Topic: Would the Bitcoin community be willing to crowdfund science? - page 2. (Read 443 times)
Sure! I just hope scientists won't bullshit us and be honest about what they're trying to achieve and what chances are for it to be used. I've seen so many bullshit projects that were crowdfunded and ended up totally wasting the money. A great example can be that solar roadway project that even got financed by some towns in the USA. Have you heard of it? It's total bullshit they will never make it work.
We are willing to fund bullshit ICOs and coins with our crowdfunding efforts so far, why not? 
Although I will concede that this participation is largely due to profit motive. Notice how much investment has backed off since these ICOS started issuing "utility tokens" instead of "equity tokens". We have had some of the largest crowdfunding efforts in the world to date occur as a result of the ICOs; you dont see that so much nowadays.
But seriously, for some reason this has always been an issue. Unless it is publicized, and deals with illness, research funding only really seems to come from the government/ big donors with a personal interest. life is too far removed from something as lofty as this for people to have empathy. attach some kind of "profit" to it, however, and you will sell out, so to speak.
people are always willing to donate money. its just that they only donate to shit they actually care about
Although I will concede that this participation is largely due to profit motive. Notice how much investment has backed off since these ICOS started issuing "utility tokens" instead of "equity tokens". We have had some of the largest crowdfunding efforts in the world to date occur as a result of the ICOs; you dont see that so much nowadays.
But seriously, for some reason this has always been an issue. Unless it is publicized, and deals with illness, research funding only really seems to come from the government/ big donors with a personal interest. life is too far removed from something as lofty as this for people to have empathy. attach some kind of "profit" to it, however, and you will sell out, so to speak.
people are always willing to donate money. its just that they only donate to shit they actually care about
Bitcoin community has been funding numerous projects but within the crypto community itself through the ICO route. However, the main factor for their investment is to get returns on it. SO the funding is mainly for personal profit and not for the profits of the mankind. So I really doubt that bitcoin community will be willing to fund a science project which may or may not be successful. However, if the community can get assurance from a government organization about the return from the project, then it can be different story. But a trial and error project will not receive much funding from the crypto community I believe.
Good point. There may be exceptions; I've heard of one guy who created a minor altcoin called Marscoin in an attempt to help fund efforts to get people to Mars, and of course there's Orbitcoin and Gridcoin. Which is part of why I thought it might not be so very unreasonable to think that there might be a subset of Bitcoin users who might be willing to donate to scientific research, however small that subset might be. But people have been scammed with ICOs because they were greedy and looking for easy profits, so it's a matter of how scientists can talk to the ones who might be looking for a payoff.
Bitcoin community has been funding numerous projects but within the crypto community itself through the ICO route. However, the main factor for their investment is to get returns on it. SO the funding is mainly for personal profit and not for the profits of the mankind. So I really doubt that bitcoin community will be willing to fund a science project which may or may not be successful. However, if the community can get assurance from a government organization about the return from the project, then it can be different story. But a trial and error project will not receive much funding from the crypto community I believe.
One of the really annoying things about government funding of science is that taxpayers don't necessarily get much say on where the money goes or what politicians do with the results of scientific experiments. Sometimes politicians misrepresent the results or ignore the results altogether when the data becomes "inconvenient" and might lose them votes. Would the Bitcoin community be willing to take the funding of science out of the hands of politicians by crowdfunding science endeavors that we think are important?
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