Topic: Announce: Bitcoin Donation Trust (http://bdtrust.se) (Read 2030 times)

May update:
The Good:
* The prototype is done. Many thanks to the students that helped implementing it.
* We are now working on the implementation of the database scripting for the live version.

The Bad:
* Implementing the co-signing the way we would like it to work is tricky business. More analysis is needed.

The Future:
* When the database population is reimplemented we will start a beta testing period with real bitcoins in very small amounts.
* During the beta testing we will make a security overhaul and implement the multisign-system we decide on.

We are updating the SSL framework. The test site will be back up tomorrow.

Dear testers,
You man experience stability issues on the Bitcoin Donation Trust prototype site today. More specifically we are looking into a problem on the "Donate to us"-page.

Update2:

Prototype site

• Sorted bugs out.
• Donations now show up in the lists as should they, usually when the next block is found.
• You can now create your own test accounts and see your personal donations on the testnet. Just like it will work on the main site in the future
• Prototype site will be used to test multiple signature transaction in the future

Main site

• Still not online ofcourse
• Testing multiple signature transactions
• We managed to figure out how to remove one of the steps in the transaction modell, the active wallet is not needed anymore. This means there is now no step between the cold storage and the target organisations where we (or anybody else) can gain control of the money. This is a huge step forward security-wise

by not collecting donations you will:
a) not need to worry about security/maintenance.
b) spend more time actually persuading charities
c) making it more needed for a charity to publish their address themselves, to receive donations. instead of you managing their funds
d) which results in no large costs.

bitcoin dos not need a centralised middleman!
ill repeat, bitcoin does not need a centralised middleman managing peoples funds, all bitcoin needs is lobbyists and enthusiasts that can talk to charities.

let me try another way of explaining it
your website and wages should never be your biggest expense.. your phone bill and postage stamps should be where the money goes to.

people dont want to donate to pay office workers a wage. they want to donate to people in need.. middle men take too much off the top and leave not very much.

please do not reply before realising these big corporate organisations also take a cut, so with you trying to make a case that you are worthy of adding to the dilution of value for the frontline people in need. atleast change your business model to show that you are not cost heavy

1. A lot of good people are doing great work with this. It has worked for some charities but some utterly refuse for different reasons. We are going to try a different method by gathering lots of donators to form a strong incentive for them to change their mind. Hopefully if we work together, we will achieve even more progress.

2. We allready are using the blockchain to track every transaction.

3. On the about us page you find information on whom we are, what we do for a living and our partners. Its a bit brief as of yet, but remeber we are still in beta.

4. We have, and we know it works sometimes, but we have found that different methods needs to be invented as well to make it work in other cases.

5. We beg to differ. We definetly think a fair fee and a healthy business model serves both security perposes and make it possible to do things non-profit work cant always achieve. Don't take me wrong, one of the things I am really proud of about myself is the many well spent hours every week i put into non-profit organisations and i admire them who can achieve even more. Nevertheless, decades of experience from non-profit work tells me what we are trying to create here cannot be done and sustained in a non-profit environment. There are to much costs, regular maintenance and too much security issues to deal with for that to work well in the long run. Over the years i have been working with companies that have done remarkable things for the kids we have had in our organisations. This time we aim to be that kind actor within the bitcoin community.

1. Thanks, we thinks so too.

2. Did you have a look at the "about us" page on the site? There you can find the list of who we are and our current partners. Yes, we could ofcourse put photos there too, but the great corporate smile feels very cheesy so we at least decided against going down that road for now. Is there anything else you think is missing there?

3. Again the "about us"-page. Organasation wise there is no such thing as charity in Sweden. There are individual persons, "membership clubs" which suits this really badly and finally different kinds of business corporations. We are the kind of business corporation that can be started with least effort and has the highest level of personal liability. For now, we think this suits Bitcoin Donation Trust very well.  Personally standing behind the company builds trust.  Not having to spend hi fees on solicitors, accountants nor the minimum captial stock of 10-15 bitcoins for setting a larger corporation keeps the fees down. If things take off, with a serious web of trust in place and lots of donation we might consider to change to a limited or incorporated like form of company, but that is way off in the future. Here is some information in english from the Swedish Swedish Tax Agency on how to start a business in Sweden: https://www.skatteverket.se/foretagorganisationer/sjalvservice/blanketterbroschyrer/broschyrer/info/462b.4.225c96e811ae46c823f8000571.html

On page 7 you can find a list of the different kinds of corporations. Ours is what is translated into "Trade Partnership".

4. Yes, we couldnt agree more, building trust is vital. Here is a list on what we are trying to achieve to earn it.
a: 100% transaction transparency. Users should be able to look up exactly where every donated satoshi are any time.
b: Co-signing of transactions. At least one other party's authorisation should be needed to transfer the stored bitcoins in the donation wallets out once the criterias for releasing them to the target organisation is fullfilled. We are working with two models right now, either donators themselves plus us or one of two third parties plus us.
c: We run the Bitcoin Donation Trust as from an official Swedish corporation with full transparancy on whom is behind it and the Bitcoin Donation Trust.
d: A healthy business model. An organisation with low costs and a fair profit is much less likely to fail than and more likely to recover if in trouble than if its run with very small margins, be it a company or non-profit.
e: We rely on experience, know-how and contacts. Together we have know-how and experience in bitcoin and the technology behing it and in starting up and running businesses and non-profits. We have also worked a lot in organisations on the recieving end of charities. When we lack the know-how ourselvs we are very lucky to have friends and business partners to turn to for advise and help.

I hope i have cleared up a few of your questions.
Thanks again for the input.

/roos

This is honestly a great idea, for the issue of trust, the best way to give trust is to put a real face and a real name behind what you do. Also to go through the right hoops and register as a charity or whatever the country you reside in says you should register as. Unfortunately, due to how many people have scammed in the past, this idea will likely not go too far unless you use those suggestions or something similar.

ok constructive criticism time:

get rid of your internal donation addresses. get rid of any need to be the handler of funds.

instead
contact charities and ask them to set up a bitcoin address. have them publish the address on their websites and then simply copy that address onto yours

use blockchain.info's service to get info about donations sent directly to that charity. this can be done simply by having the blockchain.info/address/ links on your website. or more detailed method is to API call the balance of the charities address.

this will self manage the publicity of how much has been donated to charity through bitcoins with 12 lines of code at most

from your post history. it seems your a self employed photographer or its just a unemployed persons hobby, and your looking to make CHARITY your method of making an income. for something that might take just half an hours worth of actual work.

the reason i am the only voice mentioning your pitfalls is because most people read the word charity and automatically trust that the person has good intentions without looking behind the curtain of misinformation.

please research how other people have SUCCESSFULLY adopted charity's without taking a cut. middle men are not required.

then learn the principals of bitcoin (decentralisation) and remake your project in a way that funds are not centralised through you.

i know i am ruining your ambitions for making money personally. but charities should not be about taking a cut/making profit.

and lastly i do not blindly give trust to people because they say they are charitable.. instead i investigate and research, and im afraid to say that i have found many pitfulls in your plan

Well,
We do all the time and people give us feedback. So far no one that have actually read up on our idea before giving their opinion have told us its a bad one. On the contrary they think it will help getting charities to accept bitcoins, that it will help bitcoin getting widespread acceptance or that it will help them start giving donations to causes they like to support.

Actually you are the first one to give us such negative and hostile feedback and you clearly didnt even bother to read any of the provided information at all. That's why this conversation is important for us. We'd really like to know what gave you an impression so different from everybody else we get feedback from? And such a strong impression at that, that you keep advocating on and on?

im sorry but a website is not expensive to set up. nor is making phonecalls to charity.

instead of telling me to visit your website to see that your site wants to take money from people and take a cut.. please will YOU speak to other TRUSTED people that have been in the community for far longer that have helped get charities to accept bitcoins without taking a cut or putting funds into privkeys that are not owned by the intended charity.

im all for lobbying charities to accept bitcoin. but true donators do not donate to middle men. and if you the middle man want to pretend to be charitable and good cause you would not personally profit off others donations.

now before replying to ask me to read your gumpth. have a cup of coffee. and ask yourself. for $5 a month VPS and a few phones calls and emails. do you truly need to be taking a cut out of donations.

1. No, we are not accepting any donations to the target organisations at all yet, we are investing our time in building a secure system where people will be able to donate with confidence, but only when its done. For now you can only donate mock-up (testnet3) bitcoins to mock-up charities as stated in the announce text and the front page. When we start accepting real bitcoins the fee will be 2.5% and hopefully even lower. That is 97.5% to the target organisations or more.
 
2. To finance running the site for the first year, we have a few choices. We could either go to an investor that will provide us with the money in hope of future revenue. This is not a good idea since that revenue would have to be taken out of future donations. We could keep a high fee, which is not a good idea since we'd like as much of the donated funds to end up at the target organisations as possible. Or we could do what we are doing now, asking for support from the community and those who think that working together to convince charities to accept bitcoins is a good idea to pitch in. We are still in our first 12 hours, but allready a few people seams to have read up and agreed that this is an idea worth supporting.

Again, id like you to read up on what and how we are trying to do things instead of posting an answer right away based upon a gut feeling that everybody that asks for help to create something is a scammer.

/roos

P.S.
For your info: Testnet3 is a alternative bitcoin blockchain with worthless bitcoins you can get for free. It is there for testing the functionality of bitcoin applications. Just like we are testing the Bitcoin Donation Trust before we accept real bitcoins for the donation targets.
D.S.

again you are mentioning your business plan to accept bitcoins on behalf of charities.. before charities even agree to accept it.
you are also asking for atleast 8BTC to set up your business.. (buying the VPS)
your target page shows far less to go to individual charities compared to your own business.

8BTC for you.. but 0.1btc for amnesty international
adding up all the target projects = 7BTC.. and again you want 8BTC for yourself but only 7btc for charity... ill repeat..from the total 15btc your website currently has on the combined targets and internal donations.. only 7btc goes to charity (54% for you 46% for charity)

think about these numbers and read my posts again to understand that i have looked at your details and have replied accordingly

any people in their right mind would rather give 15BTC direct to charity then let you eat up 54%

Thanks for your input!
I notice you are almost hostile to us bringing lots of donors together to create stronger incentive for charities to accept Bitcoin donations. However, unless you are just trolling, we are definetly aiming for the same goal and you raise some valid points. We will try to treat them as feedback and suggestions and in return i'd like to ask you to read up on what we are trying to achieve and how we are implementing it. I think you will find that we are working for the very same goals you are advocating above and that reaching them will be easier with both the persuation you suggest and the incentive we'd like to provide then by trying only one of the methods.

We appriciate all attempts that will help persuade charities to start accepting bitcoin donations and will suppert such efforts as best as we can. We also would love take up on your suggestion to collaborate with a partner in the business. We would like to find such a partner with good enough reputation among the community to be co-signer for the release of the funded donations. The current situation with shady exchanges and mining rig producers makes trust a scarse resource. We need to provide the users with enough protection so that they can know for sure and see that there is no way their donations end up stolen or lost. A trustworthy partner to co-sign the transactions would be a great step in the right direction.

/roos

lesson 1
bitcoins should go from individuals directly to an address 100% owned by a charity..not a middleman service such as you propose.

lesson 2
if you want to manage and report bitcoin donations to a charity.. its easy. its called the blockchain.

lesson 3
if people want to be public about their donations. they do not ask their bank(the middleman) to inform the charity and media. they inform the parties involved direct

lesson 4
if you do not want to be a middleman, and blockchain.info can show all received donations. and people can publicise their own charitable good will. then all that is left is to persuade charities to add a bitcoin address to their official webpage.

i would advise you to collaborate with the half dozen other groups that's sole agenda is to get charities to accept bitcoin. there are already too many groups trying to be the middlemen, taking in bitcoins, taking a cut off the top and then redistributing it.

also because there are many of these middle men it makes it hard for average joe to know the difference between a profiting scammer that only gives 10%... or a genuine 'signposting' services that does not take a cut, but does the job to be personally charitable.

persuading a charity to accept bitcoin does not require massive legal fee's to get the bureaucratic paperwork signed, it does not require hiring 5+ members of staff to be board members and trustees. to sit on their asses because thats what governments want.. all its takes is passion and persistence.

we dont need people ripping us and charities off.. we need people with passion to do whats right, not for a big pay day. but because its in their heart

News Update 1:
I can't promise news updates every day in the future, on the contrary, i promise keep it at once a week as soon as the first release madness is over. The first day in public, however, is worth a few words.

In the morning we fixed a few details we discovered during the dry run over the weekend.
Then we had the release after lunch with the full team on alert expecting to rattle out bugs that the first users spotted. To our surprice things have worked smoothly so far. Load has been low so far and we have fixed a few problems with the wording in the announce message and site text. Yey, we even got a few small donations in. Thanks for the support!

As site looked stable I went for the local bitcoin meet-up. I came just in time for tasting the champagne popped over the $700 price top. Ofcourse we discussed Bitcoin Donation Trust, among other stuff, I got good input and ideas on the signing system. But most of all I got even more people asking for bitcoin donations to the wikipedia. We will definetly open donations to the wikipedia as one of the first donation targets. Maybe even a pre-opening teaser as soon as we get the wallet system in place.

All and all a very good first day for Bitcoin Donation Trust!

Thanks again for the support!

/roos

1: Thanks for the input. Fixed!

2: About trust:
Yes, its very hard to find a bitcoin organisation that carry enough trust today to become a relieble co-signer for releasing the funds once the donation targets start to accept bitcoin. Suggestions on such an organisation are very welcome, whom would you trust?

For now we are leaning towards a solution where donors should be able to opt-in to become co-signers for their own donation. That would mean that it would require the signature of both us and the very donor to release the funds to the public address of the target organisation. The problem with such a solution is that we cant rely on everybody to release the funds. This, on the other hand, would mean that we cant state as clearly to the donation targets how much money they would actually get once they start accepting bitcoin.

/roos

I also misread the first post, thought you converted to fiat. I think you should edit the first post to clarify that you will hold the bitcoins and never touch fiat. Nice initiative but i think it will take time for you to build enough trust. You can't even trust elite exchanges these days.

1: We agree 100%

2: We dont hand fiat to anyone.

3: This is exactly what we try to achieve with this project.

every day i see a new thread of someone else asking to have peoples btc and be middlemen for charities.

THE COMMUNITY DOES NOT WANT MIDDLE MEN STEALING COINS. WE WANT THE CHARITIES TO ACCEPT BTC DIRECT

so stop taking peoples funds and saying you will hand them fiat.

the whole point is to get charities to accept the bitcoin and for them to either use bitcoin or them cash it out.