BITCOIN ENDOWMENT FUND

Update — Give us your suggestions on how to spend our Bitcoin Endowment Fund!
 
Lifeboat Foundation has launched the world’s first bitcoin endowment fund! Become a Lifeboat VIP and donate to bitcoin address 1Endowment7huUesEXRuWgEXfxHgxvZHfK
 
The Lifeboat Foundation is interested in funding cryptography-related projects since a 1984-like world would not only be unpleasant but could give the government the power to do terrible things that could even become existential threats.
 
While the Lifeboat Foundation was founded in the 21st century, until recently it was mainly funded using 20th century money, basically various types of monies backed by governments. Thanks to the encouragement of some of our larger donors we are now working to have the majority of our funding come from 21st century money — money backed not by governments but by algorithms. The 21st century money Lifeboat is currently focused on is bitcoins.
 
Historically government backed money has done a poor job in holding its value. For example, the successful U.S. dollar has lost over 97% of its value since it was first issued. A less successful currency, the Japanese yen, has lost 99.95% of its value since being issued. Many promote the idea of trading rocks (gold and silver) instead but this Bronze Age idea has various drawbacks including portability when local governments decide to confiscate it. As a futuristic organization, we should be promoting 21st century money and now we are!
 
Crypto-currencies have many advantages over old-fashioned government-backed money. For example, they allow people in less developed countries to have access to the rest of the world. For example, PayPal alone blocks access to over 60 countries, and many credit card companies have similar restrictions. Some are blocked for political reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don’t think a human being from Haiti, Ethiopia, or Kenya should have diminished access to the world because of payment issues they can’t control. Our goal is to enable people, not block them.
 
The March 2013 EU–IMF grab of about 50% of large bank accounts in Cyprus that held government-backed money was the key event that caused the Lifeboat Foundation to feel that the time for 21st century money was here. (We launched our endowment fund shortly after the Cyprus crisis began.) Such confiscations continue with the confiscation of all bonds held by Polish private pensions.
 
Any bitcoins donated anywhere on the Lifeboat site will be added to our bitcoin endowment fund. Any non-bitcoin donations made on this page will be used to buy bitcoin-related hardware such as bitcoin address generating equipment or will be used to buy bitcoins.
 
Learn about the Bitcoin Foundation. Read Bitcoin Magazine. Learn about the potential of bitcoins.
 
We would like to start a trend of nonprofits building endowment funds with bitcoins instead of just spending them all. Nonprofits could be using the deflationary power of bitcoins to build up their resources so they are in a better position to make a difference in the world. Help us launch this trend!

To give back to the bitcoin community we have created the first Windows version of oclvanitygen in the world that runs well on high-end AMD cards. (Our version runs nearly four times as fast as the old version!) We also added support for compressed keys as well. You can download the program for free and can learn more about what we did on GitHub. This is a program for generating vanity bitcoin addresses such as our address that begins with 1Lifeboat. PGP signature for program is here.

In addition to all these donation methods, the Lifeboat Foundation is interested in the donation of desktops with PCI-E slots and of laptops without PCI-E slots as well. Let us know if you have such hardware to donate!

Learn about the LIFEBOAT 500!

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Every donor can provide a short testimonial with their donation which will show up on our donors page. If you haven’t already created a testimonial please consider the ability of your words to help others reach the same conclusion you did. If we all work together, the day when humanity adopts the increasingly powerful technologies of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI safely will arrive that much sooner.

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