An autonomous news firm in Russia has collected up to $250,000 worth of crypto donated by the supporters to keep on reporting the autonomous news while being under a bombardment of censorship and propaganda imposed by the government of the country. Today, a Latvian-based news site (which is in the Russian language) – Meduza – that asserts to portray the true image of Russia, has been appealing for contributions since April previous year in United States dollar (USD), euro, as well as cryptocurrencies taking into account ZEC (Zcash), XMR (Monero), USDT (Tether), BNB, ETH (Ether), and BTC (Bitcoin).
Since the news agency’s issuance of the donations request, it has acquired nearly $250,000 worth of crypto-based donations made via nearly 146,000 distinct transactions. Up to 93% of the cumulative amount of the donations was provided in Bitcoin (nearly $116,954) and ETH (up to $117,767).
April of the previous year was the time when the financial difficulties of Meduza started. Then it as well as a few other autonomous media outlets were labeled as foreign bodies by the Justice Ministry of Russia, pushing the firm to issue an attention-grasping caution in every one of the articles thereof in the Russian language notifying the customers about the firm’s latest status specified by Russia. The very caution would additionally be presented in the promotions of the platform, paving the way toward the damage of up to the entirety of its advertisers.
In its donations FAQ section, it noted that some of the firms will recompense to advertise their goods under a caution proposing that the presented material was manufactured by some foreign agents. Being categorized as a foreign entity did not put a stop to the donations coming from the readers throughout Russia, nonetheless, an avenue was promptly established by the firm for contributors to deliver regular donations via banks with the utilization of Stripe (a payment processor) as well as crypto.
Nevertheless, Meduza was found to be smashed by both the pressure from the Western sanctions as well as the censorship imposed by the authorities in Russia. The government of Russia stopped the website of the venue by accusing it of disseminating data that violates the law. In addition to this, a well-known avenue permitting donations from supporters within Russia, the SWIFT network, was also blocked concerning business with the banks within Russia, on 26th February.
James Thompson