Ukrainian activists are turning to bitcoins to fund a three-month protest in Kiev's Independence Square that helped oust President Viktor Yanukovych amid violence that left at least 82 people dead.
Photos of demonstrators on the barricades with signs seeking donations in the digital currency circulated on the Internet. In one such image posted on CoinDesk.com, a young woman working on the food line holds a paper with "Support the Revolution" in English over the background of Ukraine's blue- and-yellow national flag.
The signs include a QR code, a pixelated square that can be read by a smartphone's camera to link to a bitcoin address. Donations over three such accounts totaled about $15,600 worth of the digital currency, according to data on Blockchain.info. That's almost four years of average earnings in a country where average monthly income is 3,619 hryvnia ($338), according to the statistics office.