EFF explained why he stopped taking Bitcoin
For several months, the Electronic Frontier Foundation supported the movement around Bitcoin , an electronic payment system that calls itself "the first decentralized digital currency." We informed members of our organization about this unique project on our blog and experimented with months of accepting donations through Bitcoin to the wallet that others opened for us.
However, we recently removed the Bitcoin option from the list of possible donation methods on the EFF website and stopped accepting Bitcoin. This decision was made for several reasons.
1. We do not fully understand the complex legal issues that accompany the creation of a new currency. Bitcoin raises unexplored legal issues related to securities laws, the Stamp Payments Act, tax evasion, consumer protection, and money laundering, among other things. And it is only in the USA. Since the EFF often speaks out in defense of people caught in the legal web due to the use of new technologies, we don’t want the EFF itself to be the object of such proceedings. Since there is still no precedent for this topic and the legal consequences are rather unclear, we are concerned that accepting Bitcoin coins by us may lead to a possible trial.
2. We do not want to mislead our sponsors. When people donate to a non-profit organization like the EFF, they expect it to use this money for its business. But since the legal sphere around the exchange of Bitcoin for cash remains vague, we are inconvenient to spend such amounts of Bitcoin that we have already collected. For this reason, we list all the available BTC, as well as all the BTC that we will receive in the future, to the Bitcoin Faucet wallet (a Bitcoin distribution service) so that they can continue to circulate in the community. We understand that we can not close the wallet, which is published to receive money to the EFF, and that returning donations to specific senders is a complicated procedure.
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3. People could misinterpret the fact of us accepting Bitcoin. We were alarmed by the fact that some people could take part in the Bitcoin project specifically because the EFF accepts BTC, and therefore they believed that investing in BTC was safe and risky. And although we supported the Bitcoin movement with a high degree of interest, EFF never recommended Bitcoin. In fact, we never recommend any type of product or service at all - and Bitcoin is no exception.
We are grateful for the support we received from the Bitcoin community and we share this community’s desire for privacy and innovation. We also understand and share their frustration over privacy issues with existing online payment systems. However, the EFF will no longer accept or spend bitcoins.
However, we recently removed the Bitcoin option from the list of possible donation methods on the EFF website and stopped accepting Bitcoin. This decision was made for several reasons.
1. We do not fully understand the complex legal issues that accompany the creation of a new currency. Bitcoin raises unexplored legal issues related to securities laws, the Stamp Payments Act, tax evasion, consumer protection, and money laundering, among other things. And it is only in the USA. Since the EFF often speaks out in defense of people caught in the legal web due to the use of new technologies, we don’t want the EFF itself to be the object of such proceedings. Since there is still no precedent for this topic and the legal consequences are rather unclear, we are concerned that accepting Bitcoin coins by us may lead to a possible trial.
2. We do not want to mislead our sponsors. When people donate to a non-profit organization like the EFF, they expect it to use this money for its business. But since the legal sphere around the exchange of Bitcoin for cash remains vague, we are inconvenient to spend such amounts of Bitcoin that we have already collected. For this reason, we list all the available BTC, as well as all the BTC that we will receive in the future, to the Bitcoin Faucet wallet (a Bitcoin distribution service) so that they can continue to circulate in the community. We understand that we can not close the wallet, which is published to receive money to the EFF, and that returning donations to specific senders is a complicated procedure.
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3. People could misinterpret the fact of us accepting Bitcoin. We were alarmed by the fact that some people could take part in the Bitcoin project specifically because the EFF accepts BTC, and therefore they believed that investing in BTC was safe and risky. And although we supported the Bitcoin movement with a high degree of interest, EFF never recommended Bitcoin. In fact, we never recommend any type of product or service at all - and Bitcoin is no exception.
We are grateful for the support we received from the Bitcoin community and we share this community’s desire for privacy and innovation. We also understand and share their frustration over privacy issues with existing online payment systems. However, the EFF will no longer accept or spend bitcoins.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/122350/
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