Bitcoin Philanthropy: Pineapple Fund to Give $86m to Charity

Cryptocurency traders are often thought of as return driven investors with all of their "To the Moon" and "Lambo" talk.

One would be forgiven for thinking that they were purely interested in self-enrichment.

However, the Bitcoin user base is indeed a large and diversified group and there are some really substantial philanthropists in the ecosystem.

A well-known example of this would be a cryptocurrency enthusiast by the name of "Pine". He / she was the person behind the well-known "Pineapple fund".

The pineapple fund has 5,057 BTC in it and has given about $8m of it away so far.

A New Type of Altruism

In the case of Pine, apparently he began mining the coins on an old PC that he had at home. This was back in a time when Bitcoin was still trading for only a few dollars.

Pine had kept the coins in his wallet all the way up as Bitcoin has rallied and broken record after record.

What makes the donation from Pine that much more genuine is that he / she is a semi anonymous individual. Unlike many other people who donate to charity, these actions are not meant to garner publicity.

In the Reddit post announcing his decision, he said that he will donate most of his Bitcoins because of how it has already impacted his life.

I have far more money than I can ever spend. My aims, goals, and motivations in life have nothing to do with having XX million or being the mega rich. So I’m doing something else: donating the majority of my bitcoins to charitable causes

One can only assume that because Pine is an early miner of Bitcoin that he must truly have made enough money to keep him satisfied personally for a long period of time. Sometimes the gift of giving is better.

Fund Mandate

According to Pine, the fund will be focusing the donations on medical research such as mental health. It will also fund some environmental initiatives as well as the fight against sexual abuse. These were the initiatives that were important for Pine.

This was why Pine took to Reddit. He wanted to get ideas of the most deserving charities in these fields. Those charities that managed to make the shortlist included SENS Research Foundation, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

This is something that was confirmed by the MAPS charity itself. They will use the BTC to fund trials that will determine whether drugs similar to ecstasy can be used to treat PTSD.

Open the Gates

Just when one began to think that this generosity was restricted to only one individual, MAPS received a further 51.5 BTC from another anonymous donor.

This was the most in cryptocurrency donations that MAPS has received from all the cryptocurrency donations since 2013.

This is indeed an exciting time as it shows the use case for charitable giving with cryptocurrency. Instead of the usual process of sending charities some money, donors can merely send some funds over the crypto of their choice.

It also means that charities can adapt the demographic of their current donor class. It allows more tech savvy millennials to fund causes that they approve of in a way they are familiar with.

As Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to break records, one can only wonder how many undercover millionaire donors exist in all those high value addresses.

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