Bitcoin Forum

Good afternoon fellow cryptopians,

I was thinking last night about the possibilities for independent research journalists to fund themselves through a kind of ''crypto-Patreon'' when I got hit with the idea of crowdfunding whistleblowers. We could make a system in which you had an asker of information who made certain criteria for when the money gets released and then all the backers would get to vote on when the money is released. This could for example be once the giver of information goes to the appropriate court system to share their information or when a big unrelated media company judges a particular piece of information to be true or at least relevant enough to be rewarded with an article.

I think this could bring a lot of positive image for the cryptocommunity and it could help to realise the true potential of cryptocurrency, which in my opinion is apolitical money. There are already established organisations to give this money to, such as Wikileaks for whom I carry a great respect and I would encourage everyone to consider giving them your support. However, relying on one organisation to do the heavy work of seeking out the truth no matter the difficulty is not only vulnerable to attack, it is also unfair to the founders and directors of Wikileaks. What I would propose is a more or less decentralised and uncensorable (potentially having the most relevant data stored as plaintext in the actual proposed blockchain) database of leaked whistleblower information. The whistleblowers themselves would obviously be the recipients of the crowdfunded cryptocurrency to fund their independence from the organisation that they are inevitably going to have to leave behind.

I could quite simply make a website that would interface with a second layer solution on ethereum. The whole system is something that I and the people around me could potentially build. Therefore I would like to test the reaction to such a proposal on this webforum. Thank you for reading and I hope to read some interesting replies!

-Auralea

*edit* spelling mistake

What’s the model? Why would individuals back the project? I fail to see the incentive here or just have a complete misunderstanding of the actual concept...

We should pay the military not to fight too...

@AT101ET People would back the projects because people donate to things like wikileaks: they want to find out what certain insiders have to say.

About paying the military not to fight, that might actually not be that bad of an idea either. We could start with the military because it is in principle a foreign fighting force, which pretty much every individual in the world would see some points in not having.

I believe the essence of the crypto world is such, that it will definitely need a whole lot of whistleblowers in order for the sector to be clean of fraud. Whistleblowers will be even more important here than the traditional economy.

Thanks for your reply!

I agree that the cryptosector needs more whistleblowers. As it is, the information that is out there in convoluted and nobody knows who has an interest in what information. We need to have some system like this. Unfortunately I do not live in a country where this would be permitted so I will not be the one setting this up.

Thanks for reading, I hope someone else finds this thread and has more balls than me ^^