BREAKING: Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao starts a relief fund for victims of Japan flooding; encourages the crypto community to join
Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, will be starting a charity fund in response to the latest catastrophic flooding and rain-slides which hit the western areas of Japan.
Flooding and landslides have killed at least 50 people and left dozens missing in Western Japan, reports BBC. Most of the deaths happened in the Hiroshima prefecture which has been hit the hardest. Authorities have ordered more than 1.5 million people to immediately evacuate their areas of residence due to an impending threat of further flooding.
This event has seemingly moved Mr. Zhao as he tweeted out the following today:
“Our hearts go out to the victims in West Japan. @binance will begin with a $1,000,000 USD equivalent donation in either BNB, BTC, or JPY. We also ask our crypto partners to join us and help our friends in need.”
Responding to his initial tweet, he added:
“Exact logistics will be figured out shortly. Reply to this thread or let me know if you (ur project) want to donate. Bonus points for future listing requests. And we may count your donations towards the listing fees. Listed projects, you know what to do!”
The community responded positively, with users expressing their gratitude for Mr. Zhao raising awareness and financially supporting the hurt people of Japan. @coperu100 said the following:
“As a Japanese, I would like to express our sincere appreciation for your kindness.”
Others immediately chimed in with their own donations. @Orbitcoin responded by saying:
“i’ll help out with an Odyssey OCN donation”
An hour later, Changpeng Zhao tweeted out an update to his thread which explained how you can donate to this relief fund. The full tweet says:
“To make a donation through Binance, 1 (optional, skip to be anonymous) email us at donations@binance.com. 2. send ETH or ERC20 to 0xA73d9021f67931563fDfe3E8f66261086319a1FC. All outgoing tx from this address will be explained by Binance and used for charity purposes only.”
Finally, @cz_binance concluded his thread by tweeting the following:
“Given the short time, we had to keep this very simple for this time. We will build something more systematic later. Our team is contacting local authorities to figure out final delivery logistics too.”
A couple of twitter accounts rightfully started wondering if this might spawn a new wave of “sending cryptocurrency” scams. @shillycrypto summed it up well:
“bruh CZ telling people to make donations via a naked ETH address in a Tweet is a terrible terrible awful idea. this is going to unleash a whole new level of scams on twitter.”
Perhaps this was a bit of an ill-conceived strategy of money collecting by the Binance CEO but his original tweet can be recognized by the blue check-mark that is placed next to his name. Mr. Zhao’s intentions are definitely genuine so be sure to check out and follow his official account @cz_binance for further updates on how you can contribute to the cause.
