After a large earthquake hit Morocco causing at least 2,000 fatalities in Marrakech alone, Morocco’s fourth largest city, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance pledged millions in Binance Coin (BNB) as aid relief.
According to an announcement on Sept. 11, a few days after the disaster struck, Binance said it will airdrop up to $3 million in (BNB) to users it has identified to be living in the affected areas.
The earthquake was identified as a magnitude 7 on the Richter scale, which categorizes it as “major.”
Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the founder and CEO of Binance, called the impact of the earthquake “devastating” to the Moroccan people and said his heart goes out to the country.
Our hearts go out to the people in Morocco#Binance to donate $3,000,000 in #BNB to our users in Morocco
We standby our users in times of need. Stay strong. https://t.co/lQzLvhuuQ3
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) September 11, 2023
He also called for users to distribute the funds to those most in need if they weren’t affected by the incident.
“For Moroccan users who receive these donations but are unimpacted by the earthquake, we ask them to pass the funds on to those most in need.”
Binance said it will identify users in the region using a Proof of Address (POA) protocol that was completed prior to the disaster on Sept. 9. Users who have done so and are shown as located in the Marrakech-Safi province, the most affected region, will receive $100 worth of (BNB) directly to their Binance accounts.
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For Moroccan users outside of the most critical province, Binance plans to airdrop $10 in (BNB) each. It expects nearly 70,000 Binance users living in Morocco to be affected by the aid in some capacity starting on Sept. 12.
It said it has also created a public wallet address which is accepting contributions for additional aid, which can be made in (BNB), (BTC), (ETH), (USDC), (USDT), or (BUSD).
In March, Binance also rose to the occasion and delivered a similar aid scheme to those affected by the violent earthquakes that hit the Turkish-Syrian border region, also with $100 airdrops in (BNB) tokens.
Crypto has been increasingly used as a medium in which aid is being made accessible to victims of disasters and as a means of charity.
During the Turkish-Syrian earthquake devastation, alongside Binance, many major players in the Web3 space also used crypto as a means of dispersing aid to impacted communities. This included metaverse developer the Sandbox, Bitget, Tether and Gate.io, among others.
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