April 5 is “Blood Donation Day” in Italy. This year, it was celebrated by the Italian Red Cross by finishing constructions on an advanced medical post that was built with the funds gained from a crypto fundraiser. Close to $32,000 was raised with cryptocurrency donations, with the process lasting under one month. Around $22,000 was utilized to finance the first medical post of this initiative close to Rome, in Castel Gandolfo.
A pneumatic tent was bought to house the entire medical post, together with other needed materials. The tent’s erection happened during April 5 and will be utilized to screen people interested in making donations.
Italian Red Cross president, Bruno Pietrosanti, declared:
“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.”
Regular Blood Donations
The crypto campaign was set up by Helperbit. The company’s COO, David Menegaldo, declared for Cointelegraph that blood donation days are going to happen twice per week for 4 months. April 19 is the next donation date. He also added that the Red Cross team wants to deploy more equipment in the future, bought with the use of bitcoin donations.
The initiative was reported to have raised over 4 BTC, which marked 113% of the initial funding target. The cost of the new medical post with its basic equipment was reported as being around $13,000 but an advanced facility would go over $22,000.
Very Low Fees
The Italian Red Cross used 2.195 BTC until now and only had to pay fees of 0.55%. This highlights how efficient cryptocurrencies can be for donations.
Most of the donations (97%) came as BTC. The rest of the funds were alternative cryptocurrencies. Anonymous donors were responsible for around 90% of the contributions made.
