Pineapple Fund sees anonymous donor give away $86m in bitcoin
Melanie May | 23 February 2018 | News
An anonymous donor is giving $86 million worth of bitcoin to charity.
So far, $53,047,101m has been donated through the Pineapple Fund, to 58 charities with all funds now allocated. The sums donated to each non-profit have been substantial. They include $1m to the Water Project, $1m to the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, $5m to Maps, $5m to OMF, and $2m to the Internet Archive. The money is sent to recipients in bitcoins, to be exchanged into US dollars.
Thanks to the generous donation of $1 million from #Pineapplefund, @soalliance can continue providing youth opportunities to protect and conserve our ocean.
See what @TechCrunch has to say!>> https://t.co/XmIuUp2uQt pic.twitter.com/vNTQNvbKhF
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— Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) (@SOAlliance) February 15, 2018
Now's your chance to say thanks to "Pine," the anonymous donor who gave $5 million to OMF to #EndMECFS. Follow this link and click "Add Kudo/Image/Video" to add your words of gratitude to our thank-you card: https://t.co/maqZKDOlct pic.twitter.com/25ASogb4Wr
— Open Medicine Foundation (@OpenMedF) February 8, 2018
The Pineapple Fund launched in December, announced through a post on Reddit, and applications closed this month.
On the site, the donor, who goes by the name of ‘Pine’, says publicity is not the point of the fund, hence their anonymity, and explains the reasoning behind the fund:
“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.”
Back in September last year, a partnership saw DonateBitcoin join forces with MakeMyDonation and OrgHunter to enable all 1.5m charities in the U.S. to accept bitcoin donations. Through the deal, when a user makes a bitcoin donation, it is sent to MakeMyDonation through Stripe, with donations instantly converted into US dollars.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.