Gosh!..., I had written a very long post that unfortunately disappeared. Will try to remember and spew parts of it since I'm now very tired.
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I always found the speculation sub to be the best place to find trools, / not surprised.
I would be very careful in spending large amount of money onto bitcoin before it has matured natually.
Core:
First, There are some needed changes and research to be done around the core protocol definition that would benefits from minimal funding, ~250k$
Ecosystem - distribution :
Then supporting development of related software and services...
Finding new ways to distribute bitcoins as evenly as possible via freebies and offers but mostly through empowering people to work and earn them for simple yet engaging tasks.
Mining:
Bitcoins generation (mining) is more and more at risk of being centralized and prohibitive due to private large scale fgpa / ASIC mining operations.
We are struggling to coordinate and fund development of dedicated mining hardware. People in the industry give estimates between 500 000 and 10m$ for a fully custom ASIC (depending on technologies and scale). This would be the holy grail for affordable network security.
There has to be a balanced momentum of people joining in, security going up and affordable mining hardware being deployed.
Increased network security would in turn attract biger player.
Re long posts disappearing before posting, I mostly write ones that I don't wish to risk of that happening on gmail compose which auto saves every couple of minutes or so & you can save at any other time with 1 click (after something that you particularly don't want to lose say) or keep as a draft & add to, tweak, finish later - so at least the bulk of one's text is usually not lost
All your points sound good to me, unless E was one of the few peeps who became an instant Bitcoin fan on coming across it & seeing it's revolutionary potential then I doubt that a 6 figure grant application would be the best way to start, I was thinking more of a small project that could be achieved in under 1 year say & would be relatively peanuts to the foundation, under $100,000 - preferably low 5 figures, my friend's first was for $13,300 & that worked very well. The main point being to get the foundation & E interested in Bitcoins as a concept & maybe they will start coming up with potential applications of how it could benefit their other projects, once 1 Bitcoin related project had been funded then it would be easier pitching the more technical, esoteric, less sexy ones that were more important to Bitcoin development
So maybe a smallish project, maybe something that could have a very obvious benefit to a cause that E likes & already supports (see my OP), maybe something Africa related, I also have a friend who is communications director of a company & dealing with the launch of a product in to a new market, the US & she may be willing to do some freelance media relations on this NPO project, I can already see some fairly snappy headlines for press releases ie, Billionaire Backs Bitcoins - blar, blar, blar or perhaps better more low key
Also if it tickled E's fancy that the application was coming from a neighbor & friend of a couple of E's buddies, then I imagine future & more ambitious Bitcoin related project would be way easier to get funded & there's even a slim chance E may wish to hear more about Bitcoin in person from me - which would be awesome