Bitcoin Forum

Time to write a letter. Feel free to write your own paragraphs and the like, as well give feed back.


Dear EFF, the bitcoin community would like to donate X bitcoins, which are worth X USD because of the work EFF to protect new and emerging technologies, as well internet freedom. Bitcoin is a new emerging P2P cryptocurrency that have over 30 enterprises and a boatload of community members around the world. It have extremely low transaction cost, is hard to produce, and is hard to fake and as well many other property that make bitcoin a good money. As such it is probable that it will become a threat to centralized monetary system, whom are often backed by the state. Members of the bitcoin community as recognized this as a potential hazard impeding bitcoin adoption in addition to the threat of monetary freedom. We also recognized previously that you protect other kind of internet freedom, such as net neutrality. Thus, our motivation to donate to the EFF.

As, such, there are X unconditional donations, but there are X amount that have specific requirement for you to satisify. Conditions include the EFF setup a node and donation buttons for members of the bitcoin community to be able to donate. Others require you to mention bitcoin to help promote the cryptocurrency.

Of course, EFF can convert bitcoins to dollars at will, or buy goods and services with bitcoins, or simply do nothing with it at all. We, members of the bitcoin community hope that the EFF will put the donation to good use.

My comment is that putting conditions in the EFF is rather silly:

If people want to donate, let them donate; they can send the money to a trusted party / wallet-on-a-VM, and we can send it over to the EFF if they want it. The EFF's goodwill and press is worth more than them running a node or two.

And, by the way, I think it's a good idea to turn the EFF on to Bitcoin. I would suggest that it might be a good job for someone with business development experience, a phone call and conversation might work wonders.

How about using the wiki?  google wave?

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=778.msg8596#msg8596

I would like to use simple, direct language that transmits one message -- our support for EFF's agenda. If we are at all effective as a medium of exchange, they will naturally discover the rest of our story. Three short paragraphs, maximum:

1. Greetings: We appreciate your service to the community.

2. Who we are: Peer-to-peer network based digital currency.

3. How we can help: By donating xxx Bitcoins.

Sure, it is important to collect and discuss here the many things we will want to say, but let's please keep the final message brief and to the point.

Very well: I follow your format.

Dear EFF, the bitcoin community appreciate your ongoing effort to protect internet freedom such as internet netruality and patent busting projects. We also see you an important partner to ensure that the bitcoin community goes unmolested or at least won't go down without a fight.

The bitcoin community is a society of users with over 30 business enterprises based around a new open source P2P cryptocurrency and monetary system called bitcoins. The software for bitcoin is published under the MIT license. It have extremely low transaction cost, is hard to produce, and is hard to fake and as well many other property that make bitcoin a good money. As such it is probable that it will become a threat to centralized monetary system, whom are often backed by governments. Members of the bitcoin community recognized government's interest in keeping their monetary monopoly and their resultant actions as possible threat to the growing bitcoin economy.

As, such, members of the bitcoin community would like to donate our goods, the cryptocurrency bitcoins to you. Members of the community will donate X bitcoins unconditionally, worth about X USD. We will also donate more if you fulfill various wishes such as putting up a bitcoin donation button, setting up a node and more. All together combined are X bitcoins, which are worth in total, X USD.

The EFF is free to convert bitcoins to other currencies at will, or buy goods and services with bitcoins, or simply do nothing with it at all. We, members of the bitcoin community hope that the EFF will put the donation to good use.

Kiba, you forgot to mention that the bitcoin software is open source and GPL. Since we are writing to the EFF I think its important to specify it.

Edited the last letter to reflect this.

It's actually licensed under the MIT. So I made use of the spirit of your suggestion instead.

No GPL? Unforgivable!!! I am leaving this community at once...  ::)

MIT is considered an open source license by the EFF, right?

Well, OSI and FSF would consider it open source.

Is that actually true? Or an argument at all?

The FSF acknowledges that the MIT license is compatible with the GPL. You can fork an MIT project into a GPL project if you like, after which your GPL fork is copyleft.

So the use of the MIT license shouldn't be an issue here.

So, does anybody have any constructive criticism for my letter? I found that I always write bad grammar and spell poorly.

I think start simple and expand upon ideas before producing a message.


Perhaps if effort by more than one, a wiki may be helpful to produce and refine a letter until it looks complete and is a message that most/everyone agrees is acceptable to send.

http://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php?id=letter_to_eff
Feel free to collaboratively add to it any points that may be worthy of including in such a message.  Bonus points if you are skilled at writing such messages and can contribute enough content to cover most everything that is essential in such a letter.

Note: If you disagree with one of the bulleted points for a paragraph, use strikethrough to indicate that it is not good point/sentence to use instead of removing it.

"Bitcoin" should always be capitalized, as it is a proper noun.


I would say "appreciates", but this might be a difference between US/UK English.


I would say "efforts".


Spelling: neutrality.
Internet needs to be capitalized.
(Also, I for one am opposed to net neutrality legislation.)


The system is called Bitcoin, not Bitcoins.


In addition to many other useful properties, Bitcoin has extremely low transaction fees and is hard to produce and fake.

systems

which are often...


Members of the Bitcoin community have recognized the interest worldwide governments have in keeping their monetary monopoly. Their resulting actions could be a possible threat to the growing Bitcoin economy.

As such,

would like to donate some of our goods -- cryptocurrency bitcoins -- to you.

Combined, this is X Bitcoins, which are worth X USD in total.


The EFF is free to convert the Bitcoins to other currencies, buy goods and services with the Bitcoins, or simply do nothing with them at all. The members of the Bitcoin community hope that the EFF will put the donation to good use.

Heh theymos.  I was contemplating correcting mistakes within kiba's suggestion message, however, I also wasn't sure whether the content of it was a kind of message that should be representative of from the Bitcoin community.  I suggest somehow collaboratively producing a message either with using a wiki, google wave or some other means.  Otherwise, if a single person who is skilled in writing is willing to produce a letter, it may be acceptable as well.

Upgrade complete:




Dear EFF, the Bitcoin community appreciates your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom. We also see you as an important partner to ensure that the Bitcoin community goes unmolested or at least won't go down without a fight.

The Bitcoin community is a society of users with over 30 business enterprises based around a new open source P2P cryptocurrency and monetary system called Bitcoins. The software for bitcoin is published under the MIT license. In addition to many other useful properties, Bitcoin has extremely low transaction fees, high divisibility, and is hard to produce and fake. These features make Bitcoin useful as a medium of exchange. As such it is probable that it will become a threat to centralized monetary system, which are often backed by governments. Members of the Bitcoin community have recognized the interest worldwide governments have in keeping their monetary monopoly. Their resulting actions could be a possible threat to the growing Bitcoin economy.

As such, members of the Bitcoin community would like to donate osome of our goods -- cryptocurrency bitcoins -- to you.. Members of the community will donate X bitcoins unconditionally, worth about X USD. We will also donate more if you fulfill various wishes such as putting up a bitcoin donation button, setting up a node and more. Combined, this is X Bitcoins, which are worth X USD in total.

The EFF is free to convert the Bitcoins to other currencies, buy goods and services with the Bitcoins, or simply do nothing with them at all. The members of the Bitcoin community hope that the EFF will put the donation to good use.

My revision:

Dear Electronic Frontier Foundation,

We, the Bitcoin community, appreciate your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom. You are an important organization that is designed to support our community.

...[/quote]

I'm too tired to revise anymore... Must sleeeeeeep!

This should perhaps be reworded, it sounds like we're taking it for granted that they'll help us if needed.

The word bitcoin is not always a proper noun. It's a proper noun when it is the name of the application called Bitcoin. It's a common noun when it's referring to units of bitcoin currency. It can also be an adjective, but the adjective is based on the proper noun. I prefer to write it lower case when I use it as an adjective. I don't much care whether my adjective capitalization is correct or not.

I am inclined to expand on the adjective usage and use "x Bitcoins." However, the FAQ uses, "1,300,000 bitcoins." If the FAQ is an official source of information, then I would always copy its usage. The FAQ also uses, "new Bitcoins," though, which seems a bit contradictory. Satoshi has used both ways on the forum.

There is precedence for your usage: the Costa Rican colón is based on someone's name, but is written in lowercase. Costa Rica is a Spanish-speaking country, though, so maybe this one example was only inherited from their non-English usage. Do you know of an actual grammar rule for this case? I looked through the Chicago Manual of Style, but I could not find any rules for a case like this.

Hopefully Satoshi or sirius-m will say which usage is correct. Until then, I think I'll use "[0-9]+ bitcoins" as the only lowercase usage of the word.

Or it can be a verb, "If you like my work, bitcoin me."

That should be capitalized because you are referring to the Bitcoin network. Similarly, "Just Google it" is capitalized when referring specifically to the Google search engine.

These rules are all very trivial and unimportant, of course, but following all of English's ridiculous capitalization rules is a bit of a hobby of mine.  :)

>We also see you as an important partner to ensure that the Bitcoin community goes unmolested or at least won't go down without a fight.

If you ever do expand to protecting alternative monetary system, the Bitcoin community have hopes that it will generally  be unmolested or at least won't go down without a fight.

Reword complete. Good or not? Should I just delete this altogether?

I think "unmolested" or any variant of "molested" is not so useful for wording

Well, its definition is:

not interfered with, disturbed, or harmed.

you could say - "the bitcoin community remains free of intervention."


I would leave out the "fight" part.

If you ever do expand to protecting alternative monetary system, the Bitcoin community have hopes that it will generally remains free of intervention.


Reword complete. RFC.

That is a truly awful sentence.

I did not know that. After Googling "when I googled it" I realize I am not alone. Not that people on the internet have a clue, one person "google'd" something.

Saying how awful it is doesn't exactly help me. The letter may not be that great, but it remains that I am the only one who is writing it.

Sorry. I wasn't helping because I'm not interested in legal action. I'll do grammar action though. I was talking about this part mostly:

"..the Bitcoin community have hopes that it will generally remains free of intervention"

The whole form of it is bad though because it's not a conditional thing. We hope to remain free weather their legal organization helps us or not.

The Bitcoin community hopes that it will generally remains free of intervention, weather or not if you ever expand to protecting alternative monetary system.

Reword complete. Request for comment.

 
The Bitcoin community hopes that it will generally remain free of intervention, perhaps with your support in the future.

Or even better:

The Bitcoin community hopes to generally remain free of intervention, perhaps with your support in the future.


 

 

That's good to avoid the assumption or reliance on that they will support Bitcoin.

I'm sure that the EFF will welcome donations in bitcoin  ;)  Other than that, IMHO, it'd be enough to just emphasize how Bitcoin will further EFF's general goals.  Asking for support seems strange.  For Bitcoin to be useful, it must resist intervention inherently, through careful and well-tested design.  Freedom by permission is an illusion.  If that's all clear, I can't imagine why EFF wouldn't support Bitcoin.  Yes?

Rewording accepted.

Upgrade complete. Request for comment.



Dear EFF, the Bitcoin community appreciates your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom. The Bitcoin community hopes to generally remain free of intervention, perhaps with your support in the future.

The Bitcoin community is a society of users with over 30 business enterprises based around a new open source P2P cryptocurrency and monetary system called Bitcoins. The software for bitcoin is published under the MIT license. In addition to many other useful properties, Bitcoin has extremely low transaction fees, high divisibility, and is hard to produce and fake. These features make Bitcoin useful as a medium of exchange. As such it is probable that it will become a threat to centralized monetary system, which are often backed by governments. Members of the Bitcoin community have recognized the interest worldwide governments have in keeping their monetary monopoly. Their resulting actions could be a possible threat to the growing Bitcoin economy.

As such, members of the Bitcoin community would like to donate osome of our goods -- cryptocurrency bitcoins -- to you. Members of the community will donate X bitcoins unconditionally, worth about X USD. We will also donate more if you fulfill various wishes such as putting up a bitcoin donation button, setting up a node and more. Combined, this is X Bitcoins, which are worth X USD in total.

The EFF is free to convert the Bitcoins to other currencies, buy goods and services with the Bitcoins, or simply do nothing with them at all. The members of the Bitcoin community hope that the EFF will put the donation to good use.

"Dear EFF"
"Dear Electronic Frontier Foundation" ?

It seems a bit strange to reference "The Bitcoin community" each in the first three sentences.  Any suggestions on wording to make it seem less repetitive?

"over 30 business"
"over thirty business"

"The software for bitcoin is "
"The software for Bitcoin is " ?

"and is hard to produce and fake"
I suggest rewording this somehow.  "produce" may be good choice for word but I'm not sure for "fake."

"These features make Bitcoin useful as a medium of exchange."
I'm not sure about this sentence considering that USD is easily producable and USD are still useful and practically dominating medium of exchange.

"As such it is probable that it will become a threat ..."
"As such, members of the Bitcoin ..."
Perhaps rewording one "As such" to something else?

"donate osome"
"donate some"

Suggestion for rewording:
"members of the Bitcoin community would like to donate osome of our goods -- cryptocurrency bitcoins -- to you"
"members of the Bitcoin community have (expressed|shown) an interest in donating [cryptocurrency] bitcoins to you"
"members of the Bitcoin community have (expressed|shown) an interest in donating [cryptocurrency] bitcoins to you as a (gesture|sign|token) of appreciation"

"We will also donate more ..."
Until this sentence you have not used "we" and instead referred to "the Bitcoin community."  Perhaps this is an error?

Also, instead of incentivising or encouraging based on this sentence:
"We will also donate more if you fulfill various wishes such as putting up a bitcoin donation button"
Perhaps simply stating something like:
"The Bitcoin community has expressed more of an interest and feels safer in donating if you were to directly establish your own bitcoin donation button or page."
Perhaps the above sentence can be rewritten a bit, but I suggest communicating the message similarly.

"The members of the Bitcoin community hope that the EFF will put the donation to good use."
I don't think "hope" is good word.  It's not liek EFF has a track record of putting some money to good use and some to not so good use.  Do they?  If they do, then the above sentence may make sense and thus we are gambling.  But if they do not, then I suggest using a word other than "hope."

I've made edits in bold.  OK, many edits.  FWIW.

Dear EFF, the Bitcoin community appreciates your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom. We hope to generally remain free of intervention, and would welcome your support.

The Bitcoin community comprises approximately N users and over 30 business enterprises employing a new open-source P2P cryptocurrency and monetary system called Bitcoins. The software for bitcoin is published under the MIT license. In addition to many other useful properties, Bitcoin has extremely low transaction fees, high divisibility, and is hard to produce and fake. These features make Bitcoin useful as a medium of exchange. As such, Bitcoin may become a threat to centralized monetary systems, which are typically backed by governments. The Bitcoin community knows that governments will defend their monetary monopolies, perhaps by suppressing the Bitcoin economy.

As a demonstration of our value, members of the Bitcoin community would like to donate some of our goods -- cryptocurrency bitcoins -- to you. In order to facilitate that process, we request that you add a bitcoin donation button to the EFF website.  That would involve setting up a Bitcoin node, which is quite straightforward. We estimate that EFF would receive approximately X bitcoins per month, currently worth about Y USD. We note that, by accepting bitcoin donations, EFF might expand its support base (perhaps substantially).

I think the donations are one-time only. Nobody has pledged to donate per monthly.

If EFF had a bitcoin button, I'd donate 50 per month  :)

Until the exchange rate hits what? ;D

I took Ichi's version and modified it a little bit.



Dear Electronic Fronter Foundation, the Bitcoin community appreciates your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom. We hope to generally remain free of intervention, and would welcome your support.

The Bitcoin community comprises approximately N users and over 30 business enterprises employing a new open-source P2P cryptocurrency and monetary system called Bitcoins. The software for bitcoin is published under the MIT license. In addition to many other useful properties, Bitcoin has extremely low transaction fees, high divisibility, and is hard to produce and fake. These features make Bitcoin useful as a medium of exchange. As such, Bitcoin may become a threat to centralized monetary systems, which are typically backed by governments. The Bitcoin community knows that governments will defend their monetary monopolies, perhaps by suppressing the Bitcoin economy.

As a demonstration of our value, members of the Bitcoin community would like to donate some of our goods -- cryptocurrency bitcoins -- to you. In order to facilitate that process, we request that you add a bitcoin donation button to the EFF website.  That would involve setting up a Bitcoin node, which is quite straightforward. We estimate that EFF would receive approximately X bitcoins currently worth about Y USD. We note that, by accepting bitcoin donations, EFF might expand its support base (perhaps substantially).

Good point.  I'd say $0.50 or so per bitcoin.

I'm honored  :)  And I have some questions.

Who will be sending this to the EFF, and how?  What email address?  Anonymous?

Also, "Bitcoin community" appears too many times, and there are still issues re "Bitcoin" vs "bitcoin".  "Bitcoins" at the top of the second paragraph doesn't work.  I'm too tired and cranky for another rewrite, however  :(

Putting on my pedant hat, I can't imagine that this will be a printed (or even PDFed) letter, given that it's coming from "the Bitcoin community".  If this will be simply an email, it should just start ...


If it'll be a classic letter, the format should (of course) be ...

I think it just sound better to greet the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Beside, the starter sentence feel "out of the blue".

If classic letter, perhaps it would be interesting if Satoshi were to personally prepare the letter himself and to fancy it with Bitcoin-related art/imagery/symbolism and perhaps even have a Bitcoin sticker to seal the envelope. ^_^  That would be AMAZING! ... and definitely garnish some incentive, motivation and interest for the EFF to consider Bitcoin as a healthy establishment.

"Dear Electronic Fronter Foundation, the Bitcoin community appreciates your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom."
"Dear Electronic Fronter Foundation,

The Bitcoin community appreciates your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom."

"We hope to generally remain free of intervention"
humm...  http://onelook.com/?w=generally&ls=a  I'm not sure about "generally" or more importantly the sentence/message directly after the first sentence.  Perhaps simply:
"We hope to remain free of intervention and would welcome your support" <-- Note: no comma

"and is hard to produce and fake"
"and is difficult to produce and counterfeit"

First you need to create a client that does subscription payments . :D

A super geeky way to do subscription payments is with the console client and cron. :P

If the EFF had a Bitcoin address I'd donate often.

Only to forget! Your client need a regular donation mechanism.

It is fairly simple to produce a client that uses the api (http://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php?id=api)/json

No conditional donations! No json! We're saying hello and giving our support to their program, not negotiating a contract.

I think our hardest task will be to define what Bitcoin is http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=815.msg9854#msg9854 I used to think that calling it a digital currency was a good idea, now I don't.

Letter upgrade, complete.

Dear Electronic Fronter Foundation,

The Bitcoin community appreciates your ongoing efforts to protect Internet freedom. We hope to remain free of intervention and would welcome your support

The Bitcoin community comprises approximately N users and over 30 business enterprises employing a new open-source P2P cryptocurrency and monetary system called Bitcoins. The software for bitcoin is published under the MIT license. In addition to many other useful properties, Bitcoin has extremely low transaction fees, high divisibility, and is difficult to produce and counterfeit. These features make Bitcoin useful as a medium of exchange. As such, Bitcoin may become a threat to centralized monetary systems, which are typically backed by governments. The Bitcoin community knows that governments will defend their monetary monopolies, perhaps by suppressing the Bitcoin economy.

Members of the Bitcoin community have expressed an interest in donating [cryptocurrency] bitcoins to you as a gesture of appreciation. In order to facilitate that process, we request that you add a bitcoin donation button to the EFF website.  That would involve setting up a Bitcoin node, which is quite straightforward. We estimate that EFF would receive approximately X bitcoins currently worth about Y USD. We note that, by accepting bitcoin donations, EFF might expand its support base (perhaps substantially).

I bet they'll smile when they come to check out the project and find this thread. :D

Thanks, kiba  :)

FWIW, I support dropping "cryptocurrency".  Bitcoin is what it is, and that's well-described elsewhere.

So, what are the current best estimates for N, X and Y?

We have about 575 bitcoins, which translate to 37.72 dollars at the current exchange rate of 0.056.

Not everybody pledged a donation. Some of which probably won't be donated at all.

Are those pledges, or in an account?  I vaguely remember another thread.  Help?

How may Bitcoin clients are there currently?

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=778.0

Thanks.  I pledged.

In this thread (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=846.msg9952;topicseen#msg9952), lfm writes that "I see about 850 connections to the IRC channel."  Is that our best estimate?

That's quite an assumption. It would mean there are 1 user for each nodes. It is more probable than some users run more nodes than other.

OK, just say 850 nodes, then.  Could we assume that all members of this forum are users?  What's that number?  And would exchanges report numbers of distinct clients?

We have 691 users, with 9818 posts. This is about 36 posts a day, 3 members a day, and 15 users online each day.

Nor would all nodes show up on the IRC channel.  I, for one, would not.  IRC is blocked for me, so my client on my thumbdrive wouldn't show up, and I imagine that mybitcoin.com would only count for one.  Any user's client who was offline and not interested in generating coins wouldn't likely show up either, since is a good chance that he turns off his desktop at night.

YES! Why bring in banking terms? This project is as different from banking as blogs are from newspapers.

And very good work, kiba, but who is going to guarantee that Bitcoins are worth xxx USD? Not me! (What is a USD worth, anyway?)

[Duplicate, sorry!]

A USD is worth somewhat less than 1 mg gold, according to the current spot price.  Without active manipulation, the current equilibrium value is probably closer to 0.1 mg gold.

You're thinking of troy ounces. One ounce of gold is worth about $1226.00. There are 31.1034768 grams in a troy ounce, so a gram is worth about $39.42. A dollar is worth about 0.000815661 troy ounces or 0.025369883 grams of gold.

DOH!

Right, 25 mg ostensibly, and 2.5 mg really.

How embarrassing  :-[

No, dammit! Somebody might trade x amount of gold for a FRN, but there is no guaranteed conversion. A FRN isn't worth squat, and they'll tell you that! Too bad Bitcoin isn't that smart.

@fresno

You asked: "What is a USD worth, anyway?"

Perhaps we should have agreed on the meaning of "worth" before I answered.  In a fundamental sense, we agree that they're worthless.  There's no guaranteed worth, anyway.

OTOH, next weekend, I can take 9,999 USD in cash to a coin show, and (with luck) drive home with seven one-ounce Canadian Maple Leaf bullion coins, and change.  Would the seller be a fool?  Or would I?  Only time will tell.

So, how much gold is a Bitcoin worth?  Or rather, how many Bitcoin could I get for a 0.1 ounce Maple Leaf bullion coin?  I might sell a few if the price were right, just as a lark.  Just one per customer, though, and I'd need a mailing address.  And you'd need to pay me before I mailed the coin.

Edit:  How about y'all send Bitcoin contributions for the EFF to me, and I'll mail Maple Leaf bullion coins to them  ;)  Or would that be confusing the message?

I'm confused.  How about you send the maple leaf bullions to me and I'll let you pay to me in bitcoins to cover their costs.  So as to show a bit of generosity, I'll even let you pay a bit extra, maybe 1.5x to provide more incentive for you.

 ::)

OK, just drop any reference in the letter to any of those worthless fiat currencies.  Yes?

I'll still sell a few 0.1 oz gold bullion coins for Bitcoin.  Bidding for the first starts at 2,500 Bitcoin, and will close at midnight Sunday (GMT).  The buyer will cover postage, and accept all risks.

Whose side are you on?!!

We donate Bitcoins to EFF. They do whatever they want with them. Maybe they'll discover something we haven't thought of.

Stop converting Bitcoins into everything under the sun! That's not our business. We regulate Bitcoins and keep the system working. That is all.

Let somebody else convert Bitcoins into drachmas and poker chips. Or maybe do it yourself, on your own site. Keep Bitcoin out of it.

Just send me the equivalent in e-gold and I'll be fine.  For that matter, I've sort of wondered why e-gold doesn't have an exchange market yet?  The largest problem with gold is that the stuff is heavy as gold is nearly one of the most dense metals you can find... and one of the earlier methods to detect counterfeiting or dilution of gold bullion with "cheaper" metals and most heavier metals are generally worth more than gold.  In fact, when "panning" for gold you depend on the density of the metal in order to extract it out of the other materials.  If you have an actual use for gold for artistic or industrial uses, it may make sense to ship it but it is a lousy currency precisely due to its weight.

In terms of sending a letter to the EFF, the K.I.S.S. principle should apply here.  Don't get side tracked into anything other than presenting this project in a clean and simple manner.  To note that there are several exchanges that will convert Bitcoins to other forms of money is useful perhaps as a side note, but that should also be a demonstration of its value as a currency.

I would encourage the EFF to set up a node to receive donations, and in fact I would be willing to at least donate a small portion of the coins I've already generated to the EFF.  What they choose to do with them afterward is their business, but it would seem like something they should at least be aware of, and perhaps even to note that there may be some legal challenges ahead with Bitcoins that perhaps could use some of their expertise in terms of protecting both the digital frontier and to note another form of innovation that is introduced by a free and open internet. If it wasn't for efforts of organizations like the EFF, Bitcoins simply wouldn't exist as software at all.   To me, this is also an excellent example of positive good that can come from peer to peer networks.

Bitcoin, gold/silver and gold/silver-based crypto exchange systems, yes.  Fiat stuff, no.

Not e-gold!!!  They were hosed, and I'd never trust them.

If you want to buy stuff locally, and the net is down, you'd better have some gold and/or silver.

Personally, I prefer silver rounds.  I keep them in my desk.  I would recommend worrying about getting out of debt and building up your pantry closet first, however.  If it ever gets to the point that I'm trading silver as the common currency, it's *already* bad enough that most people won't be willing to trade anything at all.

Yes, silver "dollars" for small purchases, and gold for long-term savings.  All physical, in our own well-hidden safe.  We also have freeze-dried food, total-nutrition tablets, guns and ammunition, and we live in a close-knit community far from large cities.

So, is the letter all right or I am missing some criticism?

Still missing some.   I will review it again later.

Oh yeah, the letter...


I think the term "cryptocurrency" will come back to bite us someday, but Satoshi has already used it publicly, it is a coined word with no prior usage, and it works.

Trying to get the community to use words other than what accurately describe bitcoin is a losing proposition.

I like the version of the letter that you posted, fresno.  It says all that's necessary.  I have a few minor edits.


Satoshi may have coined "cryptocurrency", and "crypto currency" has been in use for decades.

I am happy to accept Fresco's version since others like it.

+1 Fresco's version.

1 google result: "unneeded regulatory intervention"
18,400 google results: "unnecessary regulatory intervention"
~23,000 google results: "* regulatory intervention" -"of regulatory intervention"
thus, "unnecessary regulatory intervention" seems most relevant/useful ("of regulatory intervention" being most common of all "* regulatory intervention" results)

bef: unneeded regulatory intervention
aft: unnecessary regulatory intervention

Today's Bitcoin community comprises approximately N enterprises and indiviuals, using a new open-source P2P cryptocurrency system called Bitcoins <https://bitcoin.org> that is published under the MIT license.
Does this mean that the community is comprised by using a new open source P2P cryptocurrency system?  This sentence seems strange.

bef: have asked to donate
aft: have offered to donate

Did we really ask?  Who was asked?

246,000 google results: "We are certain that you will"
1,660,000 google results: "We are confident that you will"

bef: We are certain that you will
aft: We are confident that you will

0 google results: "receive many more in individual donations"
0 google results: "receive many more individual donations"
7 google results: "receive many individual donations"
See search results for "receive many * donations" for some ideas on how to reword this.
Perhaps even "receive many * donations" is not useful either.  Any ideas?

@mizerydearia

Thank you.  That's a very interesting approach for common usage.  The next time I'm lost for words, I'll just google  :)

I like your suggestions, FWIW -- up to "We are confident ..." anyway.

Upon reflection, I get that EFF can't receive any Bitcoin donations without creating a node.  Right?  Using Mt. Gox's payment button, for example, could get them Pecunix or whatever, but not Bitcoin.

How about ...

"In order to accept pledged and future donations, EFF would need to create and publish a Bitcoin address."

added the bit in italics should we describe how it can be done?

Yes, thanks.  Honestly, I've never checked out mybitcoin.  I will  :)

The details don't need to be in the letter. Keep it simple.

Yes, simple is good.

Nobody seems interested.

Why was that?  Is it that y'all don't like gold?  Or that y'all don't trust me?  Or?

Can you post to Australia? :)

That'd be iffy.  I wouldn't want to use DHL or whatever, because the'd want to know far too much about me.  I could use regular anonymous airmail, but a gold coin would be pretty obvious in an x-ray scan -- or even by feel.  Although I've have received several ounces of gold internationally by mail, that was registered and insured, with customs paperwork.  Any ideas?

Is it just me or this conversation has had a very sudden sidetrack here? :)

Unless the EFF has Australian offices and you'll be sending them the gold along with the letter, of course.

I apologize for that -- should have started another thread when I first made the offer.

They do actually.The australian government has been threatening to filter the internet just as china does.You could say Australians are on the bleeding edge of this issue.The perfect way to put bitcoin donations to work is helping push back where the fight is.This has been worldwide news for awhile and the government is an international laughingstock because of it.They are also trying to ban pictures of small breasted women and female ejaculation because they think it is child porn and abberrant behaviour.

For more info look up "operation titstorm"  and  where anonymous ddos'd the Aus governments websites.
http://www.efa.org.au/ (http://www.efa.org.au/)


I will send them an email referencing this thread if that would be ok.

Is the letter ready to send to EFF?

Yes.

I say it's time to ship the final draft.

What does it look like?  I cannot tell if it's ready or not if I can't see latest changes.
\
Is this final draft?  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=804.msg9021#msg9021

I propose the following.  It's based on everyone's suggestions, with a few tweaks.

==================================================

Dear Electronic Frontier Foundation,

The Bitcoin community appreciates your efforts protecting Internet freedom, and keeping the Internet free of unnecessary regulatory intervention.

The community using Bitcoin <https://bitcoin.org> -- a new open-source P2P cryptocurrency system published under the MIT license -- already comprises several hundred enterprises and individuals.

Several members of our community have offered to donate to your foundation, with 700 Bitcoins pledged so far.  In order to accept pledged and future donations, EFF would need to create and publish a Bitcoin address using a local client, or use an online service such as MyBitcoin.

Warmest regards,

Bitcoin community

How should the letter be sent?

Nice letter. It brought to mind the story of James Smithson donating a bunch of gold sovereigns to the unexpecting. :-)

One of us could email it.  I nominate kiba  ;)

Seconded!

Big-worded committee bloat is slipping in. Not knocking anyone's efforts!

Improvements should consist of removing and simplifying. I'm supposed to be working, but couldn't control myself:


They will look at the site, and get back to us if they have any questions about how to receive Bitcoins. I doubt they'll have any trouble.

You rock  :)

So....where do I send the letter to?

Unless one of us has a better address ...

membership@eff.org

"For membership, donation, corporate giving or matching gifts information"

I sent this letter with "several" not "several hundred" to the EFF. I don't like to exaggerate.

Several = ca. seven  ;)

late grammar nazi:

At this time, I still do not have anything from the EFF.

Give them some time.... it's not like that the only thing they do is checking their email for donations. ;)

The EFF uses lots of college interns for donations and maintenance projects. As the school year is just about to start I would expect more attention after the new crop of recruits comes in.

Nothingness and Nothingness.  :-\

No reply, ever. Any suggestion on how I should move next?

1) resend again to same address
2) resend to informatio AT eff DOT org
3) If you live in the US, send a fax or the letter via snail mail.
4) call them.

https://www.eff.org/about/contact

If you call, record the phone call and if you live in state required by law to inform party, then do so. ^_^
Then post on Internets.

I might be able to help with this. I have a personal contact at the EFF. I will write a letter. No promises though.

Thats a great idea.

Any progress for that matter?

Probably just by sending everybody's Bitcoin commodity donations to the "eff" via Bitcoinmail to: membership at eff dot org  .... will introduce them to Bitcoins when they claim the donation (having to actually download the Bitcoin client app to receive the donation - and sell the Bitcoins for national currency - through one of the Bitcoin commodity exchanges if national currency might still be needed by them to conduct business in the conventional economy - alternatively they could embrace Bitcoin commodity and use Bitcoin commodity, as payment in like, if they can on there part again, reach agreement with their trading partners).  https://www.eff.org/about/contact

And what if they'll add it to spam-list? :-\

I have choosen to use mybitcoin, which are essential online bitcoin account. Very easy to use. I just need to give them the password and the username.

I sent an email and am now playing the waiting game.

Safe idea, Kiba.  That way, if it does not get claimed by the eff - you did not automatically donate your coins to Bitcoinmail.com when you wanted to donate it to the eff (if the eff turned out to be unthankful/ignorant/not checking the spam folder from time to time ?!?)

Kiba -- please send me your email address ASAP using the forum personal message system. I'm in talks now to get this setup for the EFF and I need to loop you into the conversation.

Also, Kiba, please go ahead and post some Bitcoin addresses here for the EFF MyBitcoin account so we can all donate to it.

Great news: The EFF is definitely interested in recieving Bitcoins!

WhooHoo!!!

It's in another thread for EFF donations. I don't have much time to do anything right now as I am in college.

Also, can you please post the email message from the EFF so we know what it says or does that violate social convention.

Um, yeah it's a private email thread so it wouldn't be nice to post it publicly without asking permission.

All they need now is the username and password for the account. If you send me your email then I can introduce you into the conversation. You can then drop me and forward them the info privately.

I can handle the rest of communication with the EFF, such as recommending that they setup a donation area on their website, etc, but you need to send the account info yourself since you're the account trustee.

Response I received:

*name changed in case anonymity is desired

It's taken care of... kiba is continuing this thread and is going to send them a username/password so they can get their donations.

I haven't yet mentioned anything about having them setup a donations page yet... I think I'll wait until Kiba confirms that they have successfully recieved their coins. Once they're happy with the donation, I'll mention that there are more donations to come if they put up an official bitcoin donation box on their website.

Done. Now all that's left is to wait.

Sweet! Did you ask if they would post an address on their website for future bitcoin donations?

I haven't asked this yet and don't want to annoy if you already asked.

Nope. My email was simply about the mybitcoin account.

Okay cool, in that case I'll follow up and mention that there are more coins coming their way if the publish a bitcoin donation address on their website.

Done.

"I hope you decide to offer a bitcoin donation address on your website. There are many more people who haved pledged additional coins if this is offerred, and it provides a convenient method for future bitcoin donations.
 
Thanks, and let me know if you have any problems with the account!"

If I hear back that they're actually going to do this, of course, I'll post and let you know!

Have you heard anything back?

No, nothing yet.

Anything yet?

LOL, nope :(

How about now?  Anything?

*Checks emal* No, still nothing.

Btw, I'm not sure if they feel the need to reply and say anything. I mean, I didn't specifically request a reply as in "please tell me what your plans are". I just left it on their plate.

But I agree that I'm dying, just as you are, wondering if they're going to post a Bitcoin donation box on their website or not. They may not even know yet -- maybe they're talking about it, or maybe they just want to liquidate the coins.

Any ideas on the course of action at this point? Should I wait a month, and if they don't post one, then ask specifically what their plans are? I feel that we've done everything possible to enourage them, so any additional bugging would just be bothersome.

Pestering them about a Bitcoin button is not a good idea. It was a gift, not a bribe.

Just give them the Bitcoins and follow up in two weeks.

2 weeks
2,419,200 seconds
Same amount of time as expected time to generate 2,016 blocks

How many days we have left?

news?

We need news!

news at 11?

Should I follow up with the EFF? What do I ask?

Indeed...what to do.

Unfortunately, I lack facilities in learning and discovering social norms.[1]


----
1. That's a bit of an exaggeration. Let just say that I have asperger syndrome and I am slow to catch on as far as the social game goes.

Do I understand correctly? mizerydearia is our spokesman, and received the following from an EFF rep:


Did we reply to this? From the same email address? Are they aware of the bitcoin.exe program and website, or just of mybitcoin.com?

(And is mybitcoin.com our project? Has mybitcoin.com been reachable from the 'net recently?)

Does EFF know what they can do with their donated Bitcoins? IOW "Who are you, and what's in it for the EFF?"

Yes, we replied and they definitely understand that they can exchange their BTC for USD.

I'm unclear on who is acting as spokesperson in this matter, his/her authority, and what information has been exchanged with the EFF.

We were led to believe that this was a group effort, and traded over a hundred posts composing a letter that we could agree on, yet it appears that communications have been held since that we are not privy to.

I am especially concerned with the statement that "they definitely understand that they can exchange their BTC for USD." Did someone in a responsible position make this policy, or was this an ad lib?

Anyone can act upon their own authority, they don't need our approval.  It is to their credit that they asked for commentary and support, but none need that to act.  This is not an action committee.

May be we should just donate to other foundation? ::)

Perhaps the next step is to ask if they have access to the account or need help.

You could ask them if they would like to receive more bitcoin? Thus leading to the question if they will put up a donation box.

So there has been no verification that the funds were even received?

The only "verification" you have is Kiba and I's word that we were involved in an email thread with one of the heads of the EFF where we gave them the account information.

If you have any ideas on how we can get the EFF to prove that they recieved the funds, I'm definitely game.

If you want I will post the entire email thread here and just block out the names.

Edit: this post used to contain the email thread, but I removed it for EFF's privacy.

You should remove the account info for the bitcoin account as soon as possible.

Sorry about that

I wasn't saying that I don't trust Kiba to give a record of the correspondance, I just meant I hadn't followed carefully and didn't realize that they didn't even give a "Thanks, we'll check it out" response, or even a stock "We got your email" message.

I'd say they rejected the donation. (Probably because they are busy eating and drinking with politicians.)

Probably because we failed to show any benefit to EFF or to their community.

We had an opportunity to introduce a new system of accounting, which could revolutionize payments on the web. What we showed them was forty bucks--IF they hassled with our software and sketchy exchange service.

Somebody trade the Bitcoins into money, so they can get something out of this exchange.

I am going to go with the optimistic hypothesis that they got bigger fish to fry than try to exchange bitcoins for paypal dollars.

With the famousness that they have with geeks, it wouldn't be surprising that they simply forgot our email.

The fact is, if we don't get a response within the next week ... or 2 weeks at the most ... I mean, at some point we need to follow up, right?

I just need to figure out what to ask.

Hi, did you managed to get control of the mybitcoin account?

Even if no money was attached it is pretty lame for a company claiming to be fighting for freedom to not be interested in a money that can be used freely.

You mean, uh, charity.

Makes sense. What do you say -- wait 1 week and then ask?

Apparently I'm incapable of making an independent decision.

Have we not wait two weeks already?

We could always pick another recipient. I vote for Stephan Molyneux.

While he is not the eff he is the pre-eminent liberty philosopher of our time.

A registered letter should be sent to the EFF if you want them to take you seriously.

I also like "stefbot" (Stephen Molyneux). I've been trying to get a hold of him for weeks. I want his site to accept Bitcoin donations. :)

I would prefer not to waste the donations of everyone here in the community. The donation was already sent. At the very least, the EFF would liquidate the coins.

ESR might be willing to accept bitcoin donations.

He is both a hacker and anarchist and he would fit right in with the bitcoin community.

In the future we should not do donations in this manner. We should request that they put up a donation box, and say that IF they do this then and only then will we donate coins.

In any event, I'm going to go ahead and send some sort of follow up to the EFF this weekend.

I'm not a supporter of donating something and then later (when they are not interested directly) saying, well then give it back. Especially because many people donated to their cause, not some other organisation. How do you think (let's stretch it a bit far) if people donated for the WWF and saw their money going to the PETA, because the WWF was not interested but the PETA is.

Personally, I see two options that I can feel happy with:
1) Keep the account with the bitcoins for a few years and send an automated mail to the EFF yearly. If bitcoin really catches the market they might become more interested.
2) Contact one of their sister organisations in other countries, asking if they are interested.

<edit>For point 2, mail the EFF with an ultimatum for the EFF to collect the coins.</edit>

Ultimatum? I don't understand ...

"If we don't hear from you before <some_date> we assume that you are not interested in the donation and we will find an other organisation that might be more interested in this donation."

Or something like that.

Well it's kinda impossible at this point. I already hand them the mybitcoin account.

Ah. I was under the impression that we still would have access to the bitcoins (because, other people mentioned to donate them to some other organisation).

None of the coins in the account were ever mine so I don't really have standing here.

But I think you could interpret the interaction thus far as you holding your hand out offering a bag full of coins for 3 weeks and not even getting a nod. You are not stealing if you pull back the bag. They had the ability to take them for a long time and didn't do it.

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Criticism_and_limitations in September 2005 when PayPal tried to instead divert the donations to a fraudulent charity instead of the Red Cross as Something Awful members had anticipated.

Of course this issue is different in that Kiba is not freezing any funds, however each individual funder should have a say in whether their funds are returned to them, to be preserved in donation to EFF or any other action.  I wouldn't change the course of action for the funds as a whole without permission from all donaters.

Okay, I sent a brief follow-up today.

"Hi [name omitted]! I haven't heard back from you so I wanted to do a quick follow-up. Did you managed to get control of the mybitcoin account?

Thanks,
[BrightAnarchist]"

I'll let you know if I hear back.

Hmm, is there a reason to censor their (Aaron Jue (http://www.eff.org/about/staff/aaron) or Mitchell Kapor (http://kapor.com/bio/index.html)) name?

Know everything you can about your customers:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10/04/1454231/Free-Software-Foundation-Turns-25

Stallman is less receptive than Raymond simply because Stallman is just a moderate socialist. Raymond is an anarchist and he's already siting on the fence about IP abolishment.

Nonetheless, I don't know if the free software crowd would be receptive to bitcoin and ciphergeeks and anarchistic hackers that surround it.

Oops! I confused the FSF with the EFF. Sorry!

Individuals aside, I'd wager that Bitcoin is already fairly popular among FS/OSS types whom are aware of it's existance.  I am such a free software geek from long ago, even though I'm not a coder.

No email from the EFF?  ???

Maybe ya need to send a letter until it get noticed by the EFF people.

No email?  :'(

Nothing, no response

Try again?

Maybe someone else should try?

Please remove these names immediately.

GREAT NEWS!!

I heard back today. Basically, they say that yes they got the account and that they're most likely going to liquidate the coins for USD through one of the exchanges.

In addition, they also said:

"Once all the logistics are squared away, we plan to place this on our Ways to Help page and notify our social networks. At this time, it isn't possible to integrate it with our membership donation forms.  Thanks for taking the time to contact us again and for everyone's generosity!"

So it looks like they're going to post a Bitcoin donation address in their "Ways to Help" page!

YaHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Btw, the reason it took so long way due to the difficulty of deciding if they wanted to be accepting anonymous donations via Bitcoin or not. Looks like they decided yes, even if they put it in a "less formal" donation area.

Two months of work....success!

I wonder if there is a legal liability with accepting anonymous donations.  I know that donations to political action committees and election campaigns require disclosure.  Perhaps they were trying to figure out a way to accept them and keep the funds seperate of their political activities.

I guess this thread will be used for news of EFF's eventual implementation of bitcoins.

I had contacted Aaron (EFF's Aaron, not Aaron name changed below) yesterday with the following message:

Here is their response:

* Bitcoin community member name changed since it is not identical to their forum alias.

My follow-up:

Tell them that this is only relevant for people who had BCM's receiving address saved. BCM regenerated everyone's unique address for deposits into BCM.

The warnings at the top of bitcoin.org, bitcoin.org/smf/, and BCM don't look good to outsiders... It makes the system look unstable.

WOW, great!

Response to my email (above):

So I don't see any mentions to donating to bitcoins on EFF's WAY TO HELP page?

Great - another way to fund useless "rights protectors" that do little more than talk about how good they are and take high profile cases to elevate lawyer's income and / or egos.

Someone will need to commence asking EFF what is up.

Yeah you can't blame them though, they wouldn't want to put a reference to bitcoin on the site and have it come up during their fancy dinners with congressmen.

Seem to me that nobody is willing to do the deed, I guess I'll have to contact them.

I sent them an email about four days ago, I have had no response.

Success!

http://www.eff.org/helpout

"Donate to EFF using Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency. Transfer money from your Bitcoin account to ours: 1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt"

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!

Me very excite!!

Dear Sir, that is pure juicy AWESOMNESS !
Bitcoin rocks !

Yeah, thanks heaps! I just sent 50  :D

wow. Im speechless. :o

Same here. I had completely given up on the EFF, even after they sent the mail confirming that they would do this. Mega surprise!

I bet the recent increase in valuations made them crave bitcoins all the more! I mean, when we made the original donations, Bitcoins were only at 6 cents each.

Totally awesome. Donation sent. Thanks to those who worked to make this possible.

Also, this should make it possible to get Bitcoin back on Wikipedia.

I would just like to thank Kiba for starting this . If you want to show your appreciation join his Mutual Aid association  http://fivegrinder.com/group/Bitcoin Mutual Aid Association (http://fivegrinder.com/group/Bitcoin Mutual Aid Association) and also his new project  http://www.soulplaying.com/ (http://www.soulplaying.com/) .

I urge everyone to support what he is doing .

I'm already donating to them in USD but I'm very happy to see them taking bitcoins, so I sent them a BTC donation to show them we mean it. :)

i donated 69 btc.  in general i will donate anything towards getting bitcoin back on wikipedia.

Wow...just wow.

Thanks for everybody who help and donated the funds for EFF.

I got a reply from the guy who deleted the Wikipedia article.

He pointed to the procedure for undeleting articles, and mentioned that the Bitcoin article has already been through that procedure twice but the appeals were rejected because Bitcoin doesn't have enough respectable mainstream coverage. I think that the Wikipedia criteria are not well-structured to non-mainstream topics, but that's how it is.

One major way that commercial enterprises get mainstream coverage is by issuing a press release, which gets picked up and re-hashed by all kinds of publications that Wikipedia respects. So if anyone knows someone who can write an effective press release in the standard format, it would be a great idea.

Of course a press release needs a subject, but "Bitcoin Economy Passes $1 Million" would do just fine.

Awesome news.

Props to kiba, BrightAnarchist and everyone else who spent time getting this done.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1355.0 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1355.0)  I came up with a list of press release sites awhile ago for bitcoinmedia.

* Write up a press release about bitcoin and distribute it to some of the bazillion free PR services eg
http://www.free-press-release.com/ (http://www.free-press-release.com/)
http://www.prlog.org/ (http://www.prlog.org/)
http://www.pr.com/press-releases (http://www.pr.com/press-releases)

Here is a list of 50 such sites
http://www.avangate.com/articles/press-release-distribution_69.htm (http://www.avangate.com/articles/press-release-distribution_69.htm)


If someone wants to write something I will spend a few days registering and posting it. Wish someone could write a script that submitted to all of them at once lol.

No need to send it to all of them. The three that you listed is plenty. Any journalist who follows releases distributed on free sites will find them.

They key is to get the release written right. The journalist needs to be able to see at a glance that it's newsworthy and reliable. If the journalist has to come to the website and spend a few hours working out what it's all about, they're unlikely to bother.

cool! donated to EFF 0.9+50

Bitcoin Blogger Article :)

http://www.bitcoinblogger.com/2010/11/bitcoin-gains-legal-protection-through.html

http://www.bitcoin.me/images/btc.jpg (http://www.bitcoin.me/images/btc.jpg)

This just happened to my twitter feed.

The bitcoin blogger article is on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1905522

This is great!  Thanks for posting that pic!

Awesome.

All I can say is:     "kiba, Hero Member"

Oh, and....  I'm calling my media contacts at PC World and such...

We'll see what happens.      :)

Yes, thx kiba for starting this!

This just in....Bitcoin newscast!

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7682177/ (http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7682177/)


 :D

Thanks to jimbobway for writing the article.

LOL!  Very funny!!!  ;D

Thanks for the media storm created by jimbobaway.

Lol, I read the article earlier and it didn't strike me as overly ominous. But hearing it in that voice is scary! The first 30 seconds sound like a warning.

And now I can claim that I started the longest thread on this forum, ever.

AND! I just extended it by one post longer with my declaration. :D

Hey there everyone -
   I think it's time to follow up on this. I'm afraid that the EFF hasn't checked their mybitcoin.com account, and might not be aware that they've collected over 3000BTC, and that given the recent surge in popularity it's a considerable donation that they might want to redeem now. I wrote the following as a letter - I'm planning on publishing it on a blog or emailing it to the new EFF staff member who wrote recently about bitcoin. But it would be rude to take the thunder away from the original 'hero member' so I figured I'd run it by here first. What do you guys think?



"""
Hi Rainey,

   I'm a newcomer to bitcoin - I've been studying the community for just over a week. One of the first things that appealed to me was that EFF accepted bitcoin donations. I wondered how that came about - does the EFF endorse bitcoin? I set about researching this question using the bitcoin forum, the bitcoin block record itself, and questions directed at the IRC channel. I found out that the EFF started accepting bitcoin donations in August 2010 after several forum members collaborated on a letter and created a mybitcoin.com account to receive the donations. EFF was able to log into the mybitcoin.com account, and even created a Bitcoin Market account with the plan of withdrawing donations via paypal. However, it doesn't seem like there has been a follow up since October 2010. Although your blog post mentioning that EFF accepts bitcoin donations is more recent, it didn't describe in detail how the EFF receives the donations - so I wonder if you weren't aware of this story either.

   I was surprised to find out that the EFF bitcoin address has received 3,000 bitcoins in donations, which is arguably worth about $2,700 USD. A bulk of the donations occurred right away - no doubt from the forum members who drafted the letter - but smaller donations have continued to trickle in daily. Have the original contacts at EFF (Aaron or Mitchell) checked the account recently, or tried to convert the bitcoins back to cash through paypal as they planned? My guess is that no one has checked in a while! It seems to me that the underlying goal of the donation box was to encourage EFF to learn about the bitcoin technology by directly interacting with the community and having a stake in it.

  So, while you could 'cash out' by figuring out how to withdraw the bitcoins through paypal (if I'm right in guessing they're still in the mybitcoin account) - that would be missing out on some of the learning opportunity. You rightly noted in your blog post that an important distinction between bitcoin (a cryptocurrency) and services like paypal is that paypal has been known to freeze accounts (such as wikileaks). I'm sure EFF will have no problem pulling money from their paypal account, but bitcoins are especially useful when paypal isn't an option.


  For example, you could treat this as an experiment in withdrawing money anonymously. Bitcoin is a powerful tool for anonymous transactions, just as Tor is a powerful tool for anonymous speech. It's counterintuitive that bitcoin enables privacy since all the transactions are broadcast to the network! I was able to find out how many bitcoins were donated to EFF by reading the public bitcoin 'block chain'. However, once the bitcoins are passed through a relay (such as mybitcoin.com) the trail forks away. That's why I can't tell for sure if someone has already tried to use the donations! (Of course, mybitcoin.com might keep logs. And if you withdrew the exact balance at once (3 147.94btc) then it might be possible to connect the dots.) I'd like to pose the following as a challenge: route the bitcoins through several relays, split them into multiple addresses, and withdraw in small amounts, through several means, without identifying yourself as EFF. Besides services like coinpal that withdraw to a paypal account, there is a coin4cash website that will send you cash by mail, or you could get a prepaid VISA gift card from coincard. You can transfer to electronic exchangers like Liberty Reserve or moneybookers using www.mtgox.com, and a robot in #bitcoin-otc mediates an over-the-counter market for trades.  If this sounds like a dry run for laundering money, consider that it's the same quality that makes this a worthwhile 'liberation technology'. A lof of the fun of bitcoin technology is that it's very easy to write code for - this encourages diversity and innovation in the form of small web services. My favorite is an escrow at www.clearcoin.com, which has a default option to specify EFF as the recipient of the collateral bitcoins in case one of the parties reneges. I wonder if I can find out how many of the donated coins came from there. Keep in mind that the bitcoin economy is relatively small, and it's correct to say that the technology is in its infancy - so the people running these services that will help you 'cash out' are likely to be some of the same people who donated in the first place.

  If this is too sketchy for EFF, then I have a couple of other suggestions of things you can do with 3000 bitcoins that don't require converting to cash. Dissidents in an authoritarian country will probably have a hard time getting tangible goods; they'd probably get the most value by trading for virtual and information services, such as web hosting and web development - after all, the early adopters of bitcoin are technically savvy and many are open source developers. You could give the bitcoins to Tor or Tahoe-LFS to use as bugfix bounties. The Tor project could offer bitcoins as a reward for operating a relay - the relay operators could receive the reward while remaining anonymous!  If all else fails, there's a guy that will order you a pizza. Ultimately, trading bitcoins for cash is the part that's most uncertain - it's my hope that EFF will use its bitcoin donations to blaze some trails for other organizations to follow.
"""

It looks like EFF only has 0.25 BTC in that address (http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt) at the moment (the the Balance column at the very bottom of the page).  Although they have received over 3000 BTC in the course of that address's history.  They seem to be spending the coins as soon as they receive them.

mndrix, the donations were sent to a mybitcoin.com account. We can't tell what's happened since then - but my guess is they haven't touched it. If kiba still has the keys to the account, maybe he could check on it for us. 

Um, that would be unethical.

You're absolutely right! More reason EFF should check on it themselves.

I don't know if this has made the rounds here yet, but here's a video of Rainey promoting Bitcoin, among other things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ti5O3TI3iw

The EFF is probably dumping their bitcoin on the market and that's what is keeping the price under $1.00 now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ti5O3TI3iw#t=1m12s

From Rainey:

   "Bitcoin... a decentralized internet currency... it's shockingly simple to get bitcoin up and running on your computer."

I suggest to not hassle the EFF about this. I'm sure they have enough people who know about the bitcoins. The EFF staff have better things to do than to read, digest, and reply to long letters.

The video of Rainey mentioning Bitcoin is great!

ribuck, I nearly agree with you and this is one reason I went to the forum first.

However, don't you think the potential to redeem a $3,000 donation is worth their time?

LMGTFY, the EFF donation address is associated with a mybitcoin.com account. All we can tell is that the coins have been collected by the wallet of mybitcoin.com. Unless EFF has been actively managing their bitcoins, they're still in the mybitcoin account.

The only way we could find out (besides logging into their account, which would be unethical) is to ask them!

There's no urgency to convert the bitcoins into fiat currency. It would be cooler if they wait until they want to buy something that can be paid for directly with bitcoins.

The EFF is a registered nonprofit, that publishes annual reports (although the latest I see at their website (http://www.eff.org/about) is for 2009). If will be interesting to see if/how they report their bitcoin donations.

So... they're receiving bitcoins at one address, they know how to transfer them to Mybitcoin, but we're assuming that they don't know that they then need to spend them? I agree with the posters above - it would be unethical to pry into their affairs. This seems like a classic case of "nothing to see here", a solution in search of a problem: it's like someone saying "I know you got paid a salary this month, but I'm concerned that once your wages were in your bank account you didn't know what to do with them. Can I peek into your bank account to check that you're spending your wages?" Hell, maybe the EFF want to save their bitcoins and spend them on something big? Is this really any of our business? EFF members have a right to find out, and I darer say they will in good time, when the EFF next release a report. But it really doesn't seem like it's any of our business.

LMGTFY, it's not likely they are transferring the coins to mybitcoin themselves. The address is a mybitcoin.com address - it happens automatically.

My belief is that the motivation behind establishing a donation box for the EFF wasn't just to help them raise money, but as a way of introducing bitcoin to the EFF, with the hope that EFF will take the time to learn how bitcoin works and become an ally in advocating it to other organizations. If they find a way report it as donation income, for example, then that would set a precedent that the rest of us could follow. Like you said ribuck, EFF has better things to do then install some software and help us debug it. But, thanks to your donations, now they have a stake in it, and an incentive to play along!

It's none of our business what they do with it, but if it's the case that they're just sitting in the account because we haven't followed up on it, then I it's appropriate for us to let them know about the alternatives. It should be a learning opportunity, I'm pretty sure that was the whole point.

All true, and all good, and I'm happy that the EFF have the opportunity to learn about bitcoins, but it still doesn't explain the need for our concern right now. If the EFF really doesn't know what to do with the bitcoins they've received, the coins will sit then and probably appreciate in value. We'll find out when the EFF release their next set of accounts, and can nudge them then. Until then, this still seems like a solution in search of a problem. Which is fine when it's our time; it's much less fine when it's the time of an over-worked campaigning organisation.

Bitcoin get transferred out of mybitcoin anyway. You can look at the block explorer history and see for yourself.

You guys are silly beyond belief.

you seem to misunderstand how these shared wallets work. maybe that is beyond belief? :)

is it just me or do they no longer have bitcoins as a donation option?

whoa, it does look like it was removed...wtf ?

Looks like they removed bitcoin as an option from their "other ways to give" page.

Are you kidding me? Haven't they gotten like $15k worth?

I think this is from eating with politicians.

They’ve received over 3k BTC if I recall correctly.

This is a shame.

This (http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt) is their address, retrieved from the Google Cache (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=de&safe=off&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.eff.org%2Fhelpout&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1).

Hm, that has happened within the last 6 hours, the Bitcoin address was there earlier today when I looked at the page.

They might be testing our response time, to see if we are still paying attention to them.

Whoa!  Maybe they just want to set up a "submit to this address" button; what with our being able to see exactly how much they were getting.

But if the EFF turns its back on Bitcoin, I will not be happy.

more likely they not "turned back to BTC", but simply lack extra-staff to handle it.
when BTC status/flow clarified and simplified, its back, IMO.

Lol, no way. How many staff do you think it takes? Do you see all the people in this forum handling bitcoin donations? Do they all have tons of staff?

I bet there will still be donation to the EFF after this.

i think it would be interesting to contact them about it and ask....

Yes, that's a good idea.

+1

I sent an email may 25th - no response.

just got this back:

EFF was created when ACLU refused to help Steve Jackson.

EFF is stuck in legal mud on BTC.

Drawing board here I come.

Cooperative Exploration Foundation - any takers?

It was like someone pee'd in my corn flakes when I woke up and read this "Legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties" on Bitcoin Money Blog. http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6100385027/eff-bitcoin-donation-review

Here's my response on Twitter: Legal tender may be antithetical to online civil liberties http://j.mp/iEWB4T this is most unfortunate @JPBarlow @RaineyReitman @EFF #bitcoin

Jon
I could not agree more

In all likelihood the EFF is making this decision for tax reasons. Specifically that since they left the donations as BTC they have to claim the donation in dollar value at time of receipt, and then they have to claim capital gains for the appreciation.

This is a pain in the ass, which is why I as a miner liquidate my BTC the day I receive them, so that I can claim the liquidation price as the  market price instead of having to calculate capital gains.

I have not sat on a 501(c)3 board for more than a decade, but I remember being regularly concerned that how we did things could put our tax status in jeopardy, making significant capital gains might be such a problem for them.

There's also the issue that the EFF will probably be defending Bitcoin in the near future.
Possessing an income stream in Bitcoin would be a bit of a conflict of interest.

I seriously doubt that accepting bitcoin is going to jeopardize their tax-exempt status. Would they refuse donations in gold bars because of the potential capital gains?  University endowments thrive on the capital gains.  This is something else which unfortunately diminishes the role of EFF going forward. Maybe somebody needs to send them 'Snowcrash' but their position and their response are laughable.

They are now irrelevant and other more forward-looking organizations will emerge. Accepting only legal tender to be able to support civil liberties on the Internet is like cancer research foundations dismissing a cure to cancer so that the foundation can continue its work. Nonpolitical cryptocurrencies will do more to secure online civil liberties than the EFF can ever hope to accomplish.

The opposite view on that one, is by using bitcoin they are legitimising it and implicitly giving their okay on the legality. To do otherwise, is to lend more legitimacy than they should to the state scrip.

They leave themselves vulnerable to the decisive question, "Why don't you use bitcoin?".

How disappointing.  Seems like the EFF is case of "dogs that bark don't bite".  A charity that doesn't practice what it preaches will not be getting my donations anymore.  Perhaps I'm being too harsh?

Anyhow, soon Bitcoin won't need the EFF to speak out for it anymore.  The money will take care of the talking.

It may be good to make a bitcoin legal charity that provides legal support to individuals attacked by the state.

No, I don't think you are. They are not getting a pence from me either anymore

Nor from me. Effectively the EFF said "The best way to help us protect your online freedoms is to not use your online freedoms."

And they said it without realising the irony.

I will continue to offer the EFF donations when they take bitcoins again. After starting a thread suggesting we donate to them, I feel kinda burned.
 >:(

Once a traitor - always a traitor.
If it was up to me paypal and EFF would never find their way back to our wiki

Do you really think their removing the solicitation for BTC donations means they don't support Bitcoin, guys?  I have some direct experience with the EFF and I can pretty much assure you (no, I didn't ask anyone -- I'm surmising) that most legal staff at EFF and probably every single non-legal staffer is pro-Bitcoin.

I understand if you are disappointed by EFF's decision but you need to understand that EFF's core mission is legal defense.  Yes they do advocacy and such and they have a huge symbolic role but ultimately the EFF is really needed when some schmuck with a blog is getting hammered by a bunch of rabid attack-lawyers because he explained how his VCR worked (or whatever).

So feel free to say "we don't need EFF because other people are now taking Bitcoin seriously."  But taking you seriously is not what EFF does.  But when the DOJ suddenly indicts every single penny-ante Bitcoin business operator and starts sending goon squads to escort you to federal prison, you are likely, IMO, to find a renewed appreciation for what the EFF is about when a bunch of guys in corduroys appear out of nowhere and magically make the whole problem go away for you.

Have you guys considered what might happen if EFF were mounting a vigorous defense of Bitcoin, if they were sitting on a huge pile of it?  What if the shit hits the fan a year and a half from now and those 3k coins or whatever are then with 1.2 billion USD?  Do you think that would help the Defense or the Prosecution in the Federal racketeering and money laundering case against your Bitcoin shoe-shine and haircut parlor?  Obviously, it could backfire massively if it creates a real or perceived conflict of interest for EFF, or if EFF were named as a defendant.  Judges could easily kick EFF out of court citing conflict of interest (don't worry they'll appoint a public defender who goes home at 4:45 sharp to his wife and kid every day).

Support Bitcoin, but please try to support the EFF.  They are the closest thing the Bitcoin community has to a friend in the legal world, AINEC.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes 1.2B would help. But if it's worth that we won't need defense.

They should send their coins to the bitcoin faucet if they do not want them.

+1 this would be exactly the right action from the EFF

This is a good point.

If they want to redeem themselves, they should make clear their where they stand regarding bitcoin.

I'll understand if they don't want to accept donations because of potential conflict of interest.  But they could state that they will defend the freedom of individuals to use bitcoin.  If they do, I'll be more than willing to donate some bitcoin profits to them in US dollars.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this just came across my news feed today, June 20th, 2011.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin)

tl;dr summary .... EFF lawyers soiled their corduroys at the "complex legal issues" surrounding bitcoin ... << bleeding edge lawyers, I guess.

Thanks!  I forgot about the tl;dr peeps out there...  I should have highlighted (bold+italics+underline) the one important sentence:

Fuck them. So are they endorsing VISA and MasterCard or not? Fuck them. Are they endorsing dollars used around the globe for terror, theft, and rape?

I didn't donate my bitcoins so you could put them in the fucking faucet, EFF. I donated so you could help defend against privacy rights. If I had known you were throwing my coins down the toilet, almost quite literally, I wouldn't have done so!

Why would a business like EFF accept bitcoins, and then months later ask their lawyers about the legalities? Shouldn't that have been discussed before, I don't know, thousands of dollars was wasted that came from those who donated and supported your cause?

"We've collected thousands of dollars in donations in order to secure your rights! Except we're not so sure we want to use your money anymore, so we're just going to walk down the road and hand it out to any stranger we see!"

Pathetic.

+1.

Electronic Frontier Foundation => "Stone-Age" "Safe-Previously-Explored-Land" "Money-Dumper".  Yeah, I had trouble finding antonyms for those words.  :)

Anyway, looks like I'm going to have to peel my EFF bumper sticker off my car.  :(

Here's The Inquieter's take on EFF's recent decision: "The EFF loses confidence in Bitcoin" (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2080559/eff-loses-confidence-bitcoin)

The moment they decided to not support bitcoin, they proved to everyone that they are not who they claimed to be. Even if they were before, they obviously aren't anymore since. Probably in the pockets of someone else at this point. F*ckin useless.

EFF was founded to preserve the FOSS stance during the tumult of the late 90's and early century against a hegemony of Microsoft lawyers. They have not professed to be experts of finance. If Bitcoin was a simple software litigation issue then EFF would be the perfect candidate for our current woes. I think EFF is a formula that you take to ward off colds of the litigious nature. We have a severe case of fiscal cancer and no one is sure if Bitcoin is the cure or the disease. Either way, the remedy is a sister-style organization to the EFF that confronts the excesses and extremes within Bitcoin and the very certain attack from without.
The internal issues with Bitcoin and its offshoots are numerous but definable and therefor resolvable. The external issues will be multiplied by our success and unpredictable. We should ask for advice from EFF and other FOSS advocacy groups that are willing to guide us during this expansion phase.
Any thoughts from the grownups?

This is very disappointing indeed.  :( I hope all the contributors to this effort and those who donated to the EFF, are not too disheartened though. Your efforts were noble and commendable. You can only lead a horse to water. I guess any friends the EFF might make, by deserting bitcoin after taking donations and then denouncing their endorsement (not to mention squandering those donations), will not be such trustworthy, honorable bedfellows. When I first saw this thread I thought about the FSF, as being an even better advocate and more deserving of donations too. I just checked and it seems they already came on board back in early May. (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/bitcoins-a-new-way-to-donate-to-the-fsf) I hope they will be more loyal, as I expect they will. We have to be thankful for small blessings I guess.

The EFF is a defender of your digital rights.

They are preserving their ability to remain neutral, thus the ability to provide a unbiased defense if and when bitcoin litigation hits the courts.

The last thing they need is to be disqualified because of a conflict of interest in an important bitcoin case.

+100

They are already conflicted because they are accepting dirty, bloodied Federal Reserve Dollars.

Although it is good to know what side of the fence they are sitting on, for now.

+100.  The EFF used to be very bold.  Just read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation#History (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation#History) and you will read about how the EFF was formed in response to raids by the FBI and Secret Service upon many of the early great 'hackers' (using the positive connotation of hackers, that is) such as John Perry Barlow.


And for those that aren't aware of Operation Sundevil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sundevil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sundevil)):

So yeah, EFF was taking some pretty bold positions at that time.


So we might not have had public access to as much encryption software had it not been for early EFF activism.

Now it seems that all EFF does is battle patent and copyright trolls, which is a noble goal and important to the free exchange of information on the internet.  However, that is much more safe than promoting bitcoin.  Anyway, I wouldn't depend on EFF for too much defense of bitcoin users.  :(

Does anyone know if Aaron Swartz still visits the forums?
He has extensive advocacy background and could possibly aid in preliminary ideas:
- source from the website: http://www.aaronsw.com/

I also found quite disappointing their decision. I know it is not as if there was a contract or anything, but people who donated to them did so in expectation they would use this money to support what they stand for.  And then they decide to drop the donations like that... shame on EFF.

"We understand that we cannot close the account that has been set up in EFF’s name and that returning the donations to the individual donors would be complex and difficult." ~ EFF

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more EFF