Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone, now is the time for us to stand up as the good people we all are and help out our fellow man. We need a way to donate our spare BTC to the Japan relief effort. I suppose the simplest way to accomplish that would be for a well established member of our community (as in, someone we trust not to keep it lol) to accept the BTC donations and sell them off and send the proceeds to (I don't know, I'm sure there's something). I just wanted to get the idea out here, since I didn't come across any threads offering to help out. Give a little, give a lot, whatever you could spare. I don't have much but if we're able to establish something, I'd like to do my part. Maybe someone a little more experienced than I am can come up with willing candidates to accept donations and put it to a vote or something? Even if we as a whole cannot do much, at least it is something, and the effort is bound to make a difference, even if it is small.

.

Thanks for the prompt reply! I don't have much at all but I'm sending it, as well as what I can muster within the next few days. Thanks so much!

I am donating 30 BTC myself immediately.

You are a bro. I wish I had that much to give, unfortunately my combined mhash is only about ~150. I'm going to try to push my rigs a bit harder though.

We have quite a unique opportunity here, to actually take our computing power and use it to do something positive for human beings. It's actually a pretty cool feeling.

20 BTC sent;
My thoughts and prayers are being sent as well-

Do you know yet who and how the funds collected will ultimately go to?

Any thoughts would be appreciated, I haven't had a chance to look into it, and now am heading for bed. Will check in tomorrow.

Suggest the following approach:

1. Let's collect Bitcoins as first priority.

2. And then tomorrow review the options for donating (to which organization, for what help purpose)

We could do a poll for those who have donated to decide where to doinate the funds.

Current status: 51.82 BTC

50 BTC sent.

I previously posted an idea to use this as a way of promoting Bitcoin. On reflection, that seems like a poor idea. If you can find someone able to help in Japan and readily willing to take BTC, great. If not, then perhaps the best thing to do is simply to sell off the collected coins and transfer fiat to the chosen charity. It would be unfortunate to come across as trying to wrangle publicity from a tragedy and to do so by dangling donation money in front of a charity only to try to make them jump through hoops to understand Bitcoin and learn how to sell the coins for fiat.

Does anyone here know a grassroots organisation in Japan that they could personally approach? I don't think we'll be collecting a lot of money here, so a small organisation would probably appreciate our donation more than a large one. Also a more personal approach would, to my mind, seem to fit the general distributed nature of the whole Bitcoin system. Perhaps a shelter in the disaster area could use financial help?

You are right, let's "just" help them to get out of this mess.

Of course we will mention that donations were collected via Bitcoins.

I also like the idea of looking for smaller aid organizations. Let's see what we can find over the next couple of days.

I'd recommend http://www.directrelief.org/, but as long as the charity donates 100% of money earned, I don't mind who it is.

why donate something after all?

japan is still one of the richer nations. short term direct help by other nations military or civilian catastrophy organizations is necessary of cause, but why money? thats exactly what governments and reinsurance companies are made for. unlike many other countries, japan has both of them.

I may earn some hate because of it, but... I don't think it is rational at all. Unless you are doing this solely for purpose of bitcoin promotion.

verbose mode: If somebody have enough bitcoins to donate, he also have enough cash to do it without intermediary step (or you want people to sell they bitcoins?). I'm glad that hero member offered service, but it is safer if people choose place to donate for themselves. And what is the point at all? How much can you collect? 1000 BTC? Look at these pictures again. Think who you want to help. There are insurance companies, there will be a lot of gov help. Poorest ones will get currently more than on average. If you are all about charity that's like one of the worst moments to donate in my opinion. Whole world is focusing on that one place currently. You could choose some donation to africa instead if you want to help so much, because need for help is continuous, and nobody is looking there at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I believe it's awful tragedy. But even just working hard at this time of looking for place to donate you may possibly do better. Governments take a lot of your money, and they love showing off helping those, that got on the TV. People die in awful ways every day. I do not think, that those who died with enough many others to get media interested, deserve more help than others.

I hope I didn't offend anybody. I'm just trying to stick to the rationality that I like on this forum (and yes, in case of tragedy, staying rational is especially useful, that's when you get most probabilities even more wrong than usually).

PS. Staying within offtopic, I liked this article: http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuclear-plant-issues-in-japan-are-least.html

10 BTC sent.

Status:

158.82 BTC

Here some ideas which organization to select.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/how-to-help-japan-earthquake-relief_n_834484.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/how-to-help-japan-earthquake-relief_n_834484.html)

 There is nothing wrong trying to convince one of the smaller ones to open up a bitcoin account and address to accept donations.

But if not, I'd still go ahead donating what we collect here.

to practice generosity.

your point with reinsurance companies and govts having enough money to help is nevertheless an excellent one.

Generosity? What meaning does generosity have?

If I wanted to truly help Japan, I would find a niche and opportunity within relocation services. Throwing money at things can only do so much.

Never feel bad for being rational.

Here's the truth: If you to help people, sell good things affordably. Get out there and actually offer something more intrinsic than money. There's plenty of people to throw the green stuff around. What we need is people to facilitate it.

... is one of the liberating actions.
might be just my personal trip but i believe that hand that gives flowers smells good.

haha, well said. Feels good, man.

I was thinking about what someone said earlier in the thread about finding a grassroots organization somewhere in Japan... A shelter or something local and small that will immediately be able to aid a community. It does hold some interest if someone could do a little research into that. I'll check back when I get home from work.

S3052, can you say how much you have collected so far?

I would recommend using Charity Navigator (http://www.charitynavigator.org/) to find a good place to send the donation. Perhaps we could choose a few candidates and have a poll, splitting it up based on popularity, or just choose a single one.

edit... D'oh, thanks randomguy7.

208.82

http://blockexplorer.com/address/18JFQrNfYpoCns2sxq5NzXcQt55rdF4K4N

still increasing, just seeing another 22.6 BTC flowing in.

How long should we collect?

perhaps someone of the moderators here you place this call for donations high and prominent in the forum, potentially on bitcoin.org homepage temporarily to collect more.
Possibly calling for donations until a certain time and we then decide to issue the donation to our selected organization.

Seconded
Edit: As for how long we should collect, that's up to you since you're handling the donation money. I say as long as there is a need and people are willing to help out... I wish I could do more but I'm virtually broke IRL and work for next to free.

I'd say convert to fiat and donate every X days or Y btc. Maybe 7 days or 250 btc?

20 btc sent

I just sent 3. I wish I could send more, but I just started and invested my FRNs in a new 5830.

Come up with some time period to stop taking donations (7 days sounds great).  When you stop have the op edit the heading so people know to stop sending you money.  Convert to fiat.  Send to organization that most of us would find agreeable, but communicate it ahead of time.


Thanks for taking on this responsibility.

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone had come up with any ideas as to organizations that we could directly send some funds to for the best effect. I've really been thinking on the point of trying to give direct monetary aid to an organization within a community such as a shelter or food bank, though I'm unsure how effective money would actually be when what the people need most are food, shelter and clothing. Any ideas off the top of anyone's heads would be excellent. I'm going to be pretty busy for the next 3 days or so, but I will be checking in. S3052, I really appreciate you stepping up to be the caretaker of the funds. I apologize, but I'm just lousy at this sort of thing, and have terrible organizational skills. I'd like to see more of people's thoughts as to what we can do with the collected funds to try to make some sort of difference in the lives of the people over there. In the meantime, I did PM a moderator to see if we can get this thread tacked up, and I'm not sure how it works, but maybe once we get some more ideas going on, maybe some sort of a poll?

As for some of the debating in some previous posts, I did read them, and the points were well taken. Plenty of stuff going on in the world, I guess sometimes you have to pick your battles. Speaking only for myself, the only agenda I have right now is just to help out. I don't care if Bitcoin shoots to the top of CNN news for us trying to help out or not, I would personally rather it didn't.

Anyways, it's late, I have work in a few hours. Gonna crank my miners back up to max and crash. You guys are the best. Thanks for your donations.

Hi folks, so i've been told I should jump in on this thread. I'm currently living in the Tokyo area, one of the areas affected by that awful earthquake.

Beam me those bit coins brothers and God bless!


(Actually am living in the Tokyo area, don't need your charity though. It's interesting to see how people are seemingly so willing to jump in and send bitcoins to some person (who I wouldn't know from Bob) without any way to verify that they actually are sent to a proper charity (or converted to physical coin and then sent).)

Possible donation option:  http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

That happens all the time, Bob. It's called trust, faith, ignorance, compassion, stupidity and many other names. It happens with taxes, marketing stunts and on and on. People actually donate to beggars on the street believe it or not, with not knowing where the pennies end up. But that is not fully my responsibility and I did my part in giving without expecting much in return when I feel guided to do so. A virtuous circle where one thing leads to another and that first step is insignificant relative to the potential impact in the end. People feel guided, encouraged to do some small insignificant thing and just do it and the end result might well surprise you.
Please do go ahead and scam people and hold a blog and let us all know how your life fans out in the end or only write it down on paper in your personal journal.

Bless you indeed,

Current donation status: around 258 BTC (will get the precise number from blockexplorer)

Thanks so much already to those warmhearter bitcoiners.


Here suggestions on how to move on:

1. We call out deadline for the first donation wave until 12:00 GMT on Wednesday, March 16
    We need a moderator and/or the thread owner edric to announce this more broadly on the forum, to call for all donations people are willing to make.

2. In the meanwhile, until Wednesday, we decide on where to donate to. I think it is best to donate to an organization that uses our funds in the epicentrum of the quake and tsunami (in the Sendai area)

One example could be for affected children in Japan (but clearly we will let the people who donate to add other suggestions and decide ultimately via voting. Please add your favorite in this thread).
http://www.savethechildren.org.au/what-we-do/emergencies/japan-earthquake (http://www.savethechildren.org.au/what-we-do/emergencies/japan-earthquake)


3. I will then change the BTC into USD and then either wire it to the organization or use PayPal if they accept it (unless they accept bitcoins..)

Done and at least something good will happen with our bitcoins.


If there is more interest afterwards, we can run a second round of donations, but I prefer we make a big call to the entire bitcoin community to donate as much as possible for the 1st round until Wednesday, 16th and then we close it.

I'm not about to scam people (which is why I explicitly said I didn't need anything). However, just giving resources without verification is foolish. It makes you feel better, but without verifying that it went to some worthwhile cause, it might well have been a waste. In this case, I doubt that there is a problem, but the point is, I've no way of knowing. 

If you really want to donate to someone, consider the Japanese Red Cross (http://www.jrc.or.jp/english/) (website doesn't seem to be working just now though).

I read something on Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/story/11/03/11/1637218/Prepare-For-Massive-Wave-of-Earthquake-Scams), one person said:

If this happened to any other nation in the world, death tolls would have been measured in per cent of the population, and the country would be completely in ruins.  Completely and utterly destroyed for the foreseeable future.  Not only because of the quake and the tsunami, but because of all the effects.  Buildings, homes, schools and hospitals falling down on people or getting washed away with people inside, chemical plants blowing up, large spills of everything poisonous, infrastructure destroyed, meltdowns in every nuclear plant, etc.  Uninhabitable.

Japan is another story.  Japan is prepared (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on-the-japan-earthquake/).  If Japan asks for something, give them that.  The Japanese Red Cross would probably also be a good idea.  Otherwise, just sit and watch in awe how the Japanese handle this.

http://architectureforhumanity.org/programs/2011-sendai-earthquake-and-tsunami

These people seem quite open in their approach.

The Japanese Red Cross site is really busy.

Anyway, this is the page about donation.
http://www.jrc.or.jp/contribution/l3/Vcms3_00002069.html


Basically there are two ways, deposit into their account in Japan Post Bank (without transfer fees), or online such as credit card.

I can arrange to deposit cash (in Yen) directly into their account. Direct deposit would eliminate possible exchange fee on credit card which could be quite a few percentages and other possible fee. And the amount can be precisely worked out before hand.

I trust the bitcoin community, I can deposit the money first, provide the bank transfer slip before accepting the bitcoin.

And we can work out an exchange rate were the community is comfortable with.


Apart from Japanese Red Cross, there are some other funds such as Yahoo Japan 緊急災害募金 Emergency Disaster funds.
http://bokin.yahoo.co.jp/donation/detail/1630001/index.html

But their are also donating to the Japanese Red Cross. So a direct deposit to the Japanese Red Cross seems to be the most reliable and convenient and "to the point".

Donation to the Japanese Red Cross can be as quickly as a consensus is reached here.

This picture makes me mad. I hope this isn't a common sentiment in America.

http://i52.tinypic.com/2cwnb83.jpg

This is a very good proposal. I am all for it.
Let's continue to call for donations until Wednesday and then proceed.

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin

Don't worry.  The Japanese will remember our soldiers helping them out and not remember that crap fabrication.  

I'm going to go with this as well. Sounds like the best idea so far.

If we are going to donate to Japanese Red Cross...below is a rough timetable.

"GMT March 16, Wed 12:00 noon" is Japan time "March 16 , 21;00" , because Japan is GMT +9.

It might take at least a day or two to agree on donation method and exchange rate and so forth. Then it will be weekend.

Japan is now under black out rotation to save electricity, so many shops including the post office may only open a few hours a day. And there could be long lines.

So, please allow a few days to deposit the money.


I prefer to make one call too. People run out of attention and interests very quickly. There could be other new big news a couple of weeks later, people might not be interested or so keen on donating anymore. If we have a second, we might only get a few BTC.

However, the Japanese Red Cross do accept donation from 100Yen , that is about US$1 . So, I guess as long as it is over 1.3 BTC, we can still donate to the Japanese Red Cross.

As far as I am concerned, I'd call it "DEAL".

I will transfer the BTC immediately once you have done the steps that you outlined above.

OK, i guess it is the closing time for the first round.

May I suggest the exchange rate as follow:

Bitcoin -> USD (MtGOX bid+Ask /2 ) -> JPY

1 BTC = MtGox (0.85+0.86) /2 = 0.855 USD = 0.855 x 79 JPY = 67.54500 JPY

250 BTC = 250 x 67.54500 = 16 886

By the way, how much exactly do we have right now?

The Yen has been climbing since the earthquake. I hope it doesn't get any stronger !!   :-\

The donation can be made in the post office or the Post Bank (basically the same thing).

They ask for Name, Address & telephone to put into the donation form.

I will try to put the following information. However, sometimes, the Japanese are not very flexible. They might insist on real street address.

Name : bitcoin or bitcoin.org or bitcoin community (Which one would you prefer ???)
Address: bitcoin.org
Tel: not sure, do bitcoin have a phone number ??


If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Depends on the responses here. Maybe we could make the donation before the weekend.

We have 319.67 BTC and I close it herewidth.

The nuclear plant trouble seems to be getting worse.

If anything worse happens, commerce in Tokyo may be affected even worse.

So, i will try to make the donation as soon as possible.

The donation was made a few hours ago.

Unfortunately the exchange rate for both bitcoin and JPY have been very volatile.

If I use Mt.Gox rate at this very moment:

319.67 x (0.795+0.8325)/2 x 79 = 20 550 Yen

Anyway, the donation made was 21000 Yen.

This is the info about how to make a donation in Japanese Red Cross website: http://www.jrc.or.jp/contribution/l3/Vcms3_00002069.html


This is the receipt (in Japanese).
https://doc-08-74-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/secure/ha0ro937gcuc7l7deffksulhg5h7mbp1/vrgf3vggnem9g8o4cqvom2phmmhnffc0/1300449600000/15949510141229870193/*/0B5QHyyV_GD85ZGEzY2ZmMTEtZjE0ZS00YTZkLWFlMGItMWI1ZjRlMjkzMDEw?authkey=CPfC5_UB&e=download

The left side is a photo copy (that's why it is in black and white), which the post office keeps. The right side is the stub receipt.

You can see the bank account number is 00140-8-507, the amount in Yen is 21000, and the organization is 日本赤十字社 東北関東大震災義援金 (The Japanese Red Cross Society Earthquake Donation).

Actually they have a small stack form with the everything filled out ready for people to come and donate.

You can see the date is 23-3-18 (Year-Month-Day). The year "23" is Japanese year. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisei_period )

So, what can you buy for 21000 Yen?

For a regular meal in a family restaurant, you can get a meal for about 1000 yen.

21000 = 1000 x 21 meals

In Japan, there are convenient stores that sell cheap stuff for 100Yen.

You can buy a rice ball for 100 Yen (http://www.su-gomori.com/archives/images/14_onigiri_100en.jpg).
You can buy one 1L bottle of cold Japanese tea for 100 Yen

21000 = 100 x 210 Rice balls
or
21000 = 100 x 210 bottles of 1L cold Japanese tea

By the way, even in Tokyo city center, the racks in all supermarkets and convenient stores for rice balls and bread or other instant foods are empty. Someone just told me that even junk foods such as potato chips are gone.

There are still many people in the disaster areas that need help. It is snowing in the disaster areas, and they have little food, and no electricity therefore no heat. Even blankets are in short supply for many of them.

International news are all focusing on the nuclear power plant trouble at the moment. But for many of the victims, they are still stuck in near the disaster zones which are much closer to the nuclear plants than anyone in Tokyo. Their main concern is not the nuclear radiation, but finding lost ones and their own survival. Especially for the elderly and sick, medical care and medicine are in critical short supply.

There was a clip on TV showing an old man and his old wife searching for their young son who worked in a post office. They had to search and ask other people if they could see the post office, because everywhere was just piles and piles of debris. At last they found the post office. The old man had to carefully climb on top of a pile of debris to see the top of the post office. He climbed up and shout the name of his son, hoping there will be a response... a week after the tsunami.

I don't think there will be a second run for this donation as interest has already fallen. See how this thread has already fell to the bottom of the page.

Contribution from the bitcoin community is very meaningful. A week after the earthquake, some of the victims are getting their first bowl of hot soup. Let us hope this contribution can help as many people as possible.

Dear Amso,

thanks so much for this great effort.

I want to transfer the BTC asap to you. Will you send the address?

thanks again+

I hope some people get some good out of this.

Oh.

I forgot about that. That's important too. :)

1QoFwnfxjsFhY8RXW6ZgiRqa6VGEU6V2y

Thanks.

I sent a small gift as a thankyou. Keep it for yourself .

Got it!

Thank you so much. :)

319.67 received. Thank you.

I am posting on this old message because we pass last 3 years developing a platform that have as one of his first purpose the aim to help people in needs after a catastrophic event. Every time there is always a similar pattern: people try to organize funds after the event but there is always organization problems and often we don't  know where the money goes and how are spent. So we develop a platform that can be used by organization to describe their projects and make a notarization inside the blockchain of the invoice they produce along their activities. Single user also can use the platform and be eligible to receive help, but is important to subscribe and define its own position before the event happen. The platform is quite complex I am interested to receive your feedback to improve it.

https://app.helperbit.com (https://app.helperbit.com)

you can find the main discussion on the project here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1032587.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1032587.0)

why this happened :

this is the welfare of living standard that occurs in japan which is now only in the same bitcoin spit. bitcoin can set the price in accordance with the sale price of the American dollar. How can we with ..?