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Mysterious Organization Gives Free Bitcoins to Nonprofit Projects

A mysterious organization called the Bitcoin Grant is giving away large sums of Bitcoin to non-profit developers. reports this Wired .

The Bitcoin Grant company is engaged in a kind of Bitcoin charity. She contacts selected organizations, asks their employees questions about the progress of their work, and then gifts them with bitcoins in amounts equivalent to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At the end of last year, representatives of Bitcoin Grant emailed Yifu Guo, the head of the company Avalon, which specializes in creating equipment for bitcoin mining. They didn't say who they represented, asked a few questions about Avalon's future, and then gifted Guo 10,000 bitcoins, which was equivalent to $100,000 at the time and more than $6 million at the time of writing. This money helped Avalon launch the next generation of “miners.”

At first, Bitcoin Grant focused exclusively on projects related to bitcoin mining, but gradually expanded its activities to non-profit organizations. She finds developers who give away their products for free and helps them continue their activities. For example, its representatives financed Replicant, a free operating system that acts as an alternative to Google Android.

On its succinct website , Bitcoin Grant says its mission is to transform open source software projects from a leisure hobby into a primary way to “get ahead.” She plans to do this by saving non-profit projects from financial instability.

Wired suggests that the people behind the Bitcoin Grant are not mysterious billionaires, but ordinary people who got into bitcoin mining before anyone else and have amassed a huge fortune from it in a matter of years. The publication's journalists tried to contact Bitcoin Grant, but never received a response.

Transferring huge sums of money to each other free of charge has become an important part of Bitcoin culture. Many holders of large amounts of money in this cryptocurrency use such promotions to attract additional attention to it, and thereby increase its value. For example, in early December, an American student earned 22 thousand dollars by simply showing a sign with his wallet number on television.

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