The institution has so far received $32,000 as donation in the form of cryptocurrencies in less than a month.
Approximately $22,000 has been utilized to fund the establishment of first advanced medical post in Castel Gandolfo, a town near Rome.
The funds were utilized to acquire a pneumatic tent that will host the medical post, along with other critical equipment. The tent, setup during Italy’s “blood donation day,” was utilized as a screening venue for pre-donation medical testing.
Bruno Pietrosanti, the president of the Italian Red Cross expressed happiness about the successful completion of initial milestone in fundraising:
“With great pleasure, we reached the first main milestone of our fundraising. We are happy to have turned the received donations into a tangible aid and we are excited to have received so much help from the Bitcoin community.”
COO of Helperbit, Davide Menegaldo, started the crypto based fund raising initiative for Red Cross. Menegaldo said that the blood donation activity will continue twice a week for the next four months, with the forthcoming event planned for April 19.
Menegaldo further stated that the “Red Cross team plans to deploy further equipment bought with bitcoin donations ahead of the next event.”
At the time of writing this article, the fund raising program has received over 4 Bitcoins (BTC) or 113% above its fund raising objective. More than $10,000 is yet to be used.
After surpassing its initial objective of raising $10,700 in a matter of three days, the Red Cross took another two weeks to achieve its second objective of raising roughly $26,000. The organization continues to accept donations.
Menegaldo informed that it costs $13,000 to set up the medical post with fundamental equipment. If the medical post consists of advanced equipment, then it would cost at least $22,000, according to Menegaldo.
Even though Helperbit’s COO highlights that the company has ventured to locate aid industry vendors accepting Bitcoin, he acknowledges:
“It is clear that this purpose needs to be balanced with the situation in [the] current world, so we will try to find the tradeoff between a full bitcoin-only use case and the current emergency.”
Red Cross has paid a fee of mere 0.55% on 2.195 BTC spent so far, underlining the efficiency of crypto in charity.
“This initiative showed how it was possible to transform BTC coming from all over the world into a tangible asset, needed during an emergency situation, in just two weeks and with a total much lower than 1%.”
Bitcoin represented 97% of total donation, while other altcoins accounted for 3% of the overall donations. Interestingly, 90% of donations have been made by anonymous donors.