Bitcoin Transfers Are Cheap and Quick
Set up in 2013, BitGive is the first nonprofit to have made it possible to make donations via Bitcoin. With its help, organisations such as Save the Children, The Water Project and Medic Mobile are now all able to accept donations in the cryptocurrency. And there are a few benefits to making money transfers in Bitcoin rather than traditional methods:
- Transactions are fast: they’re often confirmed within ten minutes.
- Fees are very low: when money crosses borders, traditional transfer services like Western Union are usually very expensive.
- Donors are receiving organisations can engage with each other directly, regardless of where they are located.
But there are a few significant disadvantages/risks too:
- The currency is extremely volatile. Between the beginning and middle of September 2017 Bitcoin’s value fell 40 per cent.
- There are occasional incidences of theft, like with big bitcoin exchanges like Mt. Gox or Bitfinex for example.
The blockchain technology that documents bitcoin transactions is also well suited to creating a transparent picture of where donated money ends up and the route it takes.
And BitGive’s new flagship project aims to take advantage of exactly that: GiveTrack is set to be a donation portal that uses the advantages of the bitcoin and blockchain technology to carry out projects quickly and transparently.
For more about blockchain and the extraordinary role it could play in making our world more sustainable, check out our article: Blockchain: A Digital System For Real World Sustainability.
Bitcoin + Blockchain = Transparent Donations
With GiveTrack, it will be possible to follow individual donations and see where they end up. With the help of the blockchain each transaction is already registered from wallet to wallet, which makes it much easier to track. Transactions are often confirmed within ten minutes, although on some occasions it can take up to one to two days.
Donation and project tracking with BitGive will go a little something like this: first, donations are collected until a certain sum is reached. When there is enough, the project is started and the funds are transferred to the organisation running it. The individual steps needed to implement it are documented and at the end the result is a successfully completed project.
The launch of GiveTrack was already announced on various news sites at the start of December, but at the moment there is only a demo video and a call for donations to support the development of the project and a beta version is set to be released in October. It will be an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) – a basic version that will be improved based on users’ feedback.
In the future the donation portal is set to be available for everyone, but donations will first be limited to organisations registered in the USA. The Water Project and Medic Mobile are included in that, both projects that BitGive has already worked with.
Check out the video below for a short intro to GiveTrack.
This article is a translation by Marisa Pettit of the original article which first appeared on RESET’s German site.
