Re: [Gimp-user] [Gimp-developer] Added Bitcoin donation option

[Michael Schumacher <schumaml gmx de>]

On 13.04.2013 19:35, Michael Schumacher wrote:> Hi there,
>
> we have added a Bitcoin address as a donation option to our donations
> page at http://www.gimp.org/donating/
>
> The address is: 1NVMCeoBfTAJQ1qwX2Dx1C8zkcRCQWwHBq

... and we're getting donations. Many thanks for that, whoever you are

- unless people identify themselves as being the owner of a Bitcoin 
address, there is no easy way to tell who's behind one.

On the other hand, telling how much we receive is very easy. The 
transaction history of Bitcoin is public. This is one of the basic 
principles of the system, and thus you can browse the history at e.g.

http://blockchain.info/address/1NVMCeoBfTAJQ1qwX2Dx1C8zkcRCQWwHBq
(shiny, export)

https://blockexplorer.com/address/1NVMCeoBfTAJQ1qwX2Dx1C8zkcRCQWwHBq
(no frills data display)


Our announcement has been picked up by Reddit in r/Bitcoin, 
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1cba75/, and the weekly Bitcoin 
Update podcast by Bitcoin Austria mentions the announcement in issue 21, 
http://bitcoinupdate.com/index.php?id=10 (around 39:04 minutes into the 
episode; language: Österreichisch)
In addition, all the sites repeating gimp-user and gimp-developers posts 
have it as well.


The fact that we got coins means that we can and have to think about 
ways for transferring the donations to the GIMP account, which is 
managed by the GNOME Fundraising team who are doing a good job at that.

The most viable options for that seems to be Coinbase.com, despite my 
mixed feelings about it: 
https://plus.google.com/110300216597663852321/posts/hpT1oVVWu2g. My main 
concern isn't that they aren't trustworthy, but that they may not be 
able to uphold their promises and standards to keep that data safe. 
Hunting lots of bugs in other software just drops your confidence somewhat.

But whether this can be used directly is for the GNOME Foundation Board 
to decide. Having the option to limit a Coinbase account to only receive 
and sell coins would certainly make that easier, as you do usually not 
want to buy them from an account that's only supposed to receive 
donations. Their merchant accounts might allow for that:
https://coinbase.com/merchants


--
Regards,
Michael on behalf of the GIMP team