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If only they provided a way to give them money without doxxing myself. If I have to register a Paypal/Stripe account or otherwise give a third-party sensitive i

by 3np 5y ago

If only they provided a way to give them money without doxxing myself. If I have to register a Paypal/Stripe account or otherwise give a third-party sensitive information, it's a no-go. There are several times when I've started the process of donating, only to abort because whatever payment processor they use blanket-403 Tor. GH Sponsors works great when you're sponsoring as a company; I can't use it as an individual. An easy way to provide this is to put up a BTC address (and potentionally ETH if the recipient is willing to deal with the potential managerial overhead of that).

maccard 5y ago
> An easy way to provide this is to put up a BTC address The barrier of stripe or paypal (neither of which require accounts for payment) is _far_ far lower than the barrier of going and fetching some bitcoin.
- 3np 5y ago
  The barrier is still close-to-0 to accept donations - the recipient doesn’t need any existing cryptocurrency in order to generate a wallet and start accepting funds. That aside... Maybe for you, not for me. PayPal and Stripe do require accounts, nondeterministically based on various factors like IP address. For example, I can not use PayPal from my residential IP. Several attempts to address this via phone and email yielded nothing but frustration and lost hours. Not to mention that both are subject to US sanctions laws and thereby legally prohibited from serving individuals and entities who happen to be in or from “the wrong countries”.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Having a wallet that can be sent bitcoin doesn't really qualify as "accepting donations" unless you have a way to convert that bitcoin in usable fiat. Thus the barrier is definitely not "close-to-0", especially once you consider potential tax reporting implications.
    - 3np 5y ago
      Besides that I disagree with that "easily converting to fiat" is a disqualifier, read on: Assuming that you as recipient don't mind centralized finance and are just interested in getting out fiat: Open account at e.g. Coinbase. Send in crypto. Convert to fiat (e.g. USD). Wire everything to your account. Report the amount you cashed out as if you had received the corresponding amount in fiat directly. This can be done later, or ahead of time. Alternatively, if you really want the full legacy finance experience a la paypal, you can set up an account that auto-converts it to e.g. USD and sends it straight to your account. For you as a recipient, this is pretty much the same experience you would get from say a normal cc provider. IMO it's preferable that individuals control their own keys but to each their own. Yes, this setup doesn't give you as a recipients all the benefits of the crypto-economy - except that you can now receive funds from it, and provide those benefits to your donors.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        > disagree with that "easily converting to fiat" is a disqualifier, You can't (generally) pay rent or buy groceries with bitcoin. Donations that can't be spent aren't really useful as donations. > Open account at e.g. Coinbase. Send in crypto. Convert to fiat (e.g. USD). Wire everything to your account. Report the amount you cashed out as if you had received the corresponding amount in fiat directly. Which is more work than setting up a PayPal account and is certainly not a "close to 0 barrier" as claimed.
        maccard 5y ago
        > Which is more work than setting up a PayPal account and is certainly not a "close to 0 barrier" as claimed. Not only that, you don't actually need an account to pay with paypal or stripe. You can do checkout as guest, and enter a card number and be done with it.
        yebyen 5y ago
        > Donations that can't be spent aren't really useful as donations. And my employer-sponsored 401k account isn't useful to me either... seriously you may not believe in "Bitcoin is sound money" or whatever crypto flavor of the day, but I actually think it might be OK if it necessarily takes most people even a bit longer than a year to figure out how to "cash out" their Bitcoins. I mean that you honestly have to be pretty obtuse to believe (today) that someone who received a bitcoin donation in any year before 2021 (and kept it) received what amounts to a "not really useful donation." Year-on-year, even in a bear market, yada yada – none of these are good reasons for you to BUY bitcoin, but as someone receiving a donation from a human who thought you did a good job, I think maybe "try not to look a gift horse in the mouth" is a valid adage here?
flotzam 5y ago
The Python Software Foundation is a registered charity so https://www.every.org/python https://www.every.org/python might work for you. Every.org wants you to type in a name and email though even if you use cryptocurrency, I hope they fix that
southerntofu 5y ago
> only to abort because whatever payment processor they use blanket-403 Tor If the only page blocked is the donation page, it's not that bad! Many supposedly tech-friendly websites block Tor as soon as the homepage... But i share your sentiment. More than once, i've found a snail mail address for a project i cared about and arranged to send some cash in a letter along with a thank-you note. That has always triggered friendly interactions that Stripe/Paypal never provided as part of their offering :-) On a side-note, i'm always glad when some NGO serves as a front for donations to smaller projects. Setting up a bank account with Stripe (or whatever) as a maintainer is a burden. But thanks to liberapay.com or opencollective.com making and receiving donations is much easier. Another one worth mentioning fdn2.org maintained by LaQuadrature, which also enables you to donate to April (FLOSS NGO), Framasoft (libre culture/software NGO), Wikileaks (no introductions necessary), Nos Oignons (Tor operators NGO) and Exodus privacy (static analyzing of trackers/malware in Android apps).
- smsm42 5y ago
  Worse than that, many would block any VPNs. Worse yet, they won't just say "we see you value your privacy, we hate folks like you, go away" - their site just starts spewing random errors or timing out. Eventually you'd guess "oh, they hate VPNs, that's why!" but it takes time and experience to learn.

by 3np 5y ago

maccard 5y ago

> An easy way to provide this is to put up a BTC address The barrier of stripe or paypal (neither of which require accounts for payment) is _far_ far lower than the barrier of going and fetching some bitcoin.

3np 5y ago
The barrier is still close-to-0 to accept donations - the recipient doesn’t need any existing cryptocurrency in order to generate a wallet and start accepting funds. That aside... Maybe for you, not for me. PayPal and Stripe do require accounts, nondeterministically based on various factors like IP address. For example, I can not use PayPal from my residential IP. Several attempts to address this via phone and email yielded nothing but frustration and lost hours. Not to mention that both are subject to US sanctions laws and thereby legally prohibited from serving individuals and entities who happen to be in or from “the wrong countries”.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Having a wallet that can be sent bitcoin doesn't really qualify as "accepting donations" unless you have a way to convert that bitcoin in usable fiat. Thus the barrier is definitely not "close-to-0", especially once you consider potential tax reporting implications.
  - 3np 5y ago
    Besides that I disagree with that "easily converting to fiat" is a disqualifier, read on: Assuming that you as recipient don't mind centralized finance and are just interested in getting out fiat: Open account at e.g. Coinbase. Send in crypto. Convert to fiat (e.g. USD). Wire everything to your account. Report the amount you cashed out as if you had received the corresponding amount in fiat directly. This can be done later, or ahead of time. Alternatively, if you really want the full legacy finance experience a la paypal, you can set up an account that auto-converts it to e.g. USD and sends it straight to your account. For you as a recipient, this is pretty much the same experience you would get from say a normal cc provider. IMO it's preferable that individuals control their own keys but to each their own. Yes, this setup doesn't give you as a recipients all the benefits of the crypto-economy - except that you can now receive funds from it, and provide those benefits to your donors.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      > disagree with that "easily converting to fiat" is a disqualifier, You can't (generally) pay rent or buy groceries with bitcoin. Donations that can't be spent aren't really useful as donations. > Open account at e.g. Coinbase. Send in crypto. Convert to fiat (e.g. USD). Wire everything to your account. Report the amount you cashed out as if you had received the corresponding amount in fiat directly. Which is more work than setting up a PayPal account and is certainly not a "close to 0 barrier" as claimed.
      - maccard 5y ago
        > Which is more work than setting up a PayPal account and is certainly not a "close to 0 barrier" as claimed. Not only that, you don't actually need an account to pay with paypal or stripe. You can do checkout as guest, and enter a card number and be done with it.
      - yebyen 5y ago
        > Donations that can't be spent aren't really useful as donations. And my employer-sponsored 401k account isn't useful to me either... seriously you may not believe in "Bitcoin is sound money" or whatever crypto flavor of the day, but I actually think it might be OK if it necessarily takes most people even a bit longer than a year to figure out how to "cash out" their Bitcoins. I mean that you honestly have to be pretty obtuse to believe (today) that someone who received a bitcoin donation in any year before 2021 (and kept it) received what amounts to a "not really useful donation." Year-on-year, even in a bear market, yada yada – none of these are good reasons for you to BUY bitcoin, but as someone receiving a donation from a human who thought you did a good job, I think maybe "try not to look a gift horse in the mouth" is a valid adage here?

flotzam 5y ago

The Python Software Foundation is a registered charity so https://www.every.org/python https://www.every.org/python might work for you. Every.org wants you to type in a name and email though even if you use cryptocurrency, I hope they fix that

southerntofu 5y ago

> only to abort because whatever payment processor they use blanket-403 Tor If the only page blocked is the donation page, it's not that bad! Many supposedly tech-friendly websites block Tor as soon as the homepage... But i share your sentiment. More than once, i've found a snail mail address for a project i cared about and arranged to send some cash in a letter along with a thank-you note. That has always triggered friendly interactions that Stripe/Paypal never provided as part of their offering :-) On a side-note, i'm always glad when some NGO serves as a front for donations to smaller projects. Setting up a bank account with Stripe (or whatever) as a maintainer is a burden. But thanks to liberapay.com or opencollective.com making and receiving donations is much easier. Another one worth mentioning fdn2.org maintained by LaQuadrature, which also enables you to donate to April (FLOSS NGO), Framasoft (libre culture/software NGO), Wikileaks (no introductions necessary), Nos Oignons (Tor operators NGO) and Exodus privacy (static analyzing of trackers/malware in Android apps).

smsm42 5y ago
Worse than that, many would block any VPNs. Worse yet, they won't just say "we see you value your privacy, we hate folks like you, go away" - their site just starts spewing random errors or timing out. Eventually you'd guess "oh, they hate VPNs, that's why!" but it takes time and experience to learn.