
EFF now accepting Bitcoin again - schoen
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-will-accept-bitcoins-support-digital-liberty
======
fianchetto
EFF taking Bitcoin is good for Bitcoin but they won't get a single satoshi
from me. I joined EFF not long after the Steve Jackson days and supported them
until relatively recently.

I didn't believe their original "we don't want to be the story" explanation
for not wanting to accept bitcoins. The EFF didn't want to get tagged as
'fringe' in their DC circles by accepting bitcoins in the wake of the
Wikileaks/bitcoin story. Now that Bitcoin is being backed by startup money,
EFF sees Bitcoin as socially safe again.

EFF alienated me by letting go of principle when it was more important to hang
onto it.

~~~
throwaway2048
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.

~~~
WayneS
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.or...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110514012705/https://www.eff.org/helpout)

It contains the bitcoin address.

Here is the history for that address:
[https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2...](https://blockchain.info/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt)

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>

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
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.

~~~
WayneS
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
An excellent demonstration of why Bitcoin is awesome: complete transparency on
the block-chain.

------
flashinthedark
Hacker News, two years ago: "God, I can't believe EFF stopped taking bitcoin!
I'm not donating to them again until they do."

Hackner News today: "I can't believe EFF had the gall to start taking bitcoin
again! Definitely not giving them a cent."

~~~
lucb1e
Two people said it. I'm not quite sure that's representative for whole
community. I myself might actually donate to them in Bitcoin.

~~~
eli
I'm confident there is a non-vocal majority that doesn't care much either way.

------
kirian
I donated. It's possible to enter the amount you want to donate, unclick "Be
an EFF Member", skip all the "Donor Information" fields, click "donate to EFF"
and you are presented with a bitcoin payment address. I wish they would just
list an address that I could send a payment to rather than go through that
rigmarole. But good to see that EFF are accepting bitcoin again.

------
jayjay1010
Ironic timing following the shut down
[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155933-homeland-
security-...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155933-homeland-security-
seizes-account-of-largest-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox)

