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Nim receives $100k in Bitcoin donations
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoNice, we’ve got $100k! I wonder what we’re going to spend our $88k on? Maybe we should use our $112k to hire somebody to work on the compiler full time? Would $85k be enough for them?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoBoy, looks like votes on my comment are just as volatile.
- dmitriid 5y agoHackernewsCommentCoin?
- judofyr 5y agoHistorically there’s been a mentality on HN to avoid these repetitive shallow jokes (sorry, but it’s true) since they don’t lead to much interesting discussions, but maybe times are changing.
- abnercoimbre 5y agoYea, I gleaned nothing from it which is not in the spirit of HN. It's hard to always comment in a meaningful way though.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoMy big beef with crypto is that it seems to be very hard to convert it to cash when needed. The world is far from being the one in which BTC can actually pay the bills.
- ptudan 5y agoEqually glib: In 2025, damn, with inflation devs are costing 500k or 2 btc these days!
- warkdarrior 5y ago2021: One dev are about 5 BTC now (including benefits), so it's nice to see costs will come down in the future.
- arcticbull 5y agoWhat's your rationale to suggest that inflation will double the price of everything in the next 4 years?
- bpodgursky 5y ago"Crypto is a pointless scam, let's complain about asset prices" -- people who have donated $0 to Nim
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gameswithgo 5y agoI've contributed to Nim's development and I say that.
- jarcane 5y agoTechnically, this includes the people who gave them the Bitcoin. Bitcoin != USD. In fact I seem to recall being told that was rather the point.
- capableweb 5y agoIf I were a developer receiving cryptocurrency donations I'd be much happier to receive > $0 than $0 which would probably be the alternative if I didn't have a address people could send to.
- oleganza 5y agoPeople who choose to attempt to understand bitcoin are either loud zealots, or stay quiet because why would they expose themselves? So the superficial criticism of volatility or "how do I reverse a fraudulent payment" is left to those who don't even bother to explore the subject.
- boublepop 5y agoIt’s a joke about the volatility of Bitcoin, not a dismissal of donations. I know Bitcoin proponents can be quite dismissive of anything that could potentially sound negative towards crypto, but I feel like we should not be having a discourse on HN where a joke like this has to be explained or which has people downvoting OP for making it. No matter your stance on Bitcoin it’s volatility is a matter of established fact, and it’s a fun joke, how the hell did humor die in the crowd of wallstreet bets HODL’rs screening yolo while betting their house on a stick because the ticket has high meme-value?
- capableweb 5y ago> It’s a joke about the volatility of Bitcoin, not a dismissal of donations. I understood that :) My point was that although Bitcoin is volatile at this moment, I much rather receive donations in a volatile currency than no donations at all.
- wyldfire 5y ago> We’ve received some small donations here and there, in hindsight we should have secured these funds much earlier[1], but the relatively large recent donation has spurred us into action. Essentially what we did was move the funds to hardware wallets owned by the core development team. This way we have significantly reduced the risk of the funds being stolen. Bitcoin's coolest feature is perhaps it's biggest weakness. I think virtually all of the people to whom Bitcoin is appealing have had access to a banking system which means we have never had to think about securing our wealth. IMO being able to safely secure the secret that would unlock a wallet from both destruction and theft is not easy. You can avoid the risk of destruction by redundantly storing the secret. Hardware wallets are a great option, probably the best one. Let's hope it's enough. BTW: I did a mini-matching fundraising for a couple of days for Zig, based on some cryptocoins I had that were gathering dust. Conveniently enough there's a broker out there that was able to receive the cryptocurrency, exchange it and forward it to the Zig Foundation. This relieved the Zig team from the hassle of securing or exchanging the funds. See the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28790988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28790988 -- I was able to donate my cryptocurrency to match funds donated using conventional means.
- jarcane 5y agoYes, physical storage is so much more secure. That's why I bury all my gold in the backyard.
- arcticbull 5y agoI'd recommend keeping it at the COMEX gold warehouse.
- cinntaile 5y agoUsing a hardware wallet doesn't mean you're physically storing it. It's just a user interface to make storing it a little easier and a little more secure than having it as a file on your computer or on a piece of paper.
- TacticalCoder 5y ago> You can avoid the risk of destruction by redundantly storing the secret. Not disagreeing with you but then there are two places (or more) where the secret can be found and your funds stolen. As to having, in addition to that, a hardware wallet makes for yet another potential attack vector: is the hardware wallet unlocked by your fingerprint? Is the fingerprint reader secure? Is it protected by a PIN? How safe is your PIN? Is the HSM in the hardware wallet really unbreakable and really erasing everything after three tries and no attacker can bypass that?
- pkulak 5y agoI wish that when people put up crypto donation addresses, they at least included _one_ from a coin that doesn't have astronomical transaction fees. I like donating a couple bucks here and there to cool projects, but that will cost me three dollars if I use Bitcoin.
- rileyphone 5y agoSci-hub has a Nano address set up, but then the issue is they still need to redeem them into a more usable currency at some point and the work to do that is barely worth the bit that they have received. This is the one area that I am still holding out hope for crypto to improve, but the vision is lacking.
- tata71 5y agoThe vision isn't lacking, it's currently busy taking profits from retail and institutional investors with one hand tied behind the back.
- asasidh 5y agocheckout lightning tips on twitter
- wyldfire 5y agoAgreed: I would donate 500 USD worth of <a specific fee free coin> to this project if an address were allocated. EDIT: censored to not look like I'm shilling/pumping.
- doomroot 5y agoNo you wouldn’t. Your clearly just want to pump your bags.
- wyldfire 5y agoI'll censor reference to the coin but then it won't communicate the message to the intended audience: the dev team themselves who are clearly open to other coins. If the dev team allocates the address (or if every.org adds support for that coin), I'll post a link to the transaction here. BTW I donated BTC to Zig earlier this month [1], only reason I mentioned a different coin here is that the Nim team mentions both BTC and Eth in their post and I don't prefer going to an exchange. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28790988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28790988
- daedalus_f 5y agoI’m an amateur programmer and Nim was the first compiled language I properly tried after first learning to program with R and python. Love the language and found Manning’s Nim in Action a great starting point. Happy this popped up on HN as it spurred me to send a small donation.
- pietroppeter 5y agoso glad I posted it, then :) I completely agree that Nim is a great first compiled language coming from those coming from R and Python!
- ur-whale 5y agoWorth pointing out: notwithstanding the many and recurring howls of "Bitcoin is useless", "Show me an actual use case" often heard on HN, here is an actual example of a straight donor-to-receiver transaction where someone contributed to something he really likes and wants to support, and no third party being able to prevent it from happening or skim any of it. If only for this specific use case (e.g. donate to wikileaks), there is actual intrinsic (and social) value in Bitcoin
- martin_a 5y agoYou know, you can always do a bank transfer. I don't think anybody would stop you from donating to some FOSS project and it's free to do that. But yeah, if you want to donate to $shadyorg, somebody might stop you or come after you. Don't see how Bitcoin is better in this regard.
- ur-whale 5y ago> But yeah, if you want to donate to $shadyorg Because there's obviously a clear and universal agreement on what falls in the $shadyorg bucket. Like when Visa and their cronies decide to cut off donation to an org they don't like just because. Must be nice where you live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASzFs4_4kvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASzFs4_4kvk
- arcticbull 5y agoI personally feel that Visa and other major transaction providers should be treated as critical infrastructure and either nationalized or regulated such that they are required by law to process every legal transaction. However it does not therefore follow that making your own money that consumes as much power as Poland (60 days of power for the average US household per transaction) or generates as much e-waste as the Netherlands each year is a better solution in any way. Certainly not while miners re-activate shuttered fossil fuel plants and burn Kazakh coal. It's an abject, unmitigated disaster. All while processing the transaction volume of a small Costco. If anything it distracts from actual solutions.
- yeetaccount 5y agoI once donated a few Bitcoin to a free software project. At the time 1BTC cost about one tank of gas. I sold the remainder when I doubled my investment and thought I walked away lucky. Now 1BTC costs more than the car I’m putting the gas in. Oh well.
- steve_adams_86 5y agoWell, it required people like you actually using it to have any value in the start didn’t it? There had to be “losers” for there to ever be winners. But you’re not a loser because you still came out ahead. I’m not an economist or even an intelligent person, so this could be a terrible assessment of the situation.
- arcticbull 5y agoIt accrues value specifically because people don't use it. Currencies don't skyrocket in value because it cripples the economy if that happens. In currency terms, it would yield a deflationary spiral. What happens is people save their currency instead of spending it, which causes retailers to lower the prices to incentivize spending. This in turn means they have less money to pay their workers, and they have to cut their pay and lay them off. This means the workers have less money to spend and the cycle continues. Even without a deflationary spiral, there's something called the paradox of thrift. [1] Something like 80% of Bitcoin hasn't moved in the last year. If we set aside the influence of USDT, the narrative you're pointing to would be that people are valuing Bitcoin more highly because of its utility as some form of currency - maybe, one day. In reality, due to its fundamental limitations and incentive structures (2-3 tx/sec), it cannot be a currency. It will always be the currency of the future, forever. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paradox-of-thrift.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paradox-of-thrift.asp
- tata71 5y agoNow explain DOGE.
- 5y ago
- SavantIdiot 5y agoFinally! Now there's a real example crypto enthusiasts can point to of BTC usage that isn't black market or laundering.
- drdrey 5y agoOr maybe you just haven’t been paying attention? What about the Pineapple fund, The Giving Block and Gitcoin grants just to name few?
- 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM 5y agoWhat do you mean by "finally"? It always was one the main use cases, doing p2p value transactions.
- johnisgood 5y agoYep, you could even buy groceries with BTC, but the haters seem to overlook some things. I actually bought coffee with it before, and yeah, it is legal.
- TacticalCoder 5y agoThe first BTC usage I remember (before hearing that it was also used to buy drugs) being talked about was poker players using it to do "person to person" transfer between poker sites. Someone had money on PokerStars and you didn't but wanted some immediately. That person would send you $100 on PokerStars (using a "player to player" transfer) and you'd sent that person 200 BTC (back when BTC was at 50 cents). This was kinda common on poker forums between regulars (sadly I was too dumb to realize the value back then). Sure it was gambling but it was neither black market nor money laundering. P.S: an estimated 3% to 5% of the world's GDP is linked to criminal activities. There are hundreds of politicians in the Pandora papers. Money laundering predates cryptocurrencies by a very long time and it's a problem on a whole different scale.
- spraveenitpro 5y agoHODL!!
- dom96 5y agoThis has just dropped from #2 to being off the front page, why?
- pietroppeter 5y agoUff, happened again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27614742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27614742
- tata71 5y agoCryptocurrency is a divisive topic on HN. For better, for worse, pro or con.
- RattleyCooper 5y agoNim is my all time favorite language. The devs deserve this and more.
- vmception 5y agoDon't reuse addresses not even for the sake of donation transparency (no other kind of donation would get this level of transparency, it is easy to re-raise crypto to those standards and also exceed it) The master public key will let you cycle to an infinite number of new and unique addresses to send funds to. But purely client side merchant solutions for bitcoin (and other crypto assets) are sorely lacking! BitcoinPayServer pretty much sucks.