SilasBarta comments on Singularity Institute now accepts donations via Bitcoin - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Kevin 28 February 2011 04:03PM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 03 March 2011 05:07:48PM 2 points [-]

EFF accepts donations in Bitcoin, so their lawyers must have decided that it's not clearly illegal or bad PR.

I'm not sure that follows. What's more, if people generally use that reasoning, and EFF is wrong (or lacked due diligence in such an estimation), then people will now be able to cite both SIAI's and EFF's actions when using such reasoning.

And then you have an information cascade, where everyone believes Bitcoin "must be okay", all based on an expert judgment that never existed.

Have any other cryptography experts published critiques of Bitcoin? I'd contribute to a fund to get Bruce Schneier to spend more time on this.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 06 March 2011 08:08:04PM 3 points [-]

I'm not sure that follows. What's more, if people generally use that reasoning, and EFF is wrong (or lacked due diligence in such an estimation), then people will now be able to cite both SIAI's and EFF's actions when using such reasoning.

Perhaps you weren't aware that EFF is a "digital rights advocacy and legal organization"? If we can imagine that Bitcoin might have legal issues, how could that have escaped the people at EFF? On the other hand, SIAI is hardly known for its legal expertise, so the fact that it accepts Bitcoin offers little additional evidence for Bitcoin's legality.

Comment author: SilasBarta 21 June 2011 03:50:01PM 4 points [-]

Can I claim vindication on this matter now? EFF now says:

  1. We don't fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system. Bitcoin raises untested legal concerns related to securities law, the Stamp Payments Act, tax evasion, consumer protection and money laundering, among others. And that’s just in the U.S. …

  2. We don't want to mislead our donors. When people make a donation to a nonprofit like EFF, they expect us to use their donation to support our work. Because the legal territory around exchanging Bitcoins into cash is still uncertain, we are not comfortable spending the many Bitcoins we have accumulated…

  3. People were misconstruing our acceptance of Bitcoins as an endorsement of Bitcoin. We were concerned that some people may have participated in the Bitcoin project specifically because EFF accepted Bitcoins, and perhaps they therefore believed the investment in Bitcoins was secure and risk-free. While we’ve been following the Bitcoin movement with a great degree of interest, EFF has never endorsed Bitcoin. In fact, we generally don’t endorse any type of product or service – and Bitcoin is no exception.

Comment author: MichaelHoward 25 May 2013 10:51:20AM 0 points [-]

They're now accepting it again, and even spoke at the last conference.

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