Topic: THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. (Read 5550 times)

Your talking about a future in about 25-50yrs from now. That isn't anything we should worry about now.

Gavin's name is way too tied to the program. So right now it would be an up hill battle, for another foundation. Which if they don't control the protocol they will never have the power to over take the foundation. You said "if this takes off"  well it is kinda taking off right now.

Satoshi disapeared 'cause of all those people Foundation founders he could not trust.
He stopped communicating with Gavin Andersen after the traitor talked to the CIA.

Please keep this on topic, gents.

Satoshi isn't coming back.

Amazon, Microsoft, Paypal, Google and Facebook. Until someone spends the time to seduce them into contributing devs the Foundation will be small. This- alongside my education project- should be the focus of the foundation. They would get dozens of seasoned professional programmers and powerful corporations who are financially tied to the success of Bitcoin. That's called a win win.

+1

+1

Good point, they are at most just solidifying their positions.....until a superior coin comes along!!!!

+1

It is all about who controls the gateway into the world. What's your area of expertise? I'd like you to record a lecture

This is like arguing over who will be head of the free software foundation. Bitcoin is much larger than a single foundation and they are not focusing on the only chokepoint to control it. I'm not worried at all. Whoever controls the gateway into bitcoin land (ie the knowledge required to use bitcoins) controls bitcoin land. I'm slowly bringing the community together behind this concept and if the BTC foundation wants to ignore it, then they will end up as an also ran.


You're free at any time to help us.

I love you too gweedo

Sorry mate. I haven't thrown in the towel yet. If the foundation doesn't get behind my course, then they will become irrelevant

They are not trying to take over anything because they already have.

As long as bg is a member of the foundation, I will continue to stay. He's been one of my best friends here at bitcointalk and a great member of the community. To be honest, I don't think what the foundation has set out to do is easy. They are effectively herding cats on a global scale.

A non-profit, but not a charity, and I think a lot of people think of the two as synonymous— the tax advantage of their structure mostly exists to prevent double taxation on monies that would otherwise be spent directly by the members if the orginization didn't exist. I hadn't really paid much attention to (c)(6)'s previously, it's interesting to see that some have been under fire, and thats probably another argument for maintaining a good delineation between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Foundation:  no one wants uncle sam arguing that Bitcoin Foundation is really the controlling corporation for Bitcoin— in independent business— operating under (c)(6) as a tax dodge.

You must have missed the part where they actually are a nonprofit.  You probably also don't realize that pretty most other entities recognized as nonprofit by the IRS are also corporations.

There's nothing wrong with them being incorporated - it's the fact that they're incorporated as a business rather than a non-profit which some people find disturbing, especially given that they chose to style themselves as "Foundation" and that they claim to represent Bitcoin in general rather than specific Bitcoin interests.  

People worry about a commercial entity whose management is dominated by those involved in Bitcoin commerce paying the lead developer (there are some people who believe the devs shouldn't be paid at all, nevermind by commercial interests).  Rightly or wrongly, they believe that the "Bitcoin elite" will have undue influence over the development of the official client.

If they styled themselves the Bitcoin Chamber of Commerce, or the Bitcoin Financial Services Alliance, no-one would really give a shit.  If they were an actual non-profit obligated to make their financial statements public, there'd also be far less concern.

What's wrong with them being incorporated?

Right-o. Piling heaps upon heaps of this credibility thingie by picking the opaque title to incorporate under.

It happens to make not one whit of difference what federal statute says, not like we were about to prosecute a bunch of self-proclaimed entrepreneurs for fraud. What matters here is that there's quite reasonable expectation from the general community to see reports. If Satoshi Dice can do it, if MPEx can do it then indeed so can this foundation whatever it is.

And for that matter, PROOF that the donated funds are used for the declared purposes, rather than as a general float fund for Coinbase/whatever other Yscambinator "ventures". This means statements signed with addresses, so everyone can see when funds move.

Presto.

You mean they've never put out a report on how the BTC they collect mostly goes to provide the sitting CEO/Treasurer (nice going there) capital for his dead "business"? Heh.

There we go, stifled and buried deep in the forums. The most important revelation since the genesis of Bitcoin. You should be ashamed of yourself.

*** Can you please post a scan of the original by-laws for THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. we wish to see Satoshi's signature as a founding member. ***

Confirmed: One of my posts has been deleted. We have awoken the monster. We must continue on while we have momentum and they are scrambling and covering up. We are working within the belly of the beast here.

gmaxwell, thanks a lot for the detailed answer!

I don't mind a professional league, but it seems that Bitcoin Foundation should be (3) and for business side of it there should be something like Bitcoin Businesses Association, which would be (6).

Otherwise it seems somewhat unjust, that business interests are trying to present themselves as the face of the community. But I guess, it's too late to do anything about it now

There's no point in organizing something like "The REAL Bitcoin Foundation"

США взяла под контроль Bitcoin и выставил его на риски системы США законной. Товарищи, мы должны собраться вместе, чтобы взять под контроль код. Satoshi призывает к нашей помощи.

Los Estados Unidos han tomado el control de Bitcoin y ha expuesto a los riesgos del sistema legal de los Estados Unidos. Camaradas, hay que reunirse para tomar el control de la base de código. Satoshi está pidiendo nuestra ayuda.


米国は、Bitcoinのを制御していると米国の法的システムのリスクにさらされています。仲間は、私たちは、コードベースの制御を取るために一緒に収集する必要があります。サトシたちは助けを求めている。

美国已采取的控制Bitcoin的和已经暴露了美国法律制度的风险。同志们，我们必须聚集在一起，采取控制的codebase。聪呼吁我们的帮助。

Les Etats-Unis ont pris le contrôle de Bitcoin et l'a exposée aux risques du système juridique des États-Unis. Camarades, nous devons nous rassembler pour prendre le contrôle du code source. Satoshi lance un appel à notre aide.

De Verenigde Staten heeft de controle over Bitcoin genomen en heeft zij blootgesteld aan de risico's van de Verenigde Staten rechtssysteem. Kameraden, we moeten samenkomen om de controle van de codebase te nemen. Satoshi vraagt ​​om onze hulp.

Usono faris kun Bitcoin kaj elmontris gxin al la riskoj de Usono leĝa sistemo. Kamaradoj, ni devas kunvenigu al fari kun la codebase. Satoshi vokas nian helpon.

It's a 501(c)(6)— a professional league, not a 501(c)(3) charity.

A 501(c)(3) engages in religious, scientific, educational charitable purposes and are obligated to act in the public interest. They're prohibited from certain political activities (they can lobby for their interests but cannot support candidates and lobbying must be limited to some minority part of their expenditure) and must meet various tests for their funding coming from the public (or other charities and government) sources. The IRS has been clamping down on charity applications now and seems to be demanding more justification that an organization's purpose is in fact charitable.   The plus side of all this trouble is that donations are tax deductible, and there is a certain degree of public legitimacy created due to both the charitable mission as well as the public support requirements demonstrating that the org isn't just acting in one parties interest.

501(c)(6) organizations are professional interest organizations such as chambers of commerce, sports leagues, etc. Rather than acting in the public interest they act in the business interest of their members. (And their income is not taxed, because it's assumed to already be taxed— and only replacing activity that the members could have done directly, but it is not tax deductible).

The lobbying and political limitations as well as the general hoop-jumping to get the classification are reasons that if I were creating a Bitcoin Foundation I might consider making it a (c)(6) instead of a (c)(3). On the other hand, the lack of a requirement to serve the public interests will likely always feed accusations of the organization being a pawn for its primary funders, and along with the lack of deductability are arguments against (6) and in favor of (3) most obvious to me.  IIRC there are also fewer rules about the disposition of assets which can make it easier for a large sponsor fund a (c)(6), because IIRC a (c)(6) can return assets to people where a (c)(3) can only dispose of assets by transferring them to another charity.

I think that even if we had a 501(c)(3) Bitcoin org, the Bitcoin ecosystem would still probably need a 501(c)(6) one to optimally enable collaboration of the large commercial interests.

Reading some of the responses in this thread is interesting....

Personally I think the foundation is a good idea, someone has to bring bitcoin to the masses and it's not going to happen easily.

* Alex shamefully goes away to educate himself about corporations... 

It is registered as non profit.

Is this even legal? You can register a corporation without requiring any info from all the founding members?

And I am surprised they made it "Inc". Why not non-profit, like Wikipedia? Especially if they ask for donations. I can understand somewhat the Ripple folks, but Bitcoin?

So what?

I don't hate Bitcoin. I think the facts speak for themselves, THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. is running Bitcoin now, Bitcoin is deeply linked to a United States corporation and Satoshi is a member of THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC.

Some people will like this, others will dislike it and most won't care or even know. Exposing the truth is not fear mongering.

"if any thing can make it fail, this foundation can"

Anon

gmaxwell: haters are going to hate.

I don't share many of the concerns in this thread—  I think it's natural, expected, and a welcome thing that businesses and other interested parties should come together to collaborate to advance the cause of Bitcoin.

I'm also confident that Gavin can behave responsibly relative to his dual roles, and at the same time— nothing he does with the codebase is a secret, all changes are cross reviewed by other developers (and anyone else who is interested!). If the review process works then there is little to worry about even if you do not trust Gavin, and if it doesn't work then you have worse things to worry about than the foundation being a boogieman.

You can help out by following changes to the reference codebase and asking questions. This would probably be a lot more productive than the fear-mongering on the forum— which does nothing to prevent badness, and is pretty demotivating to people who (in all likelihood) are completely honestly motivated.  If you have a concern the best thing to do is step up and eliminate it by guarding the system— if your concerns were misplaced, no harm done, you might still stop a failure from a direction you didn't expect— if they weren't misplaced you'll help stop a bad outcome ... and doing that avoids offending people with false accusations in the times your concerns were misplaced.  Complaining on the forum like this, smearing peoples motivations and such— makes people write off the forum as a bunch of poorly socialized chicken-littles.

I do think that it's kind of odd to see one thread of people complaining that the bitcoin foundation is some ominous force, while other people from the forum complain that they're not grabbing enough!

Making it clear that the Bitcoin Foundation is a professional promotion organization like a chamber of commerce and doesn't own or control Bitcoin— any more than a chamber of commerce controls or represents all business— is a good thing but it can be done without accusations or conspiracy theories that make it sounds like the claiming person has other motivations.

If the general counsel of the THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. fumbled on its first document (the by-laws) by including Satoshi. What will it fumble next?

Listing Satoshi was something I reacted to too.
I haven't seen anywhere that he have said that he is a member of this club

The Network says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE

and to THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC.:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. has even gone so far as to list Satoshi as a founding member in their by-laws. Without his consent and thus implying that Satoshi is affiliated with THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. to further strengthen their takeover of Bitcoin.


26/Apr/2013 Wall Street Journal - First-Quarter Growth, at 2.5%, Misses Expectations

this cocksucker just spreads envy and bullshit everywhere. confirmed. careful to prove him wrong: he's going to google your personal data and publish them around, including names of relatives, without your consent, pretending to be an artificial intelligence.
well, his intelligence is apparently, really artificial, and he has been sentenced to be called cocksucker in public.

From what I've heard the 'community' as represented by this thread is in fact in perfect agreement with Satashi's ideology of Austrian economics, Libertarianism and anti-government paranoia.  And their is a comprehensive future plan for BTC, its called the 21 million coin cap and that was dictated by Satoshi under his belief that scarcity was the fundamental reason why money is valuable and it is vigilantly guarded by his like-minded followers to this day.  So lets not kid ourselves about central planning and central 'vision' controlling BTC simply because the mysterious founder has disappeared.  BTC is starving for any kind of original thinking because the only person who would be remotely acceptable to the community to provide such thinking dose not provide it.

++11. sounds like a reasonable argument.

And now its come out that "they" hold the Bitcoin trademark. Unbelievable.

And now pay for development of the official client. (Control the lead developer)

**** THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. now owns  you. ****

Despite the mythology which has sprung up around Satoshi, he didn't develop some comprehensive future plan for the future of Bitcoin.  He recognised it as an experiment and believed it should succeed or fail without him pushing it in a specific direction and believed - rightly - that how people actually used it would determine what Bitcoin became, irrespective of his personal ideology.

If you've ever been part of any grass roots movement, then you know that there are always multiple different agendas within such movements and that trying to get those factions to agree on even a few common goals is often a formidable task.  Very often, you end up with many different interest groups focusing on their own individual agendas and a peak body to which they all belong is eventually formed to carry out tasks which smaller organisations cannot.

There are many different agendas within "the Bitcoin community" and they cannot all be represented by a single body.  People need to get off their asses and start forming groups which promote the aspects of Bitcoin most important to them instead of complaining that someone else isn't promoting their agenda.

Y'all could have put together a non-profit to hold the Bitcoin trademark and to pay for development of the official client, but the people who actually got off their asses and did it were those with largely commercial interests in Bitcoin.  If you don't like their focus, then start forming other groups to address the issues you believe are important.

The Bitcoin Foundation is not trying to take over anything.

I'm not paranoid. Which one of my enemies told you so?

Obvious troll.  But I can't tell which side is getting trolled.

The problem is that they self appointed themselves as the representatives of Bitcoin and have the lead developer under their control. They've admitted they would be "happy" to be regulated. They operate out of the United States and as such there is now the true possibility that the United States can control the Bitcoin code.

This is extremely paranoid even by my standards and I am quite paranoid.

They are just trying to get Bitcoin accepted by the masses and recognized by official media. Of course they have to be centralized if they ever want to succeed in doing that.

I don't mind that the Foundation exists - as you said: BITCOIN CANNOT BE CONTROLLED anyway, so why worry ?

Completely decentralized things don't work in the real world - that is why foundation exists: to create a bridge between the two worlds.

Above you can see that somebody involved with THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. is trying to "use" you.


Additionally, they now admit they have other things to do as well as advancing Bitcoin. What is this hidden agenda?


**** Well there you have it, a United States corporation is trying to take over Bitcoin. **** 

Good luck everyone.

Actually your lawyer board member should know about all these things. It's kinda surprising he hasn't noticed himself yet.

The privacy policy is an important point. Thank you for mentioning it.  Same with the tax status. Do you hade a back ground in this sort of thing? I think we could use someone who knows something about this. The foundation has a lot of work to do in addition to advancing Bitcoin. But bear in mind, the vast majority of the foundation membrrs are just like the members here...except we paid $30 (about 1/3 if what you would pay to join the Linux foundation).

I will put it on the agenda. Many thanks.

We dont need anyone representing what cannot be controlled. This foundation is a mockery to our decentralized structure CREATED by Satoshi.

Hopefully the development lead will come to the realization that there is a conflict of interest being involved with both Bitcoin and THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC.

Bitcoin foundation look like scam, we have to be very careful with any changes to code made( proposed ) by Gavin Andresen. Registere as no profit corporation lol.

interesting!

There's way worse things about the "foundation" than that.

There's still no legal mailing adress. There's no privacy policy even though they gather personal data on the "join us" pages. They are accepting "donations" but there's no information on the tax status of this... company?/non-profit?/for-profit?/what the hell are they even?

This "foundation" is one of the biggest scams in Bitcoin.

It's interesting that THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC. conveniently and casually drop the  "INC." designation at the bottom of their website at https://bitcoinfoundation.org/.

If they are trying to hide the fact that they are a United States corporation, what else could they be hiding?

Edit: I have removed the link to the general counsel. On further thought, there is no need to make this personal. Bitcoin is supposed to be fun.