An Anonymous Bitcoin Millionaire Is Donating Their Fortune To Charities (gizmodo.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Tis the season for giving, and one Bitcoin investor claims to be giving away the majority of their cryptocurrency holdings after experiencing an incredible year. The unnamed donor has set up a fund to hand out $86 million worth of Bitcoin to various charities, and they've already started listing the donations and providing receipts. If this whole thing works out, you can just call this mystery person the Bitcoin Bill Gates. So far, The Pineapple Fund claims to have distributed just over $6.5 million in Bitcoin between eight charities. Its website provides links to the blockchain transactions under the name of each charity. These transactions are in a public ledger, but the sender and recipient are only identified by a long string of digits. We contacted the Electronic Freedom Foundation to ask if the two transactions that were purportedly sent to the activist group were indeed legitimate. A spokesperson confirmed via email that the EFF has "been in touch with the Pineapple Fund and are in the process of receiving the donation." The anonymous founder writes: "Sometime around the early days of bitcoin, I saw the promise of decentralized money and decided to mine/buy/trade some magical internet tokens. The expectation shattering returns of bitcoin over many years has lead to an amount far more than I can spend. What do you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly spend? Donating most of it to charity is what I'm doing. For reference, The Pineapple Fund is bigger than the entire market cap of bitcoin when I got in, and one of the richest 250 bitcoin addresses today."
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Only the miners carry the whole chain. Not ordinary users.
If it's legit,.. (Score:3)
Respect to the donator.
Re: If it's legit,.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cynic mode: It will be just the right amount to ensure he pays no tax on the millions he cashes out for himself.
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nothing wrong with that, about half of the people in the USA gave nothing to charity. Money that was given to make tax return better works the same for a charity as money that was given without regard for tax situation.
Re: If it's legit,.. (Score:2)
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Donations aren't a magic loophole rich people use to pay $0 in taxes. Unless the charity they're donating it to is a scam and is somehow giving them back the money, which is illegal.
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Respect to the donator.
Instead, the author chose to insult the donor by comparing him to Bill Gates.
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I've been at Slashdot since 1999
Sometimes I get the impression that a lot of people here haven't really updated themselves with any knowledge newer than what existed when they joined
"Cashing out" bitcoin is as simple as selling them on any number of exchanges. It takes a few minutes (or hours, depending on the sums and the number of network confirmations the exchange requires).
How I know? Well, I've done it. Multiple times.
Maybe you should study more, and post less.
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You have? $86M or even $4B worth of cashing out?
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Assuming he knows about it, of course.
EFF (Score:1)
We contacted the Electronic Freedom Foundation to ask
Really Slashdot? What has happened to you? Its the Electronic Frontier Foundation dumbasses.
Re: EFF (Score:2)
Tis the Season (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need to be a Bitcoin millionaire to make a difference. Some difference makers:
Charity Nerds [charitynerds.org] donate games to hospitalized children.
The Shriners [shrinersho...ildren.org] help transform the lives of children scarred by burns.
Your local Salvation Army [salvationarmyusa.org] chapter has a great track record of helping those least blessed.
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Re: Tis the Season (Score:3)
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I am a maker! I have a 3D printer, a CNC router and a laser cutter!
Re:Tis the Season (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Tis the Season (Score:5, Insightful)
Was going to make a cheap swipe against utilitarianism, but this is dead right. Bang for buck, theres little more important than trying to solve malaria. It, along with HIV has put such a massive strain of Africa , that even putting aside shitty dictators and corruption, its hard to see how Africa can get out of its poverty without solving Malaria and HIV. These two diseases put huge sections of the adult population in bed sick (And trust me, Malaria is no joke) instead of working, and thats *terrible* for keeping people fed and housed. HIV is a hard one, although it CAN be neutralized with good meds, but Malaria is straight up preventable, and yet its ignored
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its hard to see how Africa can get out of its poverty without solving Malaria and HIV.
Without Malaria and HIV, they'd have even more population growth and more poverty.
Re: Tis the Season (Score:2)
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Africa doesnt have a population problem. Theres enough resources to feed everyone very well. In fact all the evidence points to population growth correlating positively with economic growth (Well by definition really, more actors in an economy means more producers and more consumers). Thats why immigration actually lowers unemployment. Its not immediately intuitive, but it makes sense when you remember mouths to feed=jobs. Or
Re: Tis the Season (Score:1)
How about helping declare a city homeless free... (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly spend?
I have always said to myself that if I ever got a lot of $$, I would start an effort to declare a major American city homeless free.
It's shameful that we have folks that are homeless in a country as rich as the USA.
It's even more shameful that so much cash is spent on [useless and unproductive] campaigns oversees, with no hope of ever stopping.
Let me add: I wouldn't mind getting some of those bitcoins either. I have major financial problems of mine.
Re:How about helping declare a city homeless free. (Score:5, Funny)
I would start an effort to declare a major American city homeless free.
Sounds like a South Park episode.
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..... and what do you think would be used to pay for their diagnosis and medication?
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Re:How about helping declare a city homeless free. (Score:5, Informative)
Homelessness cannot be cured by money. Most homeless people are mentally ill.
Yes and no. Yes, most homeless people are mentally ill, but their illness doesn't make them want to live on the streets, it just makes them unwilling or unable to do all of the things required to obtain and maintain a residence. Money can address this by giving them a place to live, fully paid for and furnished, including utilities and maintenance, no strings attached and with no requirement that they get along with others or do anything else they're unable to do. On top of that, money can provide counseling and health care. In such an environment, many of the homeless do get better, at least somewhat.
This is an approach that has proven to work quite well with the chronically homeless. Very few of them choose to return to the streets. Many of them kick their addictions. Some of them get jobs. A few actually build back up to self-sufficiency.
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No, money can't address that. These are mentally ill people. Many of them aren't even aware where they are. You cannot just hand them a free house and counseling and expect it to be OK. The problem is that there is no way to force people to seek treatment for their mental problems.
You don't know what you're talking about. You've never worked with homeless people.
Re:How about helping declare a city homeless free. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have, and he's correct.
Free housing is available if you just don't smoke or drink on the premises. I have a friend who sleeps on the street because he'd rather smoke than have shelter.
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Would he sleep on the street if the free housing allowed him to smoke?
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Free housing is available if you just don't smoke or drink on the premises. I have a friend who sleeps on the street because he'd rather smoke than have shelter.
The shelter has strings attached. You're right, that doesn't work, which is why I specified that it must not.
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I have, and he's correct.
Free housing is available if you just don't smoke or drink on the premises. I have a friend who sleeps on the street because he'd rather smoke than have shelter.
In addition to the fact that your friend's shelter has strings attached (in contrast to what I said works), it should also be pointed out that one counterexample doesn't disprove the general case. We're talking about people, not theorems. There actually is a very small minority of chronically homeless whose illness is so severe that they will remain on the streets even when offered no-strings-attached shelter. But they are a very small minority.
Re: How about helping declare a city homeless free (Score:2, Troll)
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And pulling facts out of your ass is exactly what a mentally ill person would do.
And if we want more proof, check out his username: 110010001000. You have to be mentally ill to use 12 bits.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which specific government safety net had funding cut in the 1980s which impacted the level of homelessness?
The Democratic Congress at the time which controlled the purse strings spent more money on most everything, so your theory seems like it contradicts reality.
However, I'm always willing to be proven wrong, so please give us the specifics of the non-mental illness-related safety net program which was actually cut in a budget which was enacted by Congress during that time. I'll be waiting, but not holding
Re: How about helping declare a city homeless free (Score:2)
Re: How about helping declare a city homeless fre (Score:2)
You are welcome (Score:2)
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Please send 1000 Bitcoins to 1LHuLKyHDndUdjgKUsmfAG8tDnXZ5fTuUA.
If they're worth exactly nothing then it shouldn't cost you anything to do so.
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19.3K USD
Interesting what people do with newfound riches... (Score:1)
Many, such as mega millions lottery winners, blow it all in a few years in selfish wasteful pointless-glitter spending, Very few are good stewards, providing for their own and others long term interests.
In contrast, those who worked for their riches, tend to either do a Scrooge McDuck, hanging on to every dime, dedicating their life to growing their net worth, defining their self-worth by their net worth, or create meaningless vanity charities (Calico Cat Benevolence Society, etc) in their own name.
My favo
This will be a fun experiment (Score:1)
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There are a large number of bitcoins siezed in an illegal (prescription) drugs case, that the government is about to put up for sale. I think this was actually a Slashdot article in the past week or two. Once that hits, it could cause a shake-up.
Anyone who has bitcoins from way back when they were cheap, and refuses to sell any of them now, is an idiot. At least try to sell a few of them to make sure that you even know how to do it! Otherwise you might as well forget that they are worth anything. If you ca
As much good as many charities do.... (Score:1)
They have pitfalls.
Isn't it at least interesting to note that a charity serving the third world probably pays for its executives to live a significantly above average first-world life?
Many of the biggest charities clearly have something improper going on.
Choose your source, here is one:
https://www.charitynavigator.o... [charitynavigator.org]
In any case, suffering cannot be simply alleviated with no alternative in place to prevent the forces that caused the suffering to begin with from returning. The suffering will simply return.
Y
An anonymous transaction!? Unpossible! (Score:2)
These transactions are in a public ledger, but the sender and recipient are only identified by a long string of digits.
But but but...the bitcoin apologists keep saying that bitcoin payments are fully traceable and that it's trivial to tie a person to a wallet address!
What productivity was generated? (Score:3)
I'm having a difficult time seeing where the productivity gain in bitcoin is. All that happened is someone mined/bought some bitcoin, then sold it at a higher price to someone else, who sold it at a higher price to someone else, etc. just because people keep expecting its value to rise. With stocks, at least the first person to buy the stock was contributing capital to the expansion of the company (which must have used it well if their stock is still worth something). With bitcoin, the only thing the first person to acquire it did was turn a bunch of electricity into heat to calculate some numbers with special mathematical properties.
If there's no productivity gain, then the process is zero sum or negative sum, and there is no net productivity gain for society (e.g. someone got some furniture which didn't exist before). In that case this is basically like a lottery, and one of the winners is donating some of his winnings back to society. Well, considering the money for those winnings came from society in the first place, there's no net good being done here. You're just moving money around.
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Bitcoin is a currency. A store of value. Currencies do not cause production or wealth, they just move it around.
It is sad that you are disappointed that Bitcoin does not cause production or wealth. However, it is fundamentally unfixable, so I hope you feel better about it soon.
(The real problem with Bitcoin is that it is a lousy currency because it is so illiquid. The whole point of a currency is to be liquid. 4 transactions a second is a joke.)
Always money in the Banana Stand. (Score:2)
Really should have called it 'Banana Stand Fund'
Trivia (Score:1)
https://bitcoin.org/en/you-need-to-know