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Not just that, but they gave away all their previously donated bitcoins (which is a very large amount of money at current prices) to some borderline scam "Recei

by throwaway2048 14y ago

Not just that, but they gave away all their previously donated bitcoins (which is a very large amount of money at current prices) to some borderline scam "Receive 0.0001 BTC free" operation instead of refunding them. My friend personally donated 20000 BTC to them, luckily he has the disposition of a Buddhist monk. EDIT: Trying to get this story confirmed, as comments below have pointed out, there is clearly a discrepancy.

w-ll 14y ago
Geez, Two Years ago that would still be 100K USD, to think thats a cool 2M today.
cpunks123 14y ago
that's ok
WayneS 14y ago
I am going to have to call bull on that. Here is the original EFF donation page: http://web.archive.org/web/20110514012705/https://www.eff.org/helpout http://web.archive.org/web/20110514012705/https://www.eff.or... It contains the bitcoin address. Here is the history for that address: https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2... Which as you can see received a total of 3,515.077 BTC. This is still a lot and is worth over $400k today, but way short of your 20,000. FYI, here is the original discussion: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0 edit: That discussion was right after the first bitcoin bubble and at the time it was trading for around $17 so the total donations that they were talking about was about $60k. Still a lot of money to be going to the faucet (and down the drain?).
- throwaway2048 14y ago
  Cannot edit or delete the old post, i was wrong by several orders of magnitude, please down vote and ignore. it was 20k USD worth of bitcoin at the time he donated. Apologies.
  - sc00ter 14y ago
    Hardly insignificant.
  - WayneS 14y ago
    Don't apologize too much. I was having fun demonstrating how to track this stuff down. That said I would have been really upset if I had donated a significant amount of money to the EFF and then they decided to give all of it away. BTW it is probably possible to verify that the money donated was REALLY send to the bitcoin faucet. Oh and yeah I got my first bitcoins from the faucet like many of these other people. It was an important service, however given how bitcoins can be split up it didn't need to be giving out large amounts at all.
    - petermelias 14y ago
      An excellent demonstration of why Bitcoin is awesome: complete transparency on the block-chain.
sinak 14y ago
Really skeptical about this. Taking a look at their block chain, doesn't look like they've ever received a donation of that size: https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2... And EFF are denying that they've ever had anything near to 20k bitcoins on Twitter: https://twitter.com/evacide/status/335461080220454913 https://twitter.com/evacide/status/335461080220454913 Apparently they determined that selling them (at the time) could have crashed the market.
kiba 14y ago
Borderline scam? That's Gavin's bitcoin facuet! I receives some of my first bitcoin from him! Bitcoin faucets are how many of the bitcoiners got their start.
elux 14y ago
I believe the EFF donated their coins to the original "Bitcoin Faucet", a service by Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen that would give away fractions of a coin for free, so the newbies would have some to experiment with. (The Bitcoin Faucet happens to be where I got my first 0.05 BTC, a few years ago.) Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0;wap2 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0;wap2
- doublec 14y ago
  The faucet funds, presumably including the EFF donations, were used to refund pools that had blocks orphaned in the recent blockchain fork: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156641.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156641.0

w-ll 14y ago

Geez, Two Years ago that would still be 100K USD, to think thats a cool 2M today.

cpunks123 14y ago

that's ok

WayneS 14y ago

I am going to have to call bull on that. Here is the original EFF donation page: http://web.archive.org/web/20110514012705/https://www.eff.org/helpout http://web.archive.org/web/20110514012705/https://www.eff.or... It contains the bitcoin address. Here is the history for that address: https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2... Which as you can see received a total of 3,515.077 BTC. This is still a lot and is worth over $400k today, but way short of your 20,000. FYI, here is the original discussion: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0 edit: That discussion was right after the first bitcoin bubble and at the time it was trading for around $17 so the total donations that they were talking about was about $60k. Still a lot of money to be going to the faucet (and down the drain?).

throwaway2048 14y ago
Cannot edit or delete the old post, i was wrong by several orders of magnitude, please down vote and ignore. it was 20k USD worth of bitcoin at the time he donated. Apologies.
- sc00ter 14y ago
  Hardly insignificant.
- WayneS 14y ago
  Don't apologize too much. I was having fun demonstrating how to track this stuff down. That said I would have been really upset if I had donated a significant amount of money to the EFF and then they decided to give all of it away. BTW it is probably possible to verify that the money donated was REALLY send to the bitcoin faucet. Oh and yeah I got my first bitcoins from the faucet like many of these other people. It was an important service, however given how bitcoins can be split up it didn't need to be giving out large amounts at all.
  - petermelias 14y ago
    An excellent demonstration of why Bitcoin is awesome: complete transparency on the block-chain.

sinak 14y ago

Really skeptical about this. Taking a look at their block chain, doesn't look like they've ever received a donation of that size: https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2... And EFF are denying that they've ever had anything near to 20k bitcoins on Twitter: https://twitter.com/evacide/status/335461080220454913 https://twitter.com/evacide/status/335461080220454913 Apparently they determined that selling them (at the time) could have crashed the market.

kiba 14y ago

Borderline scam? That's Gavin's bitcoin facuet! I receives some of my first bitcoin from him! Bitcoin faucets are how many of the bitcoiners got their start.

elux 14y ago

I believe the EFF donated their coins to the original "Bitcoin Faucet", a service by Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen that would give away fractions of a coin for free, so the newbies would have some to experiment with. (The Bitcoin Faucet happens to be where I got my first 0.05 BTC, a few years ago.) Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0;wap2 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20185.0;wap2

doublec 14y ago
The faucet funds, presumably including the EFF donations, were used to refund pools that had blocks orphaned in the recent blockchain fork: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156641.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156641.0