Dogecoinis sending yet another team tothe moonthe 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
A week afterraising more than $30,000to help fund the Jamaican bobsled team’s trip to Sochi, the Dogecoin community has stepped up with nearly $7,000 in donations of the meme-themed virtual currency to help send three athletes from India to the 2014 Games.
From the Post:
India’s sports ministry agreed to help the athletes defray the costs of competing at Sochi. Keshavan received sufficient funds, but it has been unclear whether the other two competitors can afford to make the trip. Roshan Lal Thakur, secretary general of the Winter Games Federation of India, said he has finally received three-quarters of the$22,000 needed to send the alpine skier Himanshu Thakur and cross-country skier Nadeem Iqbal and their coaches to the Games. Still, he doesn’t know where he will get the rest.
“Maybe I have to borrow from friends,” he said. “Some miracle will happen, no?”
Some miracle will happen indeed. Within hours on Wednesday, Dogecoin users had raised roughly $4,500 worth of Dogecoin. And as of this writing, the balance sits at about $6,700 – more than enough to reach the $22,000 total needed – according to Ben Doernberg, a member of the Dogecoin Foundation, which helps facilitate the Dogecoin community’s charitable efforts. Nearly 470 people havedonated to the fund, with amounts ranging from as little as 2 Doge to one donation of 3,000,000 doge or about $4,700, at current exchange rates.
As chance would have it, one redditor was able to get in touch with Keshavan’s wife, Namita, who provided further details about her husband’s financial situation and that of the other Indian athletes.Namita writes:
Because Keshavan has covered his expenses, it is likely that the donations will go toward funding Indian alpine skiers Thakur and Iqba. However, the Dogecoin Foundation is still working out the details of how best to send the funds to the Indian athletes in need, says Doernberg. The funds may go directly to Winter Games Federation of India’s secretary general Roshan Lal Thakur – but only if that doesn’t result in a bureaucratic mess.
“Right now, we’re waiting to talk to Shiva to make totally sure that this secretary general is the right person to send the money to, and that that’s how it will best get to the athletes,” says Doernberg. “We don’t want it going into a bureaucratic process where it takes so long that it doesn’t get to the athletes in time.”
While India’s athletes may now have enough money to make it to Sochi, their challenges are far from over. Last year, a criminal investigation into the Indian Olympic Association forced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to suspend its charter, meaning none of the country’s three athletes will be allowed to carry the Indian flag during the Opening Ceremonies, which will take place on Friday, February 7.
In the mean time, watch a video of Keshavan’s supremely ballsy training routine below:
