The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is launching a blockchain-based aid program to transfer USDC, a stablecoin created by Circle and Coinbase, to eligible recipients’ Vibrant digital wallets running on the Stellar network.

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has launched a new tool to help customers recover more than 4,000 currently unsupported Ethereum-based tokens sent to its users’ addresses.

The first Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange have received nearly $54 million and $20 million in initial investments for a total near $75 million.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• UN to Send USDC to Displaced Ukrainians
• Coinbase Launches ERC-20 Asset Recovery Tool
• Hong Kong Bitcoin and Ether ETFs Draw in $75 Million
• Crypto Market Movers – CELO, DASH, APE

UN to Send USDC to Displaced Ukrainians

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is launching a blockchain-based aid program to transfer USDC, a stablecoin created by Circle and Coinbase, to eligible recipients’ Vibrant digital wallets running on the Stellar network.

Aid recipients will be able to receive the funds in dollars, euros, or another local currency at a MoneyGram location. In Ukraine, there are 4,500 of these locations, and the funds will be distributed to those most affected by the war to help cover basic expenses for food, medical care, heating, and more.

UNHCR Representative to Ukraine Karolina Lindholm Billing said in a statement:

“UNHCR has been collaborating for years with the tech sector, which has played a crucial role in helping us to innovate to deliver assistance faster, as speed is of the essence in humanitarian action.”

UNHCR’s program is being launched in collaboration with the Stellar Development Foundation and is being piloted in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Lviv and Vinnytsia. The program is set to roll out to other regions in the future.

Coinbase Launches ERC-20 Asset Recovery Tool

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has launched a new tool to help customers recover more than 4,000 currently unsupported Ethereum-based tokens sent to its users’ addresses.

As Coinbase doesn’t support these tokens, they aren’t registered on its ledger and would become unrecoverable as Coinbase does not have access to the private keys needed to reverse the transactions.

With the new tool, which will become available over the next few weeks, users will be able to recover their assets by providing the Ethereum TXID for the transaction they made where the asset was lost, and the Coinbase address that the funds were sent to.

There will be a 5% recovery fee for assets above $100 in value, in addition to a separate network transaction fee that will apply to every recovery. Coinbase’s blog post announcing the tool details:

“Our recovery tool is able to move unsupported assets directly from your inbound address to your self-custodial wallet without exposing private keys at any point. We did this by using patent-pending technology to send the funds directly from your inbound address without processing the funds through our centralized exchange infrastructure.”

The feature isn’t currently available to Coinbase users in Japan and isn’t available for Coinbase Prime.

Hong Kong Bitcoin and Ether ETFs Draw in $75 Million

The first Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange have received nearly $54 million and $20 million in initial investments for a total near $75 million.

The ETFs, the CSOP Bitcoin Futures ETF and CSOP Ether Futures ETF, will track CME’s Bitcoin and Ether futures. The ETFsare being launched at a time in which cryptocurrency prices have been affected by a wave of bankruptcies and the collapse of FTX.

Tim McCourt, global head of equity and FX products at CME, said the approval of the ETFs is an “important milestone” for digital assets in Asia that “underscores the robust growth and increasing client demand for exposure to bitcoin and ether.”

Crypto Market Movers – CELO, DASH, APE

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Celo (CELO) - CELO is a utility and governance asset for the Celo community, which has a fixed supply and variable value. With CELO, users can help shape the direction of the Celo Platform. Celo's mission is to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity for everyone.

Dash (DASH) - Dash is an open-source blockchain and cryptocurrency focused on offering a fast, cheap global payments network that is decentralized in nature, whose name comes from "digital cash," was launched in January 2014 as a fork of Litecoin (LTC). Since going live, Dash has grown to include features such as a two-tier network with incentivized nodes, including "masternodes," and decentralized project governance;

ApeCoin (APE) - ApeCoin is an ERC-20 governance and utility token used within the APE ecosystem to empower decentralized community building at the forefront of web3. The APE Foundation is the steward of ApeCoin. It is the base layer on which ApeCoin holders in the ApeCoin DAO can build.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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