No less than one million people had to flee from their homes in Chile after a powerful quake jolted the country’s central region. To help the survivors, SurBTC, Chile’s first fully fledged Bitcoin exchange, has created an account with the aim to help in collecting funds.
In a blog post, this Bitcoin exchange also outlined that the account will be only used to collect donations for the survivors. The features of this account are as under:
- 0% fee on every deposit, withdrawal or other transactions. This will be done both in Chilean Peso and Bitcoin.
- Every Bitcoin will be converted to Chilean Peso.
- SurBTC will only aid in collecting funds and the money will be given to chileayuda.com.
- The address is: 32hpM5uCFHFEkV1UuXWfwFef2u7GNKa4Yj
As per a BBC report, close to 10 people have died due to the tragedy so far.The report also stated that the residents of Chilean city Illapel (which was near the quake’s epicenter), went out of their houses as the buildings swayed dangerously. Later, a Tsunami alert was also issued but has been lifted.
The situation has remained tense since then with the rescue operations still going on. However, the impact of the earthquake was rather harsh and Chile needs help immediately.
SurBTC is new, but it has shown ample promise and has been providing Chile’s citizens an option to trade their Pesos with Bitcoin, and vice versa.
It also goes to the credit of the exchange that it quickly gained the support and trust of its government and also the citizens after it secured funding for its operations.
We had earlier reported how the Chilean government went a step further when it too decided to back the Bitcoin exchange by giving $40,000 in funding.
CEO and co-founder of SurBTC Guillermo Torrealba had then said that they felt that this was an “extraordinary validation” for their operations. This funding was provided as part of the state’s startup initiatives.