Bitcoin Forum

In tonight's Bitcoin Brainstorming session,  we came up with an idea to make sure Bitcoin will never be banned by governments.
Rather than having Bitcoin be known as the currency of online drug pushers and gamblers,  we need to have it be known as the currency of charitable donations.

Lets make sure that the
Red Cross
United Way
The Humane Society
and more

accept bitcoins for donations.

If lots of great charities like these use Bitcoins for fundraising,  no politician would ever dare to ban them!

A great example of a charity that is already accepting bitcoin donations is http://epicchange.org/donate.php (http://epicchange.org/donate.php)

To get this started,  I suggest we contact the the United Way and offer to make a $10,000 USD Donation via bitcoins
as soon as they list on their website their Bitcoin donation address.


Bruce Wagner of onlyonetv.com (http://onlyonetv.com) has agreed to hold the funds in escrow until we reach $10,000 worth of BTC.
MemoryDealers.com (http://MemoryDealers.com) will donate $5,000 of the $10,000 so we only need the community to come up with the other half.
Once it is listed on the charity's website, Bruce will send out a press release to all the media contacts he has.
It should make major news headlines as well!

If you think this is a good idea,  please send your Bitcoins to: 1CEmUakCaR71BmELWJPg72QRYzUqEddNm6  (this is stored on MTGOX)



Please let us know if you have any additional ideas on how to make this plan even better.


--------------------August 30th update----------------
Thank you for all the comments and feedback.
If you don't think the United Way is a worthy charity,  please don't donate.
Instead contact your favorite charity and ask them to directly accept Bitcoin donations on their website. 
Mention the success that Epic Change has had with bitcoin donations.  The more charities that accept Bitcoin the better,  but I suspect that if the biggest charity in the USA accepts Bitcoin donations,  the rest of them will quickly follow.

If everyone who has read this thread so far had donated $6 worth of Bitcoins,  we would already have the other $5000 to make this a reality.
Ask yourself,  "Is $6 worth the major national news attention Bitcoin would receive if United Way listed Bitcoin as a donation method on their website?"
"Do I want the world to think of helping orphans, cute puppies,  and those in need when they hear about Bitcoins?"

If your answer is "YES!"  then send your $6 worth of BTC NOW to:  1CEmUakCaR71BmELWJPg72QRYzUqEddNm6

It is easy!  Just do it!

I am Bruce Wagner, and I approve this message.    ;)

I'd like to see SPCA's accept bitcoin donations.

That's a nice idea

I really like this idea! ;D

We already have our first donation!
Please send your donations now!

1CEmUakCaR71BmELWJPg72QRYzUqEddNm6


Thanks everyone!

Good idea.. but some people (e.g me) are quite particular about which charities they'll support.

I like to make sure they're secular so I know the money's not going to supporting some preacher somewhere for example.

I'm sure for some people it's the reverse :P

Once it's set up so there is a donation address for specific charities - it should be good..   but..   who does the ultimate donation appear to come from?
I'm not saying anyone here would do this.. but an intermediary could treat the donation as their own for tax reduction purposes.. which would be a bit off!

Is it too early to try to convince individual charities to accept it directly?

Nice idea, and very generous from you.

Maybe this would be better if it where $1000 every month, otherwise they could see this as a *onetime* special way to donate and remove it after they received it. And charities also loves getting regular donations. Albeit the number would not be that "press friendly" anymore.

Interesting Idea, but what about the tax implications?
I donate to charities annually; I like the tax credit.
I dont see anyway of doing this while donating with bitcoins...just a miner (pun) issue =)

I agree,  so we tried to chose the least controversial charity possible.
If anyone can suggest a less controversial one, but equally well known,  now is the time.

I think asking EVERY charity and business that you intend to pay to accept bitcoins is a great idea TODAY!

That brings me to my next idea that I will post about tomorrow.

Perhaps a good way for the bitcoin community to 'donate' to these charities - is to donate the time and tech skills to help set them up with a solution which allows them to give a receipt in local currency equivalent ( or optionally just donate anonymously).

I wholly support you and your actions and efforts, but I think it's a mistake to think you can do anything to keep government from regulating bitcoins. Governments like the US will be hard pressed to get rid of something like encrypted numbers. To outlaw bitcoin would only mean we have to change the name of bitcoin, really. You cannot outlaw numbers.

Welcome to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number) the real world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime)

Great idea and awesome donation from you!

Information is not illegal.

This really is a terrific idea from a bunch of perspectives and is a win/win/win to me.  So I just did a trail donation.

 - supports good efforts

 - supports bitcoin

 - supports people coordinating efforts (*)

* I don't give a damn about tax write-offs personally and am willing to eat tax losses as a cost of doing business in a $$-centric world (but I am deeply sorry about the Pakistani villagers I am murdering by remote control :( )  If any organization has the get-up-and-go and the general decency to coordinate such an effort, they have my expressed permission to claim any tax write-off they can get after converting the BTC I donated to state-sponsored currencies.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110615/14240014708/us-trying-to-extradite-uk-tvshack-admin-over-questionable-copyright-charges.shtml

On topic: This is a great initiative. I assume it's the world wide and not only the US branch of United Way?

um, how about perhaps not to use 'Bruce & all the media contacts he has' - not

from the BitCon pump & dump site:

http://bitcoinme.com/index.php/bitcon-2011/

Wall to Wall Major Global Media

Some of the media outlets who have said they will be here include:

    CNN International
    Al Jazeera English
    Blomberg Television
    Wall Street Journal
    The New York Observer
    BusinessWeek
    Wired Magazine
    SmarterMoney
    NPR
    Forbes
    Fortune
    CNN / Money
    The Atlantic
    Radio Australia
    Freedomain Radio

Was there even a single peep from any of these?

Only hype & BS brought to you by

1 or 2 simply awful 13 year old child posters from Pattaya & their pedo bears

Donated!

Bruce, don't let the buggers get you down.

I'm sorry, and nothing personal to Bruce, but just because he's one of the most prominent celebrities in the Bitcoin communitiy does not a good escrow make.  Consider the fact that he just lost half of his 25k BTC holdings that he had in MyBitcoin, an online wallet service.  He currently doesn't have the best track record for holding on to large amounts of value and knowing where to securely put it.  You may want to consider an actual escrow service, or a Bitcoin-centric entity with a more solid track record, like perhaps one of the exchanges.

Also, there are two separate Bitcoin charity organizations that I'm aware of thus far, perhaps you could involve one of them:

 http://www.bitcoin-charity.com/ (http://www.bitcoin-charity.com/)

http://bitcoinsforcharity.org/ (http://bitcoinsforcharity.org/)

It's a good plan, please don't tear it apart!

Great idea but please do think it through before rushing anything!

We already had a rather unpleasing incident with the EFF (retroactively) deciding not to accept a rather sizable pile of Bitcoin donations - I think we as a community should learn from that experience.

Any such effort should be well coordinated and some things should be clarified beforehand:

• what happens if the organization does not accept the donation for whatever reason?
• what happens if the targeted amount is not achieved?
• how long should we wait to decide these two cases?
• is the donation paid even if the organization makes some kind of a one-time exception to accept Bitcoin?
• what happens if the donated fund is suddenly worth much more than the targeted amount?

I think this should be done in form of a well formulated proposal on a separate website with giving users the possibility to register by name (for possible tax-deduction) and maybe specify modalities what should be done with his/her money in case the primary goal of the fund cannot be reached. Anonymous donations should of course be possible as well!

It would also be good to clarify some regulatory questions (eg. taxes and accounting wrt. Bitcoin donations) - it would lower the barrier for organizations to accept the donation and for donors to participate in the fund.

As for the exact setup of such a fund there are a few possibilities. One would be to list a few renowned organizations and promise all the money to the first of them that lists Bitcoin as an official way to donate on their usual donation page (for an extended period of time).

Another way would be to split the fund between more organizations - maybe even letting registered donors influence the percentages...

Linking humanitarian donations to demands (in this case: advertising/good publicity for Bitcoin) is always a bit of a shady thing but it is very common nonetheless, albeit usually in a somewhat more discrete fashion. I think the organizations should be contacted beforehand if they would potentially approve of the basic intent of this fund in order to minimize the risk of disappointment and also to maybe get valuable recommendations for the whole procedure.

I think it is key to set this up primarily as a way for people to donate to a good cause with the added benefit of helping Bitcoin instead of the other way round!

I'd be willing to help set up such a page or otherwise contribute - PM me if you need any help!

That is a fantastic idea.  Make it into a bounty that a charity can claim by allowing Bitcoin donations via their normal method for a set period of time, say 6 months or a year.

It seems kind of weird to make them do something like that for money...maybe it's just me, but it seems a little off for a charitable donation.

I also think a good charity that isn't very controversial is the ASPCA.

Wait... what?

Rather than being scammed by Mr. Bruce.... cruising... to.... pattaya.... why don't I just donate myself so I can first wait until the red cross ACTUALLY lists its BTC adress?
How will Bruce be refunding our BTC when it turns out the Red Cross is not interested in BTC? What is the deadline for this action? Lets say we manage to gather 10k dollar worth of bitcoins today, then the bitcoin price drops by half before the red cross gets a bitcoin adress... who is going to cover the extra 5k dollars worth in bitcoins to reach the promised $10k again?
And what happens if the opposite happens? Who gets the extra cash?

I disagree. I have quite a lot of experience with charities, actually... Long-term unemployed for medical reasons, so I had to rely on several for services. I also volunteered at quite a few over the years (as in, more than three dozen different ones, totaling thousands of hours), and I've even been doing some computer work and website development for two local charities.

The problem is the majority of charities are quite, quite focused on anything that will get them some more money. Some of them because they're keeping the maximum percentage allowed by law, and some just because they really do just want to be able to buy food for more families. I'll tell you, though, the ones who take the PERCENTAGE of donations, and not just taking out their ACTUAL expenses exactly ... frankly, giving to some of those wouldn't possibly make Bitcoin look good. They -WOULD- take bitcoins once-and-just-once. And from then on any time someone asked they'd do this "Oh you know we tried that once and it didn't work out ..." because they'd just want dollars. Faster profit.

And, no, not all charities are like this -- there are five charities in my area where the head honcho is known to be pulling in more money in salary than some of the bank executives around here get, but most have a more "reasonable" $100-200K yearly income ...

But face facts. If Bitcoin users are going to give a huge chunk of money to a charity, and this is being solicited specifically with the topic line "How to make sure Bitcoin will never be banned by governments!" ... If you're donating just to donate, you don't care if they take Bitcoin or not, so mail them dollars. If you only want to donate if the donation is Bitcoin, then yes, you have every reason to say "Yeah, we'll give you the windfall as long as you keep accepting bitcoins, because everyone giving US the money to give to you wants you to accept bitcoins going forward, not just this second."

Attaching strings to donations? No, it's not some bad thing. It happens all the time. In fact, in virtually every case that I get some assistance from a charitable organization there's a condition. And it's often been an extremely rotten and unfair one: several years ago, my home was destroyed by a storm. The only place nearby who would take me in had a condition: change religions. This included the "requirement" that I attend six hours per day of religious classes, and if I missed any I was out -- and they were very clear that if I had to choose between working and taking the classes, either choose the classes or go elsewhere.

To be blunt, if a charity is allowed to attach strings to the help they give out, I see no problem with attaching strings to a donation to them. I mean, hell, all the big donors do it, why do you think they name hospital wings after people in the first place?

I was in a hurry to go hiking when I read this post and made a donation.  I am disappointed looking at block explorer just now.  At the very least I can say with a straight face that _I_ use Bitcoin primarily for charity, and that is good enough for me.

But I did do some thinking/re-thinking on my day out.  Also read some other people's perspectives on this thread.

I do believe that it would be a big win in a number of ways if there were a decent sized chunk of the economy which was going to charity.  This would give the opportunity to bring it up in response to people who point out the negatives (Silk Road, laundering, etc.)  Also, of course, at least some charities are in need of support and can/will do good things with it.

I would be uncomfortable coercing charities to accept Bitcoin, or even forcing them to put much energy into it.  Those that do may just be more interested in profit than their cause.

I think that what may work better is to have some responsible party collect donations on behalf of 'interested parties in the Bitcoin community', transfer them into state currency, and donate as they see fit.  Requesting a simple note from the recipient thanking said 'interested parties in the Bitcoin community' for the donation would not be to much to ask.  Hopefully a tally could, one day, add up to a sum which would impress Joe Sixpack who has otherwise never heard of Bitcoin or only hears the line that it is the 'terrorist' or 'druggy' internets money.

There are some variations on the theme.

 * Maybe 'bins' that people could donate to so that they are more comfortable that their donations would be more likely to go to a purpose they agree with.

 * Maybe the tax advantages of charitable donations could be leveraged.  Off-hand, my thought on that would be that it could go to startups to help them not to need to gouge us poor would-be buyers so much.  But that is a huge can of worms.

It also could very well be the case that there are simply _not_ enough people in the Bitcoin economy at this time who are of a mindset or have the means to think much about charity.  Or that the economy is not big enough to be able to realistically expect a decent chunk of funds for charity.  If either of these things is the case, I hope it will not always be so.

It's also possible that Bruce Wagner is simply an obviously bad choice as an escrow to people besides myself.

He lost twenty-five-thousand bitcoins to mybitcoin, and was publicly talking about how many others he'd recommended them to also lost coins (I believe he mentioned that including relatives, but I could be wrong, I haven't gone to look it up again) ... he continued to endorse mybitcoin for a good while after many people were finding problems and losing coins and posting about it here, including many people asking him outright to stop endorsing them.

The simple fact is Bruce Wagner not only hasn't proven he can be trusted as an escrow service, he has proven he cannot handle secure storage of his own coins, or those of people he wanted to give good advice to.

As little as I have (I'm on disability and usually need assistance for food) I'd be willing to give some of my coins to a good charity... but I'd have to trust the charity, and every step along the way. For a number of reasons, the biggest one stated just above, I cannot trust Bruce.

I would not be surprised if Bruce himself did not agree with you.  But...

Running a charity aggregation deal should, I think, be quite possible to do in a very transparent way which would satisfy the chronically suspicious folks (like me.)

I also would not expect that it would take a huge investment in time relative to many other endeavors.

I envision an address where people could verify that their donations are being appropriately deposited.  Also, publication of a series of mails being sent to potential charities and the responses sent back.  Probably a discussion thread also.  I cannot honestly say that I have ever coordinated such a thing so I am probably underestimating the effort.

I would hope that the funds in the address(es) could be drawn down at a reasonable frequency to limit losses, and if nobody in the community can figure out how to keep a secret key secret after all that we've been through in the last few months...well...we may as well kiss Bitcoin goodbye as a viable system anyway.

<snip>

My whole point was that Bruce didn't successfully keep his secret key secret and lost, as I recall, over 25,000 bitcoins.

Actually, technically, that's incorrect, and my point was that Bruce didn't think a secret key had to be secret at all, or his, and as a result he lost, as I recall, over 25,000 bitcoins.

I'm not at all disputing that someone can learn from a mistake like that, mind you. I'm sure a lot of people did learn. And of course it can quite easily be that Bruce is one of them. The problem is... someone running a TV show all about bitcoin, who can't do the basics that have been discussed all over the forum since day one, does not really inspire confidence...

Opps.  Lemme re-phrase.  I suspect that Bruce himself may in fact agree with you.

But again, I think that a great deal of trust in either the motives or competence of a party willing to run such an effort is not an essential need.  Some sort of 'parity bit' scheme for access to the private key could be arranged if it really bothered people (though the questing then comes up about who sets that up I guess...)

Both Bruce and the memory guy still seem to me to be among the top candidates for such a 'cherity' endeavor both because they have shown some interest in it specifically, and because, respectively, they have been in for a long-ish time and are early adopters among early adopters.

I'd trust Bruce's motives on this one -- I don't have any real reason not to, honestly. Even the stuff I disagree with he's done I don't question his intent to do something decent.

I do, however, disagree with you that trust in the competence of a party isn't essential. If I put coins, dollars, or whatever else in someone's hands I'm going to want to know that's the right place to put them -- both in terms of "Do I believe this person will do the right thing?" and in terms of "Do I believe this person will do the right thing?"

Yes, I said the same thing twice. If the person isn't capable of performing whatever act is "the right thing" it's the same result as if they have no intention of trying.

I'm sure we will be able to find someone willing to take free money.
I think charities may be tempted to accept a smaller amount,  or I may be tempted to put up additional money.
I think everything should be able to be settled by the end of Sept 2011,  but there is no reason to set the time limit in stone.
It is our money,  so we can decide what we want to do with it.
I will find another good bitcoin promoting project to spend the money on.  I think I have a good track record:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8717.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8717.0)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7961.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7961.0)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34320.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34320.0)
[/list]

[/quote]

If everyone who has viewed this topic had donated just one bitcoin,  we would already have more than enough money to make this happen. 

The funds are very secure stored with www.mtgox.com (http://www.mtgox.com)

Please send your donation now!

1CEmUakCaR71BmELWJPg72QRYzUqEddNm6

In addition to Bitcoins,  I need everyones help to make this happen.
Lets start contacting charities today, asking if they can accept bitcoin donations.
Maybe we can get more on board just by asking.
Can someone post a list of charities to contact?


Lets make this happen!

Thanks for addressing my concerns - I really appreciate the spirit of this, a few more remarks however:

No doubt about that - will it be somebody the original donors would like to receive their money as well is another question. Have a look at the EFF case - many did not agree that their Bitcoin donations ultimately went into the faucet and it leaves a bitter taste for everybody to see that their donation goes to somebody they might not like. This can easily be avoided if a clear procedure is stated before you ask people to donate - saying that you will find somebody to take the free money is not enough.

Charities are mostly more than willing to accept money - commodity contributions however are often rejected because they cause more organizational hassles than they are worth. Especially for large organizations its probably very difficult to adopt a new payment method. What if they kindly ask you to convert the funds to USD and donate USD instead - would you do it? Would people who donated mainly because they would have liked the organization to accept Bitcoin directly agree?

Great, but who is "we"? Sure, you contribute the largest part and I would personally trust you to do "the right thing" (TM) but others might disagree. Note that the owner of the fund money has no safe and fair way to ask the original donors about their opinion after they have donated, so this has to be decided beforehand! Again, have a look at the EFF case to see what can go wrong...

Yes please - I think its a great idea and I really thank you for you are very generous and your initiatives are very important for Bitcoin. I would just hate that people wanting to do something good (for the world _and_ for Bitcoin) feel offended because there are no clear rules for this effort.

I'm pretty willing to give to any reasonable cause, and at least for me, I'd consider most tax-exempt charitable organizations to qualify. But as a few people have pointed out...

Some people are more choosy about who they want to donate to. Some prefer small charities, some prefer larger groups. Some want a specific religious affiliation, some just want ANY religious affiliation, or specifically want there to be none...

And then we have our own pet causes, when it comes down to it. One of my friends donates to several charities, but only to ones that help the homeless. Some donate just for cancer research.

What I think may be a good idea to consider as a solution... Why not start multiple pools? You can take your $5,000 worth of bitcoins, and split that into, say, 5 $1,000 pools. Each for a different charity as first-choice, but each with a different "focus." For example, maybe you have one pool for, well, the first non-religious charity that will accept it. And a pool for the first food bank that wants it.

And one pool for "Hey, I don't care, as long as it helps someone!!" and that pool can just be distributed as needed among the others -- perhaps evenly, perhaps to meet a numeric boundary to try and get another charity to take the help.

Benefit one, we don't help one charity, we potentially help four or five.

Benefit two, more people will feel comfortable donating. You might end up raising more than the original target amount as a result.

Benefit three, we'd expose more charities to Bitcoins, and charities often communicate. A local friend of mine works at a small food bank, they trade "clients" with a free medical clinic, they encourage their respective donors to consider contributing to the others, they share information about grant competitions and things like that.

They obviously couldn't regulate the existence of the numbers, but that isn't what they would do.

Governments do regulate commerce, including mechanisms of payment.  It is no stretch to imagine that some crusading evil-doer in congress could preach that bitcoin is enabling the anonymous purchase of illegal drugs, therefore the US must outlaw the use of bitcoin as a medium of exchange.  Many more wrong-headed laws on other topics have been passed.

This charity initiative is a step in the right direction.

What bitcoin is known for is a very important issue that should not be neglected.

Yeah, especially because we can't trust our elected officials to truly comprehend this. This isn't some crack on politicians either. I don't expect the elected officials to understand everything about pharmaceuticals. Or medical research, transplants, how a Cisco router knows where to send data ...

They're supposed to make laws to cover everything except they can't know every subject. So sooner or later some senator is going to say "bitcoin" and another will go "what's that?" and a third will say "oh, that's that thing people use to buy crack on the internet" ...

If senator number 4 says, "not just crack, the red cross takes it as donations, and you can buy computer parts and clothes with it" then we have a much better chance of winning.

I Honestly do not see at all this stopping "Re: How to make sure Bitcoin will never be banned by governments!" from happening if it is ever on the cards! The people who control the money supply control everything, they do not care about anyone except themselves. Sorry to be brutally honest, everything is worth a try, but at the end of the day, they do what ever they wish. To any extent

Start our own charity called kittens and kids

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/2008/03/cute-cats008.jpg

Great idea.  :)  Donated. 

You'd have to be able to ban the exchange of cryptocurrency in EVERY COUNTRY. That includes Bolivia, Bhutan, North Korea, Holland... and about 230 others.

Uh huh... the way the Chinese government bans access to the internet, for example. There are still people behind the great firewall connecting to the internet every day... and a p2p network would be even more difficult to monitor. And say the Chilean government gets away with it and forces Tradehill to shut down... two days later you'd have Tradehill operating from Argentina, or Peru.

Governments could try and make it difficult for Bitcoin, but an outright ban would be as impossible as banning porn, or music and movie downloads.

Oh, I'm the first to agree with you that Bitcoin is suffering from a tremendous crisis of credibility right now. In fact, it's what prompted me to start the thread on a PR effort. I also happen to think that donations to NGOs and charities are a very important aspect of any PR campaign, though just one aspect of it, and it should come together with other approaches to the media and academic circles as well.

I was just commenting on the relative ease with which a government might be able to ban Bitcoin as a currency or commodity. I don't think it would be easy at all, actually.

Cheers,

Update added to the original post.

Send your $6 worth of Bitcoins now to 1CEmUakCaR71BmELWJPg72QRYzUqEddNm6

Roger I just donated 1 bitcoin.

We would be happy to setup an automated processing and receipt system for any charity that needs it.   We can give every donor a receipt for their tax purposes, and give the charity an itemized list of all donations.

Regarding the tax deduction, in the US anything you donate that has value, is tax deductible.  I give sofas and clothing to my local charity all the time, and get a deduction for it.  Especially if this "item of value" is immediately sold for dollars, then it clearly has value.

GREAT!  Lets start contacting Charities now and get them setup with Bit-Pay or any other Bitcoin method they are interested in.
It is time to generate some super positive press about bitcoins!

Agreed!  I will work on a proposal this afternoon that we can use.    I will email you in a few hours.

I tried to read most of this before posting,

It seems we can solve some problems by accepting donations in cash or local currencies, giving out receipts, and when we are ready convert the cash to bitcoin and donate it.

In California it costs roughly $26 to start a (unincorporated) Non-Profit Organization. I have one already actually. Start one of these, accept donations and log them all per legal requirements, Purchase bitcoins with the cash raised and donate bitcoins to charity.
Then people can still get their tax right-offs, and you know that the money was truly handled correctly at least by penalty of US Law.
Use BlockExplorer for proof at the end.

Jumping Point??

I just made a major announcement for this, in a new topic

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40137.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40137.0)

Excellent work!

But does this mean, that every donated bitcoin is immediately sold on some exchange? That would mean if someone donates a large amount, it will crash the bitcoin price.

I believe the charity will be able to choose what percent to keep in Bitcoins or exchange for a legacy currency.
As Bitcoins become more and more popular,  I suspect they will keep more and more of their Bitcoins in Bitcoins.

Yes.  We can divide the funds into bitcoins and dollars, at the request of the Charity.

So who still thinks it is a good idea to donate bitcoins to a fund that is not yet sure it will even find a proper place to send the money to, which is controlled by a guy who has lost 25k in bitcoins on an earlier occasion and is now linked to (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39476.120) shady stuff involving child prostitution (I'm not saying he did anything, but it's definitely fishy enough for any charity organisation to never want anythong to do with it)?

I'm the one running all of this,  and I have never been involved with any of the things you just mentioned.
So, YES,  I do still think it is a GREAT idea.

Yeah, but you're having the coins controlled by someone who thinks it's a girls fault if she gets raped and who is now linked to illegal acts in a place he is trying to go back to with bitcoin.

But ok, nice to know you endorse all of that.

The coins are being held by MTGOX and I think you should look up the definition of "Non sequitur"
 (Latin for "it does not follow"), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises

Your opening post states:


So you are working closely together with Bruce Wagner.


I think you should stop trying to find latin words to hide behind. Basically what you are saying is that you don't care Bruce thinks about rape and you don't care how he is linked to shady business, you will work with him as long as it serves what you feel is a beneficial purpose.

MD: The opening to this thread stated that Bruce Wagner had been chosen to hold the coins in escrow.

Unfortunately since you opened this thread there have been some ... well, honestly, pretty distasteful developments with regards to Bruce's behavior and opinions. Including an article he wrote trying to argue that rape victims are the ones to blame for being raped.

You open a thread soliciting money. You state Bruce Wagner will hold the currency. That's what it says right in the opening post.

Your own words. "Bruce Wagner of onlyonetv.com has agreed to hold the funds in escrow until we reach $10,000 worth of BTC." They're still there. I just checked.

Given that your primary goal in getting charities to accept bitcoin is to garner positive publicity for Bitcoin, please do not attempt to ignore the issue. I am not accusing you of committing such behavior. I am not accusing you of condoning it. I know full well much of what I refer to here blew up around the forum after you created this thread. However the situation does now exist and it is probably quite relevant, and it does need to be addressed -- even if this is simply you posting a clear statement of what Bruce's involvement in this project is, and editing your first post if necessary to reflect that.

Speaking of the brainstorming session, I'd certainly be interested to know any details about it.  I'd be surprised if a lot of others here were not as well.  Who was present, in person or via vid, was it taped, etc.  That sort of thing.  It seems pretty clear that Bruce Wagner was a party and as you probably know there are a lot of questions about his character which have surfaced since the time of your post.

Thanks!

I'm aware of all the issues that have surfaced in regards to Bruce Wagner since my initial post.  He was in Toyko earlier this week,  and I had an informal dinner with him,  and a couple other Tokyo locals who are interested in Bitcoins.  For months,  every day, all day has been a Bitcoin brainstorming session.  I hope more great ideas will follow soon.  I am sure this charity idea is still a great one,  and I will work to see it through.

We have solved the escrow problem.  There is no longer a need for any third-party to accumulate donations.

https://bit-pay.com/forCharities.html (https://bit-pay.com/forCharities.html)

The charity can now have an account with Bit-pay and accept the bitcoins directly. 

We immediately convert these to US Dollars, which clearly establishes their value, and then we electronically transfer the dollars by ACH directly to the charity's bank account.

Acknowledgement that bitcoin has no (clear) value. Love it.

Great idea, I've already started a forum post with the announcement, and will probably make another one with a list of the accepting locations.

It can't hurt for everyone to talk to any charities they know, tell them you want to make a donation but only if they accept bitcoins.  We do everything for them for free, so there is no risk or cost to the charity.

Our US lawyers have confirmed that at this point it is not legal for an organization to accept donations in bitcoins.

They have hope this situation can be resolved, but in the meantime, in the USA, accepting bitcoin donations puts the organization at risk.

What is that based on? If it's illegal to accept it for a donation then by that logic I don't see how you could accept it as payment either.

Not trying to argue just like to know what legal precedent they based it on.

Jered

Does that include shops ?

This. But lets be honest, didn't we already know that? Or have you seen any tax papers that have a section to declare your bitcoin income?

Citation please.  My family business is tax preparation.  Both my mother and sister are IRS enrolled agents and represent individuals and organizations before the IRS.  I have consulted them on the matter and according to them, there is absolutely no issue with a charity accepting donations in bitcoin.

Same section you declare the goat your neighbor gave you for mowing their lawn while they were on vacation.

Jered

Whatever you do, ask your own lawyers anyway.

We are trying to check for things in the broadest range possible, and until the status of bitcoin is legally defined, accepting donations in bitcoins can be bad. It depends on context and various things.

Let me say it explicitly. I am not your legal counsel. I provide an opinion based on the feedback of different lawyer firms working together in the US for us, and they wouldn't advice anyone to accept bitcoins as donations.

I've asked MT to clarify :

<MagicalTux> accepting donations in BTC is an issue because of all the reglementations around donations
<MagicalTux> business activity is slightly less reglemented than donations

Thats what I mean. The non-existing section. Unless you know how to calculate the VAT on a goat.

The charity will know the regulations for accepting cash donations vs. property donations, if there are any differences.  The opinion we got is that there is nothing illegal about it, but of course it is up to the discretion of the charity.  They can accept or decline anything, including furniture, cars, blankets, food, etc.  

Ok, can we remove all businesses/organisations that say "accepting bitcoin donations" from the wiki please? Because if that is true, then the wiki is displaying illegal activities.

It very much exists at least in the US which is where we're talking about.
If we're considering wikipedia a source we can use this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter

Tax implications

In the United States, the sales a barter exchange makes are considered taxable revenue by the IRS and the gross amount of a barter exchange member's sales are reported to the IRS by the barter exchange via a 1099-B form. The requirement for barter exchanges to report members sales was enacted in the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. According to the IRS, "The fair market value of goods and services exchanged must be included in the income of both parties."[9]

Other countries do not have the reporting requirement that the U.S. does concerning proceeds from barter transactions, but taxation is handled the same way as a cash transaction. If one barters for a profit, one pays the appropriate tax; if one generates a loss in the transaction, they have a loss. Bartering for business is also taxed accordingly as business income or business expense. Many barter exchanges require that one register as a business.


Jered

Perhaps we should make a difference between something not being legal, and something being illegal.

Of course you meant to say: VERY nonexistent

There is no bitcoin economy. There is only speculation.

In a long list of silly posts, this has to go be among the silliest. So if BitPay was offering a way of turning gold donations into US dollars, you'd be saying gold has no value?

Philosophically, I'm with you, NOTHING has inherent value. But for the purposes of this discussion, it's just stupid.

You know just as well as all the others here that no sane person living in the real world would keep his money stored in bitcoins. Which is something that was clearly shown again by Bit-pay.
I am sure that if we would send our donations in gold to mr Bit-pay he would be a lot less hasty to immediately exchange them for dollars.

No, I don't know that. I do know what the trading volumes at the exchanges are. I also know what I am doing. And as best I can tell I am a sane person and living in the real world.

So please don't put words in my mouth, or those of other sane people out there.

Actually, it'd be a bit insane to be keeping lots of money in US dollars right now, but luckily that's not where I live, so it isn't a great concern to me.

What he said.

Ok, so we agree that it is not smart to keep money in something that is not very stable. You seem to think the dollar is not very stable. Since I do not see a lot of US based businesses immediately exchanging all the money they receive into euros, yens, Chf or gold, I think we can assume that bitcoin is a WHOLE LOT less stable than the US dollar, since I have yet to see any real business that accepts bitcoin and NOT immediately exchanging it.

And why is that? Because everyone knows bitcoins have no real value.

No, again, you really need to be careful about putting words in other people's mouths. It isn't the instability of the US dollar that concerns me, it is the absolute lack of sustainability for the US economic model.

You also don't see business immediately exchanging their money into palladium, yet from a point of view of value, few would argue it is a LOT more valuable than other things out there.

Businesses transact in whatever currency is least complicated for them to transact in. So yes, in the US, lots of businesses deal in US dollars, because it's what's around them and because there are lots and lots of US dollars. It doesn't mean the US dollar is necessarily more or less valuable than other currencies, gold, Bitcoin or what have you. It means that, for now, it is more viable (sounds like valuable, but means something else, look it up).

But anyone with a brain, and an even superficial understanding of economics, history and politics, understands that the long term viability of the US dollar is, at the very least, seriously in question.

By the same token, the viability of a decentralised, uncounterfeitable, infinitely scalable and fungible, instantaneously transmissible, open-source, cryptographically secure currency, in the long term, is looking rather rosey.

Couldn't agree more on that one.


Yeah, if we ever come across such a currency, it might have a good chance.
But for the centralized (MtGox + the two largest mining pools = not decentralized), userunfriendly, perfect-for-scammers, slow transmissible (sorry people in line... this customer is waiting for his 6 confirmations...), underdeveloped currency that bitcoin is... not much chance.

I had most of my bitcoins before I ever opened an account with MtGox. I agree on the user unfriendliness, perhaps it will be partially resolved by the time we have Bitcoin version 1.0 (you do realise we're not even there yet), but there are already solutions popping all around to make it more user-friendly, from Bit-Pay to instawallet, flexcoin and vibanko. All viable. I have sent and received payments through the network in a matter of minutes, but for the people in stores, see my previous comments about Bit-pay, instawallet, flexcoin and vibanko.

Look, I have no bone to pick with the notion of Bitcoin being at the early stages of its development, and with the idea that it could go ridiculously well, ridiculously badly or somewhere in between. But when looking at it, I expect a level of depth and analysis that goes beyond: "this is play money without value and you guys are stoopid". That means either you lack a brain, or that you have ulterior motives for interacting with a forum devoted to this idea.

Consider bitcoin like gold or another thing and problem solved.

As long as you don't sell them for dollars, you can keep them, no need to pay taxes or what else. If i barter water for food do i have to pay taxes for that? No.

In one of his stupid posts he wrote that he is pissed of because of something that Bruce did. It seems that now he wants to help destroy bitcoin as a revenge. My guess, he is an ex-lover of Bruce, because otherwise he would just have left the bitcoin world.

Actually, I have a feeling that if you had a food stand in the middle of the desert, and quoted prices in litres of water, at some point the IRS (in the USA) would come knocking. Not sure what value they would assign to a litre of water, but they'd certainly want their share.

Well, what do the law say about that? That's what we have to be sure before making further assumption on what do to with bitcoins

Barter transactions are taxable, the (US) IRS is pretty clear about it. Enforcing it is harder.
If  you buy lunch with a bottle of water you're going to get away with it. If you build an economy around selling bottles of water they're going to want their cut.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter

Jered

MagicalTux saying it doesn't even come close to meaning it is true.

Remember that we are talking about the guy who came up with "force majeure" as an excuse to say Mt.Gox wasn't liable for any of the issues surrounding when they got hacked. There were reports of SQL injection vulnerabilities, which MagicalTux ignored. And then MagicalTux himself gave the entire database, passwords and login names and email addresses included, to someone who did not actually need that information. Force majeure is for natural disasters and things like that. You know, stuff a business owner clearly didn't cause, like a tornado hitting the facility. Even then, force majeure requires proof that the business owner did everything reasonable to prepare.

Even if MagicalTux wants to claim that hackers are as unpreventable as a hurricane, the fact that he gave away the database to someone and then made a public statement saying it was THEIR system that was compromised and THEIR system the database was stolen from automatically disqualifies force majeure, because MagicalTux helped cause that hurricane by contributing the data without a legitimate reason. And being told of other problems but not actually doing anything to deal with them disqualifies him from force majeure protection because he would have been required to do everything within reason to prepare or mitigate such.

MagicalTux says his lawyer says bitcoins are illegal for donations. Well, I say seek your own counsel. Given MagicalTux's previous spoutings of things his lawyer said, I think said lawyer is either incompetent or imaginary.

Bump!
Do we have any new member willing to contribute? ;)

Willing,  yes, in theory, but I think this was a good idea that got rushed and poorly prepared.
I think the legal issues should be cleared up, at least to some extent.
I think Bruce, for the sake of this project, ought to step down as "escrow"
I think some other issues should be clarified, like what happens when we dont meet to goals, or no charity accepts the offer etc.

If there is a second attempt to this right, Id be more than willing to donate. As it stands, sorry but no.

I expect this is a joke, but as a mea-culpa...

Been there, done that.  I did it at the same time I _should_ have been reading the info that SA dug up about Bruce and co.

I think it is more likely than not that my contribution went toward blow and y-chromosome prostitutes in Thailand.  One way or another, I don't see any accounting of where my coins went, and block explorer shows relatively little activity on Memorydealer's address.

I can only hope that somehow some of the value I contributed goes toward some of the people Bruce scammed in his-n-Ed's  'Bold Funding' exploits if justice is ever served in that case.

At the end of the day, I have a clear concience in knowing that I use Bitcoin primarily for charity...or try to.  And at this time, that is about all it is good for.  Earlier I had some naive hope that Bitcoin would serve to better mankind in some way.  I still hope that it will and think it is possible, but am not holding my breath.  My interest is not far more directed to seeing if I can enrich myself personally from it thanks to the lead of most of the active players in the space.