The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has established a cryptocurrency fund to accept donations in bitcoins and Ethereum.

Digital assets will finance open source technologies for children and youth around the world.

UNICEF became the first organization in the UN that transacts in cryptocurrency, the fund said in a press release.

“If the digital economy and currencies have the potential to shape the lives of future generations, it is important to explore the opportunities they offer ,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Foret.

The first contributions to the UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund will come from the Ethereum Foundation through the French branch of the children's fund, which previously began to accept donations in nine cryptocurrencies.

Digital assets will be directed to finance three grantees of the UNICEF Innovation Fund. These are startups Prescrypto, Atix Labs and Utopixar, working in the areas of “tracking recipes, selecting investors and those who need financing, as well as public tokens and business relations”. GIGA will also receive funds from the cryptocurrency fund for connecting schools around the world to the Internet.

During a speech at a DevCon conference, Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi announced that 100 ETH (approximately $ 18.3 thousand) had already been sent to the UNICEF Cryptocurrency Fund.

. @ mi__ayako shared the EF sent 100 eth to UNICEF as part of a new partnership aimed at helping children around the world. #DevCon pic.twitter.com/TNKytMq14O

– Leigh Cuen (@La__Cuen) October 9, 2019

A UNICEF statement says cryptocurrencies are accepted by the national fund committees of the USA, Australia, New Zealand and France.

It is noteworthy that the Australian branch of UNICEF previously used mining to collect donations.

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