Update — Give us your
suggestions on how to spend our Bitcoin
Endowment Fund!
Lifeboat Foundation has launched the world’s first bitcoin
endowment fund! Become a Lifeboat VIP and donate to bitcoin address
1Endowment7huUesEXRuWgEXfxHgxvZHfK
The Lifeboat Foundation is interested in funding cryptography-related
projects since a 1984-like world would not only be unpleasant but could
give the government the power to do terrible things that could even
become existential threats.
While the Lifeboat Foundation was founded in the 21st century, until
recently it was mainly funded using 20th century money, basically
various
types of monies backed by governments. Thanks to the encouragement of
some of our larger donors we are now working to have the majority of our
funding come from 21st century money — money backed not by
governments but by algorithms. The 21st century money Lifeboat is
currently focused on is bitcoins.
Historically government backed money has done a poor job in holding its
value. For example, the successful U.S. dollar has lost over
97% of its value since it was first issued.
A less successful currency, the Japanese yen, has
lost 99.95% of its value since
being issued.
Many promote the idea of
trading rocks (gold and silver) instead but this
Bronze Age idea has
various drawbacks including portability when local governments decide
to confiscate it. As a futuristic organization, we should be promoting
21st century money and now we are!
Crypto-currencies have many advantages over old-fashioned
government-backed money. For example,
they allow people in less developed countries to have access to
the rest of the world.
For example, PayPal alone blocks access to over 60 countries, and many
credit card
companies have similar restrictions. Some are blocked for political
reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other
financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don’t think a human
being from Haiti, Ethiopia, or Kenya should have diminished access to
the world because of payment issues they can’t control.
Our goal is to enable people, not block them.
The March 2013 EU–IMF
grab of about 50% of large bank accounts in
Cyprus that held government-backed
money was the key event that caused the Lifeboat Foundation to feel that
the time for 21st century money was here. (We launched
our endowment fund shortly after the Cyprus crisis began.)
Such confiscations continue
with the
confiscation of all bonds held by Polish private pensions.
Any bitcoins donated anywhere on the Lifeboat
site will be added to our bitcoin endowment fund. Any non-bitcoin
donations made on this page will be used to buy
bitcoin-related hardware such as
bitcoin address generating equipment
or will be used to buy
bitcoins.
Learn about the
Bitcoin Foundation.
Read
Bitcoin Magazine.
Learn about the
potential of bitcoins.
We would like to start a trend of
nonprofits building endowment funds with bitcoins instead of just
spending them all. Nonprofits could be using the deflationary power of
bitcoins to build up their resources so they are in a better position to
make
a difference in the world. Help us launch this trend!
