The fund was started by Sandeep Nailwal (co-founder, Polygon) and has since been supported by Vitalik Buterin (co-founder, Ethereum) and Balaji S. Srinivasan (former CTO at Coinbase).
Crypto Relief fund singular focus is to reduce the immediate suffering of Indian citizens, which they accomplish by:
- Connecting those in need to the verified sources of aid,
- Sourcing essential supplies and equipment from across the globe and providing them to the overwhelmed and under-resourced facilities,
- Setting up oxygen plants and dedicated COVID-centers in remote and underserved areas of the nation.
Indian crypto entrepreneurs and global crypto communities have shown the power of crypto philanthropy to the entire world through India’s Covid Crypto Relief fund amid India’s battle with the second wave of COVID19 by raising more than $1 billion last year.
Crypto Relief fund supported the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to establish a Genome Sequencing Lab. The Viral genome sequencing lab will focus on SARS-Cov-2 virus studies. These include continuous surveillance and tracking of the virus mutants and variants.
Crypto Relief collaborated with UNICEF India, UNICEF India receives USD 15 million from Crypto Relief for procuring syringes to support the Government of India’s vaccination drive
Sandeep Nailwal (co-founder, Polygon) and founder of Crypto relief fund on 28th Jan 2022 on Twitter announced “ Have been in discussions with Vitalik Buterin on how to accelerate relief efforts in India. And we have come up with a solution, we will move $100mn USDC back to Vitalik, a non-Indian, to do fast deployment in high risk/ reward projects”.
Since its inception, Crypto Relief has been extra cautious to be in full compliance with Indian jurisdiction, even though the Crypto relief entity is based out of India. Considering the fund’s foreign origin and laws of India, Crypto Relief followed a systematic, controlled & robust approach in disbursing funds mandated to be utilized for India. “But being an Indian citizen (NRI), I have to be extra cautious in any of the projects being donated to”, Sandeep mentioned on Twitter.
Vitalik being a non-Indian can do it in a more accelerated way by being able to do faster decision making and deploying to projects which have higher risk but high rewards too. Per conversations with Vitalik (who donated ~ 98% of the fund) on accelerated funding in Biotechnology & Medical Science at a global scale, it was concluded to a-portion 100 million USDC to Vitalik’s vision for him to implement the same.
Hence, to enable this vision, especially in R&D, “which may extend beyond India”, a sum of 100 million USDC will be transferred back to Vitalik Address for accelerated funding in the domains of Biotechnology And Medical science, wherever he deems fit.
Crypto Relief still reserves, 302 million USDC (Apart from 70 million USDC that it has already deployed) to keep disbursing in areas of need in India as it is. Crypto Relief wishes all the best to Vitalik’s team and may this amount help in creating a better world & future for all.
Replying to Sandeep Tweet, Vitalik Buterin replied “ Crypto Relief sending $100m of funds back to me. I plan to personally deploy these funds with the help of science advisors to complement Crypto Relief’s existing excellent work with some higher-risk higher reward covid science and relief projects worldwide”.
“Projects will include vaccine Research and development, innovative approaches to air filtration and ventilation and testing”, he further said.
Due to their complex nature, long path to profitability, and a significant degree of clinical, regulatory, and commercial risk, early-stage biotech and medical science startups have a narrower audience of institutional investors compared to companies with more traditional business models. Achieving and maintaining buy-side relevancy is critical to getting the attention an early-stage biotech company needs to access funding.
Due to the pandemic more Biotech and medical science companies emerge, startups need to come up with creative ways to stand out from the competition. Messaging and positioning are key elements to this strategy, but many younger companies have small, focused teams with limited business experience and fewer connections to sources of capital. Amplifying this challenge, early-stage companies often have little data to support their concept, as projections can’t be built from comparable companies.
Blockchain-based tokens promise to make it possible for anyone to invest in new companies and technologies. The dream is that blockchains can democratize fund-raising by issuing and managing all kinds of assets faster, cheaper, and more transparently than traditional financial institutions can. Blockchain is the bridge that connects a greater range of companies and ventures with a larger pool of potential investors. In the idealized future of blockchain-powered crowd investing, both sides of the market will win.
For blockchain enthusiasts, like Vitalik Buterin and Sandeep Nailwal the goal is much bigger: to revolutionize all investment markets, and even create brand-new ones like Biotechnology and Medical science as they are with high risk and high rewards. And before you roll your eyes, blockchains have proved to be phenomenal tools for raising money. This is an obvious takeaway from the boom in initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2017 and early 2018 when projects were raising hundreds of millions of dollars seemingly overnight by issuing blockchain-based assets.
Tokens can be designed to check that a buyer is eligible before letting a trade go through. This could eliminate many of the middlemen and make securities trading cheaper and faster. On top of that, blockchains create a tamper-resistant audit trail of every transaction, making it easier for issuers to keep track of and verify shareholders.
Scientists from Wuhan Institute have warned about a new strain of coronavirus, NeoCov, related to the Middle East respiratory syndrome MERS-coronavirus. NeoCoV carries with it the potentially combined high mortality rate of MERS-CoV (where one in three infected people die on average) and the high transmission rate of the current SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the researchers have said. With the rapidly mutating virus, the pandemic is far from over.
Pandemic has made Biotechnology and Medical science startups the hot new tech sector. Consequently, companies in the biopharma sector have generally been front-page news and that is likely to continue to be the case until the pandemic is under control, at least in developed countries.
Leaders across the crypto space have applauded the way Sandeep Nailwal has conceptualized and managed the movement of the Covid CryptoRelief fund and showed the true potential blockchain technology has in transforming the global charity sector methodology while having an immediate and real-world positive impact on the ground.
You can follow the CryptoRelief work at their Transparency page : https://cryptorelief.in/transparency?s=09
