Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has announced that he will run for office at the next presidential elections in 2018.



The official website of Navalny’s election campaign lists bitcoin as one of the method for supporting the electoral campaign. That is to say that for making donations people can opt for bank transfer, Yandex.Money online transfer, PayPal, as well as digital currency bitcoin.



According to Coinfox, Navalny’s bitcoin account is registered to the head of his electoral campaign Leonid Volkov.



In a recent tweet, Volkov said that within the first 3.5 hours following the announcement, they received $15,000 with 15% paid in bitcoin.

Никогда такого не видел: 3.5 часа, и собрали первый миллион рублей.

55% на Яндекс, 30% на Paypal, 15% (!) биткоинами. — Leonid Volkov (@leonidvolkov) December 13, 2016



The latest figures coming from Navalny’s election headquarters reveal that so far 20 BTC have been donated, which is equivalent to $15,600 or one million Russian rubles, Coinfox reported.



This is not the first time that Russian political leaders are looking at bitcoin for donations. In fact, cryptocurrency legislation and blockchain promotion were included in the parliamentary election programme of the left-of-centre political party Yabloko. In addition, the right-of-centre Party of Growth was also open for bitcoin donations during their parliamentary election campaign.