Bitcoin Forum

The following press release can also be seen at http://lifeboat.com/ex/press.releases.bitcoins.hundred.thousand.dollars

September 24, 2013 — World’s first bitcoin endowment fund nears one hundred thousand dollars.

Thanks to a large pledge of 500 BTC (bitcoins) by Brian Cartmell, Lifeboat Foundation’s bitcoin endowment fund at https://lifeboat.com/ex/bitcoin has soared to nearly $100,000. Brian will match the next 500 BTC donated to Lifeboat Foundation.

Once we have matched Brian Cartmell’s 500 BTC pledge, the Lifeboat Foundation will be interested in funding cryptography-related projects as a 1984-like world would not only be unpleasant but could give the government the power to do terrible things that could even become existential threats.

While the Lifeboat Foundation was founded in the 21st century, until recently it was mainly funded using 20th century money, basically various types of monies backed by governments. Lifeboat is now working to have the majority of our funding come from 21st century money — money backed not by governments but by algorithms. The 21st century money Lifeboat is currently focused on is bitcoins.

Crypto-currencies have many advantages over old-fashioned government-backed money. For example they enable transparency, enabling Lifeboat to show that our endowment monies are stored in these wallets: 1 (http://blockchain.info/address/1Lifeboatu7Y9YqKQRcXfjWYJdXog9CS7r), 2 (http://blockchain.info/address/1LifeboatdUHD5eepYdcZZ57VjcwJU6CtB), 3 (http://blockchain.info/address/1Lifeboa1zJ7xJabHzVDmnsgqZ11m6LWL5), 4 (http://blockchain.info/address/1LifeDkGUgNJcneyRb5JUPTBF1pnT13C2U), 5 (http://blockchain.info/address/17aDRzRQK8ccBLVBzsms3ZasVKc9q3o3Qk), 6 (http://blockchain.info/address/1EYHFdzc3bnuzZAJxj2iCx4RdtdrVzkL92), and 7 (http://blockchain.info/address/1MVn2E3hMf9cziRCsZzFnf1oLtSEeMVCSx). They also allow people in less developed countries to have access to the rest of the world. For example, PayPal alone blocks access to over 60 countries, and many credit card companies have similar restrictions. Some are blocked for political reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don't think a human being from Haiti, Ethiopia, or Kenya should have diminished access to the world because of payment issues they can't control. Our goal is to enable people, not block them.

We would like to start a trend of nonprofits building endowment funds with bitcoins instead of just spending them all. Nonprofits could be using the deflationary power of bitcoins to build up their resources so they are in a better position to make a difference in the world. Help us launch this trend!

Lifeboat Foundation is now partners of Bitcoin Foundation and Bitcoin Magazine. Lifeboat Foundation bitcoin-related board members include Jeff Bone, Paul Buitink, Vitalik Buterin, Brenton Camac, Philippe Camacho, Brian Cartmell, Stephen DeMeulenaere, Matthew Elias, Mark Friedenbach, Chris Haley, Adam Harding, Zach Harvey, Kris Henriksen, Dan Ilett, Nejc Kodric, Aaron Lasher, Sean Lavine, Adam B. Levine, Colbert Low, Jon Matonis, Trace Mayer, Sam Mindlin, Lasse Birk Olesen, Salvatore W. Delle Palme, Michael Parsons, Elizabeth Ploshay, Alan Reiner, Benson Samuel, Charlie Shrem, Eli Sklar, Adam Stradling, Jorge Timón, Jonathan Waller, Alex Waters, and J.R. Willett.

Also, to give back to the bitcoin community, Lifeboat Foundation has created the first Windows version of oclvanitygen (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen) in the world that runs well on high-end AMD cards. (Our version runs nearly four times as fast as the old version!) You can download it for free at http://lifeboat.com/oclvanitygen and can learn more about what we did on GitHub at https://github.com/samr7/vanitygen/issues/19. oclvanitygen is used to create vanity bitcoin addresses such as our bitcoin address 1Lifeboatu7Y9YqKQRcXfjWYJdXog9CS7r that begins with 1Lifeboat.

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About Lifeboat Foundation

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.

Contacts:

Lifeboat Foundation News office
1638 Esmeralda Avenue
Minden, NV 89423, USA
+1 775-853-5212
press@lifeboat.com

From: http://lifeboat.com/ex/about

Mission Statement

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.
 
Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.
 
We believe that, in some situations, it might be feasible to relinquish technological capacity in the public interest (for example, we are against the U.S. government posting the recipe for the 1918 flu virus on the internet). We have some of the best minds on the planet working on programs to enable our survival. We invite you to join our cause!

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Appears as a close cousin to ThriveMovement.  Both working on organizing for human success from coordinating individual efforts.

The foundation can be controversial (I doubt anybody completely agrees with everything they've done and supported, and some of their members are quite controversial), but I'm a member because they are doing a great job of building a community of people working on world-bending (and world-saving) ideas.

Also, I'm controversial myself, so who am I to judge :)

I've admittedly been called worse things than "controversial" myself from time to time.

The Lifeboat folks seem to have the right mission for the right time.  It may also be a timeless mission as we seem to bounce between existential crisis every few months. 
From Fukashima reactors, to politically motivated violence, to managing our atmospheric protection from the barrage of space radiation and balancing that with the heat retention.
With each advance of human capability we lunge forward into a new uncharted region.

Bitcoin is a part of this ecosystem as it reduces friction for our motion and lunges, it increases productivity and personal empowerment.  We desperately need an effective backstop management which is not itself tethered to the things that are sinking the ship, hence a lifeboat, I like the notion.  That they have recognized cryptography as one of the catalysts puts them close to my heart, and I have great affinity for many of their areas of focus.

That they are non-profit, non-regional, non-government seems like the right structure and I've seen nothing bad come out of these folks so they have my support as well.  I wish them every success.

Like the previous comments, I think that the Lifeboat group generally is going a job worth doing.

Take a look at their new Vanitygen program for generating Bitcoin Vanity addresses. Its open source.

I am a member as well.
Some more information about Lifeboat can be found on Quora (https://www.quora.com/Lifeboat-Foundation).

VanityGen looks fun and is a nice improvement, I can imagine some pretty funny payment codes coming soon...

Thanks! We have now passed $150,000 at https://lifeboat.com/ex/bitcoin (https://lifeboat.com/ex/bitcoin).

And our Bitcoin Endowment Fund (https://lifeboat.com/ex/bitcoin) is now around $300,000!

Hello, I was wondering, if you had all the wealth you needed, what would you start doing?

From our Bitcoin Endowment Fund page (https://lifeboat.com/ex/bitcoin):

"Once we have matched Brian Cartmell's 500 BTC pledge, the Lifeboat Foundation will be interested in funding cryptography-related projects as a 1984-like world would not only be unpleasant but could give the government the power to do terrible things that could even become existential threats."

So thanks to the high value of bitcoins, we will be able to fund lots of cool stuff as soon as we finish matching his pledge.

Any specific candidates?

Would this Endowment one day also extend to causes outside the crypto realm? This is what I'm referring to when I asked you the hypothetical.

As you can see from our mission statement (http://lifeboat.com/ex/mission.statement), the Lifeboat Foundation's goals extend beyond crypto, so the answer is yes.

Once we have finished matching Brian Cartmell's pledge, we will start looking for causes to fund. At this point we are unsure of how long it will take to match his pledge, so we aren't putting a lot of effort into looking for such causes at this time.

I would like to see the logical steps of progression/accomplishments you envision for Lifeboat going into the future as the bastion of humanity. So you get funding now, 500-1000 BTC... and then what? What if that 500-1000BTC ever turns out to command a significant amount of influence in the economy?

Does Lifeboat ever see itself leading grand schemes?

That is our goal as you can see from our programs listed at http://lifeboat.com/ex/programs

http://lifeboat.com/ex/nano.shield is such an example.

We have the people to pull this off at http://lifeboat.com/ex/board. Now we hope to get the funding...

Seems you folks are on the right path with the right intentions.  Hope things keep progressing in the right directions and you can reach your goals and then some!