Mining charity

[ver599]

I posted recently about bitcoin legitimacy and the drug stigma attached to it. I did a lot of thinking and decided to start a charity which closely mirrors folding@home in that people pool their mining power in order to generate bitcoin for a good cause. After getting the LLC goes through and I have 401-c3 status I hope to get a kickstarter project going.

Would any of you fine people have any suggestions / criticism / helpful hints?

[ivroer]

I'm also a bit of a newbie around these parts, so I don't have any examples to reference of Bitcoin charitable causes and organizations.
But I have talked to some local charities near me to raise their awareness of Bitcoin's potential as a donation method... so I'm interesting in following your progress.

I think some brainstorming / market research is required, the Bitcoin mining industry seems to be very commercially driven - especially now with ASIC hardware. The main problem I see is that folding@home, SETI, and other BOINC style projects were reasonably successful in gaining contributors / participants because people could use pre-existing hardware (their home computer) to donate "spare" CPU/GPU cycles to the grid, there wasn't much else commercially viable to do with their idle computer.

But with ASIC owners, it might be more difficult to convince them to point some of hashes at a charity pool - because they probably spent a chunk of fiat and/or BTC for specialized mining hardware on the hope to reap more BTC.

Mining alt coins that are CPU/GPU friendly might be an option, or 'coining' a new alt specifically for charity (one may already exist?)

My post is more on the criticism side, but I'd like to see what I can do to help if you're serious about forming a cause that shares profits to charitable causes. I'll watch this thread 

TL;DR:
Individual miners might feel too financially squeezed to contribute [directly] to a charity mining pool.
Pool operators might be able to help by facilitating an option for miners to set a % of their mining reward to be redirected to charities.

[ver599]

I appreciate the feedback, and I apologize for not being as elaborate however I'm on my phone (without access to a computer).

Either way the thought was to have people with average computers contribute their power to mine, seeing as that people with ASIC rigs wouldn't be likely to donate.

The point of the kickstarter page will be to hopefully acquire a few ASIC rigs, and the rest to market and hoer programmers to make a user friendly mining app.

We will be called BitGive. "Saving the world bit by bit"

Probably a small effort that, in all reality won't amount to much, but anything I can do to support bitcoin as well as helping those in need sounds like a good deal to me.

[meowmix4jo]

I think Sean's Outpost runs entirely on donations so it's not impossible to run entirely from donations.
CGminer lets you set up so 90% of your power goes to one pool and 10% to another, it would probably be easier to get people to do that because of the hardware+power costs associated with mining. I'd definitely do it with an altcoin too since you can actually get decent hashrates on scrypt but without an ASIC you'll do next to nothing on btc.

[ver599]

I think Sean's Outpost runs entirely on donations so it's not impossible to run entirely from donations.
CGminer lets you set up so 90% of your power goes to one pool and 10% to another, it would probably be easier to get people to do that because of the hardware+power costs associated with mining. I'd definitely do it with an altcoin too since you can actually get decent hashrates on scrypt but without an ASIC you'll do next to nothing on btc.

Altcoins are definitely a good idea. Do y'all think they have the same trajectory as bitcoin? I haven't done much research, but if mining litecoin would get better returns I would be down for that.

[ivroer]

I think Sean's Outpost runs entirely on donations so it's not impossible to run entirely from donations.
CGminer lets you set up so 90% of your power goes to one pool and 10% to another, it would probably be easier to get people to do that because of the hardware+power costs associated with mining. I'd definitely do it with an altcoin too since you can actually get decent hashrates on scrypt but without an ASIC you'll do next to nothing on btc.

I forgot it was relatively easy to have multiple instances (or division) with CGMiner, at least with sha256 - I think it gets a bit more tricky with sharing Scrypt hash power due to memory bandwidth? Am I right or wrong?

Using the folding@home example: they claim 327,000 clients. So if you were targeting a pool (cluster of pools?) of that size with CPU only you might get 5 - 15 Thash/sec

Having some ASIC power to get the ball rolling would definitely be highly recommended.

[ver599]

Well from what I read a minute or so apparently litecoin can't be mined with ASICs? Either way I'm still going to need a team of programmers considering I'm no technological genius... 

Changing gears, any thoughts on swag for kickstarter contributors? The best I have at this point is hard hats with the company's logo on it.

[ivroer]

Changing gears, any thoughts on swag for kickstarter contributors? The best I have at this point is hard hats with the company's logo on it.

Well, my idea is probably quite unoriginal and boring... but how about USB mining sticks? Maybe if it was possible to get a custom "face-plate" with your logo.  Even the gen. 1 sticks are 300 Mhash/sec aren't they? Probably 10x the hash rate of what people will be giving from their CPU. Maybe with a lanyard / keychain or something like that.

Going on a tangent here, but I wonder whether it would be possible to convert a USB miner to use a mass-storage interface rather than generic COM port, that way you might be able to make it portable and use a web browser as the mining client so they can contribute from any computer, without having to install drivers/software etc.

[ver599]

Changing gears, any thoughts on swag for kickstarter contributors? The best I have at this point is hard hats with the company's logo on it.

Well, my idea is probably quite unoriginal and boring... but how about USB mining sticks? Maybe if it was possible to get a custom "face-plate" with your logo.  Even the gen. 1 sticks are 300 Mhash/sec aren't they? Probably 10x the hash rate of what people will be giving from their CPU. Maybe with a lanyard / keychain or something like that.

Going on a tangent here, but I wonder whether it would be possible to convert a USB miner to use a mass-storage interface rather than generic COM port, that way you might be able to make it portable and use a web browser as the mining client so they can contribute from any computer, without having to install drivers/software etc.

I think both ideas are brilliant.

Giving out a USB miner would not only be an awesome gift, but it's also self serving. I'd assume if someone would be willing to give enough to get to that level, that would only mean they would use it to mine.

And a self contained miner would be perfect. People are willing to help so long as the setup and execution is easy and painless. I can't imagine it would be too difficult to get that setup.

[nickgogerty]

Hello,  SolarCoin is going to starting soon (1-3 weeks). www.solarcoin.org is a charity coin that may interest people involved in renewable energy and sustainability.

Our goal is to have the cleanest and greenest coin for the audience interested in that.

It is going to be setup with a huge pre-mine and an independent board of governors and an independent board of givers to control public issuance to limit inflation impacts.  the goal is a charitable circulation to reported entities using a stable unit of value rather than having the coin be a speculative vehicle.  Initially it will likely be speculative as miners will be and are intended to be the primary recipients of coins relative circulation base.

we need some good economists to help with our estimates on the optimal marginal incentive for solar energy production a a coin target at either regional or global level.  any economists with renewable energy backgrounds from multiple countries and regions (primarily PV), drop me a line, it would be great to talk. We also will need people nominated for our board of governors. 

Some of the work on the coin is based on an energy backed currency paper http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802166

If anyone would like to know more or would like to help out let me know, we are interested in thoughtful feedback from the community and being as open and transparent as possible.  the project is being run under the auspices of the name: opencentralbank.org

For full disclosure 0.50% of the pre-mine is reserved for a founders fund.

N

[Jest3r]

I think just about the most important part of a charitable undertaking like this would be transparency, especially with the stigma attached to crypto-currencies at the moment. Having an easily accessible way of showing how many coins have been mined and showing where they've gone would go a long way.

Oh, and one small note; Kickstarter has a policy against "charitable" projects for whatever reason. So you'd probably want to look into an alternative crowdfunder (There are tons though).

[ver599]

I think just about the most important part of a charitable undertaking like this would be transparency, especially with the stigma attached to crypto-currencies at the moment. Having an easily accessible way of showing how many coins have been mined and showing where they've gone would go a long way.

Oh, and one small note; Kickstarter has a policy against "charitable" projects for whatever reason. So you'd probably want to look into an alternative crowdfunder (There are tons though).

Kickstarter.... Raining on my parade 

Either way I'm sure there's another outlet.

[PenAndPaper]

You said about people giving mining power to you and that you 'll eventually buy asics but you haven't said what the charity is about.

[ver599]

You said about people giving mining power to you and that you 'll eventually buy asics but you haven't said what the charity is about.

Which is what I'm mulling over now. I want to make sure the funds truly go to those in need. I've been thinking if there was a way to have separate pools for different types of charities.... Otherwise I'd probably put it to a vote by those in the pool.

I imagine it as either
A. The charity accepts bitcoin directly
B. liquidating at regular intervals and donating proceeds. 

[mindfulmojo]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300631.0

Maybe you could donate the mined bitcoin to them?

[ver599]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300631.0

Maybe you could donate the mined bitcoin to them?

I wouldn't be opposed to that by anyways. I just want to make sure it's going to worthy charities.

With that being said I would attempt to make all stages of the process available for public consumption.

[BitGiveOrg]

Hi There -

BitGive Foundation was founded in July of this year and we are in process of 501c3.  We would love to talk to you about perhaps partnering on your ideas.  I am just beginning to approach mining pools re: donations.  

www.bitgivefoundation.org

Thanks!
Connie Gallippi
Founder and Executive Director
BitGive Foundation
info@bitgivefoundation.org

[traiz]

I think gridcoin contributes to BOINC

[Flashman]

Connie/Bitgive seems legit..
http://labitconf.com/speakers.php

[BitGiveOrg]

Yes! Absolutely legit.  Please check out our website - www.bitgivefoundation.org

Would love to continue the conversation with you all.

Connie