Bitcoin donations to a pro-military Ukrainian group surged to nearly $1 million after Russian President, Vladimir Putin, launched what has appeared to be a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on several fronts.

zkSync, a protocol responsible for implementing Ethereum scaling platforms, has announced the test network release of an Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible Zero-Knowledge rollup (zkEVM) years ahead of schedule.

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates. Its earnings per share were at $3.32 versus the $1.65 expected, while revenue was $2.5 billion, versus $1.94 billion expected.

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Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Ukrainian Military Receives Nearly $1 Million in Bitcoin Donations
• Ethereum ZK Rollup Testnet Launches
• Coinbase Beats Q4 Estimates, but Expects Trading Volume to Fall
• Crypto Market Movers – MANA, KEEP, IDEX
• Sponsored: Register for a Rewarding Bybit Experience

Ukrainian Military Receives Nearly $1 Million in Bitcoin Donations

Bitcoin donations to a pro-military Ukrainian group surged to nearly $1 million after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what has appeared to be a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on several fronts.

As reports of Russia’s military action in the country started rolling in, blockchain analytics and compliance firm Elliptic noted that some $570,000 in BTC had been donated to Ukrainian non-governmental organization “Come Back Alive,” which distributes supplies to soldiers, and other NGOs and volunteer organizations.

Blockchain data shows that one of the tracked addresses now has 24.97 BTC in it, worth close to $960,000 as donations keep pouring in. Most transactions occurred in the past week, with the majority of the funds coming in yesterday, following Putin’s announcement of what he deemed a “special military operation.”

Ukraine’s official website shares bank addresses people can donate to but adds that the “national legislation does not allow the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to use other payment systems (“Webmoney”, “Bitcoin”, “PayPal”, etc.).”

Ethereum ZK Rollup Testnet Launches

zkSync, a protocol responsible for implementing Ethereum scaling platforms, has announced the test network release of an Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible Zero-Knowledge rollup (zkEVM) years ahead of schedule.

The new test network is the first implementation of a ZK rollup capable of running the full Ethereum environment – the EVM – and will provide insights into how capable zero-knowledge technology is at scaling.

Over the last few years Ethereum rollups have taken two different approaches in scaling the base layer as Optimistic and Zero-Knowledge. Arbitrum is the most notable Optimistic chain while dYdX has taken advantage of ZK technology for its trading application.

ZK rollups are more computationally intensive and put a burden on nodes, but if zkEVM manages to create a similar end experience for users that Optimistic Rollups currently offer, they may do so with cheaper transaction fees and nearly immediate finality.

Coinbase Beats Q4 Estimates, but Expects Trading Volume to Fall

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates. Its earnings per share were at $3.32 versus $1.65 expected, while revenue was $2.5 billion, versus $1.94 billion expected.

The company predicted that retail monthly transaction users (MTUs) and total trading volume during the first quarter of the year are now going to be lower than the prior period and attributed the change to decreased cryptoasset volatility and a drop in crypto market prices.

The company said it expects subscriptions and services revenue to be lower in the current quarter because of falling cryptoassets prices. MTUs rose to 11.4 million from 7.4 million in the third quarter.

On its earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong shot down the idea the cryptocurrency market could be entering a new “crypto winter,” or a prolonged bear market. Armstrong said he does not expected such a downtrend because of a chance in cryptocurrency use cases.

Crypto Market Movers – MANA, KEEP, IDEX

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.

Decentraland (MANA) - Decentraland is a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications. Land in Decentraland is permanently owned by the community, giving them full control over their creations. Users claim ownership of virtual land on a blockchain-based ledger of parcels. Landowners control what content is published to their portion of land, which is identified by a set of cartesian coordinates (x,y).

Keep Network (KEEP) - Keep is an incentivized network for storing and encrypting private data on the public blockchain. The network is made of off-chain containers for private data known as keeps, while the KEEP work token enables it to be completely permissionless. With Keep, developers can finally build fully decentralized apps. Visit Keep to learn more and stake, and tBTC to see its power in action.

IDEX (IDEX) - IDEX is bringing its DEX to multiple high-performance blockchains. IDEX is currently available on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, with Polkadot and others to follow. Bridging the IDEX token to each blockchain enables stakers to secure IDEX’s L2 on all networks. In return, stakers earn 50% of the trading fees on all IDEX products.

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