refugee Council, warned that people putting their money in crypto may become unsuspecting victims in cyberwarfare, and not only in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “Most conflicts are going to be more and more about cyberwarfare,” he said. “You risk becoming a target.”
That being said, it’s not as though other currencies can’t be used for unsavory activities. “US dollars are used for a lot of really great economic activities,” Zerden said. “It’s also used to buy drugs and weapons and, you know, engage in human trafficking, right?”
One of the big arguments that crypto proponents have long made is that cryptocurrencies have the potential to act as “digital gold.” That means that, unlike fiat currencies, bitcoin can’t be diluted because there’s only going to ever be a set number of bitcoin, and that investing in cryptocurrencies is a way to diversify your portfolio in the face of volatility. Theoretically, that’s supposed to mean that bitcoin is a way to hedge against inflation, or that if the stock market crashes, bitcoin won’t. This theory hasn’t entirely proven to be true. Crypto has shown itself to be super volatile, and it often moves with stocks. The current conflict has highlighted crypto’s volatility.
Bitcoin fell when Russia invaded Ukraine, as did the S&P 500 — it didn’t act differently from major US stocks. And as the S&P 500 rebounded later in the week, so did bitcoin.
“That’s removing the perception that people had that cryptocurrencies could be used as a hedging asset against these kinds of macroeconomic conditions,” said Hugh Harsono, a digital currency researcher.
Still, cryptocurrency advocates say bitcoin can be better than the alternatives — like cash, bank accounts, or other physical assets, like gold or real estate — because it’s beyond the control of any one institution and easily transportable. And while crypto may be volatile, it can be less volatile than some countries’ fiat currencies or markets. Earlier this year, the Turkish lira became more volatile than bitcoin, which prompted some people in Turkey to cash in their fiat currency for bitcoin and Tether.
“You’re worried that bitcoin went down 10 percent today or whatever,” Gladstein, from the Human Rights Foundation, said. “What are your other options for Ukrainians? What are they going to do? Put it in the Ukrainian stock market? Are they going to put it in a house? Are they going to bring the house with them?”
The extent to which people in Russia are turning to crypto right now is unclear. In the days just before and after the invasion, trading between rubles and bitcoin surged on Binance, one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. But data from Chainalysis suggests that crypto activity in rubles in March is lower than what it was at the end of February, and is much lower than its record level. There could still be a lot of crypto in Russia overall, however. While the Russian government has not been as welcoming to crypto as Ukraine, Russian people may have more than $200 billion worth of crypto, according to an estimate from the Kremlin made before Russia invaded Ukraine.
This isn’t the first time people have turned to crypto amid an international conflict, but it does feel like the first time crypto is front and center, so much so that some have even called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “the world’s first crypto war.”
This is largely thanks to crypto proponents who have rallied in support of Ukraine and tried to find a role for crypto. The cryptocurrency exchange FTX, for instance, has given the equivalent of $25 to every Ukrainian user on its platform to use as they please, according to its CEO Sam Bankman- Fried. One of the co-founders of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova, has organized a fundraising effort to sell 10,000 NFTs of the Ukrainian flag. Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-born founder of ethereum, has encouraged people to donate to humanitarian efforts in the country with crypto.
Of course, some of crypto boosters’ efforts to inject the digital assets into a war effort have been a little cringeworthy. It doesn’t really help for a bored ape NFT person to express solidarity with Ukraine. Given the scamminess of parts of the space, it’s also hard to know which projects are actually going to help people in Ukraine and which ones are just money grabs by opportunists.
For now, we don’t know how crypto will shape international conflict, or whether it will ultimately help or hurt. People fleeing war zones might find a unique use for crypto, but they’ll need to figure out how to use it first. There are already plenty of other ways to raise and move money that don’t involve digital currencies. And while crypto may make it easier to sidestep sanctions, countries were evading sanctions long before bitcoin arrived.
What we do know is that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are now a real factor in global economies and in conflicts. Whether it’s good or bad in wartime, crypto is doing what its proponents say it does — giving people a way to work outside of traditional financial institutions — and there’s no sign that will change anytime soon.
Update, March 15, 2:30 pm ET: This piece was updated to note that Ukraine’s government has launched a website focused on its cryptocurrency fundraising efforts.
Update, March 7, 1:15 pm ET: This piece was updated to include new information about the role of cryptocurrency in the Russia-Ukraine war and to reference the most recent data available about the Ukrainian government’s crypto fundraising efforts.
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Body found in a car -
Youth murdered at Ballupete -
Siphoning of RFL funds: Supreme Court dismisses interim bail plea of Shivinder Mohan Singh -
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Farmers demand withdrawal of State laws on farm reforms - Thousands of farmers from Mysuru to participate in Bengaluru Chalo agitation
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New York Times takes down third-party Wordle Archive - Move could signal a more aggressive stance on certain Wordle clones. - link
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OAN sues AT&T, says being kicked off DirecTV may force it to shut down - OAN relies heavily on expiring DirecTV deal and is struggling to find new partners. - link
Enamored with her, he asks if he can have sex with her. Naturally, she says no, and gets off the bus. The man goes to the bus driver and asks him if he knows of a way for him to have sex with the nun. “Well,” says the bus driver, “every night at 8 o’clock, she goes to the cemetery to pray. If you dress up as God, I’m sure you could convince her to have sex with you.” The man decides to try it, and dresses up in his best God costume. At eight, he sees the nun and appears before her. “Oh, God!” she exclaims. “Take me with you!” The man tells the nun that she must first have sex with him to prove her loyalty. The nun says yes, but tells him she prefers anal sex. Before you know it, they’re getting down to it, having nasty, grunty, loud sex. After it’s over, the man pulls off his God disguise. “Ha, ha! I’m the man from the bus!” “Ha, ha!” says the nun, removing her costume. “I’m the bus driver!”
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Now I am trying to figure out which one.
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So I put it under my arm, walked out of the building and went home.
Eventually, he called me on my phone and said, “Bring it back here right now!”
I replied, “£100 and it’s yours.”
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Because you’re smoking hot and I want to put your butt in my mouth.
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A politician.
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