Bitcoin Forum

EpicChange.org now accepts donations via Bitcoin. They do Awesome work for orphans in Africa. You can find their bitcoin address on http://bitcoinaddress.com  Be sure to honor the amazing good they're doing in educating those beautiful gifted children, by sending them some Bitcoins.  :-)

I'll be happy to donate when they list their bitcoin address on their "Donate" page:
http://epicchange.org/donate.php

Although I trust you, Bruce, I don't like to encourage the idea of people donating to anonymous Bitcoin addresses that may or may not be related to the charity in whose name they are posted.

What exactly is the purpose of this site ??

I lol'ed. You weren't seriously expecting us to take your word for it right?

First, the purpose of my new page at http://bitcoinaddress.com is to create a master directory of public bitcoin addresses of people and organizations which accept donations via bitcoin. 

I curate it.   I verify personally each address by direct communication with the listed entity, or copying the address from their official site. 

By all means, no need to trust me.   Contact them directly to verify their address.   I just wanted to curate and publish one master list, in one place, for convenience, and for reference. 

_____

Epic Change emailed me back to tell me that....

They now accept donations via Bitcoin.  

See http://EpicChange.org for information.  

You can find their bitcoin address listed on http://bitcoinaddress.com

Please:

(1)    Send them an email asking them to list their Bitcoin address on their "Donate" page of their web site.

(2)   Ask them What their bitcoin address is, for verification. 

(3)   Send them a little (or a big) Bitcoin donation.   It couldn't be a better cause.    Talk about getting the biggest bang for your Buck...!

This is a bad idea.

If an organization stops accepting bitcoins, or changes to a different wallet, anyone who donates from your links will be throwing away their money.

Bitcoin donation addresses only make sense when they are directly maintained by the organization receiving the donations.

[edit: including bitcoin donation addresses in a TXT record of the DNS would work much better]

Agreed.  For many reasons.

Maybe it makes sense to keep a list of organisations which accept bitcoin donations.  But such a list should consist in organisation names and website links.  Nothing more, and certainly not the actual bitcoin addresses.

Also, organisations might want to change their receiving address for each donation/payment, in which case it doesn't make any sense to list it.

For the purpose of accepting a donation, why is this a bad idea?  Since it is a donation, the organization doesn't need to know who it came from.

It isn't like your address is secret, right?  If I give you a Bitcoin address, and you then do send to that address, I now know what your Bitcoin address is. 

Additionally, because that data has value, the recipient will likely store it in a database.  Then let's say the recipient's server gets hacked and that stored data with your Bitcoin address tied to your name winds up on some publicly shared torrent data file.  What's the risk?

Won't the payment processors, retailers, etc. do the same with Bitcoin that they do with credit card transaction data?  Once Bitcoin reaches visibility of higher levels of organizations, anonymity (for the average Bitcoin consumer) will be gone in 5, 4, 3, 2, ...

Fortunately, if I wish, I can create another wallet with a separate Bitcoin address, fairly easily.

Yes.  Even before I read this thread...  As I began working on the list today, I came to the same conclusion myself... for several reasons.  Those you guys mentioned, as well as:

• I don't want to have one more thing to constantly maintain and update, and
• I don't want to be blamed for funds being delivered to the wrong place, or not delivered at all

So, I changed the "Bitcoin Address" field to:  "Bitcoin Address Page".   That is, the link to their Bitcoin Address on their own web site.   If that's not available, then it just says, "(please email and ask for bitcoin address)".

This way, I won't be responsible for listing their correct current Bitcoin address.    I think it still adds lots of value.... just having all of those entities who accept donations listed in one place...  one directory.

It's sorta like our own Flattr for Bitcoin...

Organizations who have told me that they would accept Bitcoin donations will be added to the list.   As a result, they might get:

• Several people emailing them and asking for their Bitcoin address  (which is great for making them aware of how much interest there is from Bitcoin users), and
• Several actual donations (which is also the whole point - I know that I will probably donate at least a few Bitcoins to EVERY organization who shows up on the list, if only to encourage them)

A very important result from all this:   Thousands, or millions, of "audience" members of each of those organizations will be exposed to the text, "We also accept donations via Bitcoin." on these various web sites.   That will lead to tremendous credibility for Bitcoin, and loads and loads more users... as people Google, "What is a bitcoin?"  .....and find http://bitcoinme.com   :)

It's a bad habit, because if non-techie bitcoin users become accustomed to seeing lists of addresses of donation sites other then on those actual sites, someone is bound to make a fake directory of same with a series of addresses that belong to themselves.