I dare you to describe a method of wire transfer to Kyiv that works in that quantity and timescale and is practically usable by the recipient that quickly and cannot be blocked by your local government's policies.
There simply isn't anything close to that. People that think that this is the same as a wire via a regulated bank are ignorant of the specifics of each type of payment.
Cryptocurrency is indeed cash, and is useful the same way cash is useful.
The regulations exist for a reason. The reason crypto do not have them is because there is no quantity.
Not because it is magically immune to existing in societies
'Yes it does, I got money to refugees when it was otherwise impossible.'
"Well... you shouldn't be able to do that."
So the majority of crypto donations were from Ukrainians on Kuna exchange; hardly a prime example of global crypto's good will. Also $100M is kind of small when you consider it next to the $14B congress has promissed to Ukraine. Then consider the total $1.5T sticker price of the congressional spending bill that $14B was a part of and it all seems insignificant.
In short we can and should give more to Ukraine.
>In short we can and should give more to Ukraine.
And this is a way to give direct aid, something you ostensibly want, and yet you're stuck saying crypto doesn't count, somehow.
It seems a less epicyclic approach is to just accept that this is a valid use case rather than finding a way to out-argue it.
Without the ability to create and control chokepoints like banking institution, it may be impossible to stop people voting with their feet when it comes to international crypto transfers. Especially once people figure out what privacy preserving designs work in practice.
Given the whispers around unbanking political protesters, at some point it may become necessary to deal in crypto to have a political opinion. They can't arrest everyone.
Any anonymous chains like Monero will be blacklisted and only exist in an island where its economy is limited to certain illegal commodities, with the off ramp to wash it clean complex.
I don't want some unknown group of Crypto Bros completely outside my control running the economy of my country. At least in a democracy the people have some control.
What happened here is a wire transfer, not different from me sending money from my bank account to someone else bank account. Just with two additional transformation steps (make money into whatever crypto, make whatever crypto back into money).