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Nonprofit Radio for November 11, 2024: Accepting Cryptocurrency Gifts

Pat DuffyAccepting Cryptocurrency Gifts

Code. Blockchain. Proofs. Wallets. Exchanges. Coins. If foreign words like these keep you from accepting a gift that tens of millions of Gen Z and Millennials invest in and gift, Pat Duffy will set your mind at ease. He defines the terms in plain language and explains why crypto giving belongs on your donation page. He’s co-founder of The Giving Block.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be forced to endure the pain of kyphosis. If you twisted me around the idea that you missed this week’s show, here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce it. Hey, Tony, here’s what’s up accepting Cryptocurrency gifts, code, Blockchain, proofs, wallets, exchanges, coins. If foreign words like these keep you from accepting a gift that tens of millions of gen Z and millennials invest in and gift. Pat Duffy will set your mind at ease. He defines the terms in plain language and explains why crypto giving belongs on your donation page. He’s co founder of the giving block on Tony’s Steak too. We have a new president were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forums for your nonprofit donor box.org here is accepting Cryptocurrency gifts. It’s a pleasure to welcome Pat Duffy to nonprofit radio. Pat co-founded the giving block, creating the new fundraising category, crypto philanthropy. The giving block helps thousands of nonprofits, fundraise cryptocurrencies, stocks and donor advised fund grants. He was a Forbes 30 under 30 in social impact in 2022. You’ll find the company at the Giving block.com and you’ll find Pat Duffy on linkedin. Pat. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure. I’m glad you’re with us. Uh, ok, let’s start with basics le let’s make sure everybody understands the, just the essentials, the basics of what Cryptocurrency is before we start talking about how your nonprofit can benefit from it. Yeah, definitely people overcomplicate it a lot. So in very simple terms, it’s a digital form of asset. It’s kind of like money in the sense that you can move it anywhere in the world really quickly. You can sit in an account. Um, it’s fungible divisible. Um But it kind of plays the role of a stock um or of gold kind of stores, the value in the sense that a lot of these cryptocurrencies have a set, um number of units that can’t be increased. The code is written that way. So there’s a scarcity element where you can buy into something and know that it won’t be um manufactured and won’t be creative of it. Uh And then it’s kind of like stocks and that a lot of these cryptocurrencies have speculative values where people are kind of betting on whether or not they’ll go up or down. Um But all of them for the most part are built off of Blockchain. And that is just uh kind of computer riddles, cryptographic uh proofs that are solving uh problems. And when they all um agree on the solution to that proof, a transaction is authorized and money moves so really secure way to store value, to move value. Um super cost efficient, just kind of a really effective version of digital money. Ok. Now it has been with us for years in, in, in the mainstream uh are fairly mainstream. There’s probably argument about that but it would be generous, you know, say mainstream at least or at least fairly mainstream. OK? But when you uh when you start to say, all right, so it’s, it’s sort of like you mentioned gold but then there’s code and you talk about scarcity and some people for some people, it’s speculative and it’s on the Blockchain and you talk about proofs, this is the stuff, this is the stuff that I think makes people like what the what are we talking about here? So, so, all right, that is an overview but we gotta, we gotta drill down what you know, like code and scarcity and speculative and Blockchain proofs uh reassure our listeners that this is something that is safe. Uh you mentioned safe, but you got to explain why the Blockchain and the proofs make it safe. Like why? OK, why is this something that we should just think about before we even start about how to get into it. We’re not there yet. Why should we consider bringing this to our board? Uh you know, with scarcity and speculative and Blockchain and proofs? Yeah, definitely. So every technology that you’re interfacing with sounds like this if you dig into it. So it’s just at a super high level. If you think about Bluetooth and Wi Fi, I even say like if you’re going to buy a car, like most people aren’t really in tune with the fact that like pistons are firing and like, what is the transmission? Like there’s all these things, it would sound infinitely more complicated than it needs to with every technology. Eventually you get to a place of like, why should I care? Do I need to use it? Has it been made easy for me? Um Those sorts of questions when it comes to crypto are important, we’ll get into those to answer the question first about like the complexity of it, like the Blockchain and the proofs and everything else. Like why do we even need something like this? We had money, we have gold, we have stocks. Like what’s the point? Um When you are sending money from one place to another, there’s no real system for it. Like ultimately what’s kind of happening is people are updating numbers and spreadsheets and there are automated processes for it. But like there’s no formalized system that’s authorizing that like there are lawyers authorizing whether or not an agreement is actually legitimate, right? Or that both parties have agreed to it. There are banks authorizing whether or not funds are in one place or another, right? There are people who are initiating transactions and kind of choosing where to park their money. Um When you think about stores of value, you can’t really store value with something like cash. Um you have to have something like gold and gold isn’t fungible, right? You can’t take a piece of gold and divide it and send it on the internet real quick. What do you think about something like stocks? You’re speculating on these assets that are tied to a company but doesn’t really function like money. You can’t move stocks between individual will or try to like stake your stock somewhere and earn interest very conveniently because it’s not technologically driven. There’s a lot of inefficiency in all these different types of money and stocks and gold. So what these cryptographers were trying to figure out is like, can we create a more um useful financial instrument? And in doing so, could we make it so that it’s infinitely more scalable than something like dollars in terms of where the dollars come from? In terms of how difficult it is to move money to one place versus another. Like ultimately, the money isn’t actually moving. We have something called fractional reserve banking where a bank is kind of pretending there’s more money in the bank than there is when you wire money to a bank, they’re not actually getting a bag of cash from somewhere else to kind of back it. Um So what you have with Cryptocurrency in short is you write this code and the code is formalized and it can’t be changed and it says it’s gonna do a few things. We’ll take Bitcoin as an example. So with Bitcoin, they go, there’s only ever gonna be this many Bitcoin and we write the code in a way where it can’t ever be altered. So people will know for sure in the way that when you have dollars sitting in the bank, the Federal Reserve during COVID, for instance, could print a bunch of money devaluing your uh savings. That can’t happen with Bitcoin if people go. But that’s great. There’s a 0% chance that more supply will be injected, but I can still have this asset. It’s easy to move around. Ok? I like that. And then people go, well, if I wanna send it to somebody else, how do I know it’s gonna get there? Right. Or if I have it, how can I prove that? I actually have it and someone can’t just take it away or say it isn’t sitting in my account. Um The code is again written with the cryptography where you would have to get more than half of the computers involved in Bitcoin to all simultaneously agree on the false premise that it isn’t your Bitcoin or the false premise that you send it somewhere else? You’d have to orchestrate what is an impossible level of scale and it packing all of these devices at once, maybe the most secure way and the most provable way to say, I actually have a thing or it’s actually gone where I said, I’d like it to. So you go, ok. So I have a more guaranteed way of saying I own something and a more guaranteed way of saying I’ve moved it somewhere else and people say I like that too and then there’s an efficiency component. So because it’s all code based, you don’t need banks to code is what authorized the transactions. You don’t need banks to prove that you have the asset or to say I moved it to someone else. It’s so much more cost effective and um you don’t have to spend as much money moving it from one place to the other. So you go, oh I could move a billion dollars instantaneously, you know, within a matter of seconds at the lowest cost possible without all these middle men and infrastructural components. So you’re writing code more or less to replace what are a bunch of inefficiencies in the asset types from like cash to stock gold and then the institutions necessary to move those asset types or prove that they’re in a particular position or pretend that they’re in a particular position with a lot of finance So it’s just a really efficient alternate financial system that solves for a lot of problems that cash had, the stocks had that gold had. So people are betting on it when people hold something like Bitcoin, they’re kind of betting on it as if you had a share of stock. Like cell phones are gonna be used more often because they’re so much more convenient than a landline. People are holding Bitcoin oftentimes as a correlated asset saying, I think this cryptography in finance, this uh cryptographic proof of work system. These blockchains, I think these tools are gonna be used more and that companies are gonna use uh these crypto assets to make their systems more efficient. Uh So that’s explaining the technology. Second half of your question was why should nonprofits take it seriously? Well, ok. All right. Before we get there, we, we will, we will, we gotta, we gotta tick off a few things. Um You, well, first of all, let’s reassure people, you said you’re writing code, but let’s just reassure people they’re not writing code, you’re not, you’re not profit is not writing the, the code is written in, in such a well, the code is already written for cryptocurrencies, right? I just wanna make that like when you’re on Google, when you’re using your iphone, when you’re using your tax software, the code is serving a particular purpose. Definitely, you’re just clicking buttons. There’s just making sure that somebody doesn’t say, well, wait, I have to write code. No. OK. If there was a listener who didn’t quite understand. OK. Um You, you said it’s uh now you said it’s scalable, but then you also said there’s a, there’s a finite amount. Those, those two, those two sound incongruous to me. So what am I not? What am I not getting about your explanation? No, great question. So, scalability in terms of the infrastructure, like how much money you can move over a particular period of time or how effectively it can solve different problems. And like if 100,000 people send the transaction or one person sends a transaction, it doesn’t become more difficult, right? You can fit more of these transactions into one block and have them approved. It actually becomes more energy efficient. The more transactions that happen in the sense that if you’re doing one transaction, you’re cracking all these codes to solve it, it kind of takes a lot of energy. This is one of the complaints of something like Bitcoin, but the more people who end up using the technology is actually uh authorizing more transactions at less cost. So it’s scalable in the sense that it allows for, if you wanted to scale the traditional financial ecosystem, you would need skyscrapers, you would need human employees, you would need a bunch of cars, taking them to buildings, you would need more lawyers, more agreements. Um When you do that off of a code base you can make an infinitely larger financial system to offer infinitely more transactions um at infinitely lower cost and more uh effectiveness. So, not scalable in the sense that you create more of the assets themselves. Um but scalable in the sense that more people can participate in that network at lower cost. Ok. Lower cost, greater efficiency, right. So, I mean, comparing it to uh you know, checks, you know, there’s a lot of, if there’s a heavy mail volume in the week, let’s say it’s the final week of December and is a heavy mail volume. You have to wait longer for your check to get to the nonprofit. You have to wait longer during certain periods for your broker to make a stock transfer for you. Even if it’s, to me, it’s just, it seems like it’s only a couple of keystrokes. But sometimes you say, well, it takes up to 3 to 3 business days to, well, it’s like you, you, you, you’re typing a couple of keys. What, what is the three business days? But anyway, uh but brokers, brokers can be all right, broke. All right. So, and to your point, you know, you made the same point. You’d have to build, build a bigger buildings and have more bank employees to scale, you know, billions of transactions or something. All right, I see. I understand. Thank you. Explain the scale up. Um Another one, you talk about, uh you know, security, you’d have to convince more than half of the servers that are, that are part of the chain that you own, the asset that you’re claiming that you own or you’re owning the, uh, we’re not talking about dozens. Reassure people. How many, what’s the scale of the server, the servers that are involved in? You know, let’s just stick with Bitcoin. That was your example for the, for the currency so far. Oh, yeah, I’d have to look up the number but I mean, there’s millions. It could be tens, hundreds. I, I’d have to look at what it is. Um, but in short, when you, when I say I’m gonna send Tony, you know, $100 in Bitcoin, what it does is it wraps it in a cryptographic riddle more or less that these miners. When you hear about like Bitcoin mining, you have all these computers that are waiting to crack riddles. These are riddles that like humans can’t solve it. A computer needs to figure it out and the faster they solve it and by getting it correct, they get a little reward that’s like released on the network. So they, they get a little bit of money off that. So they’re all university incentivized to solve it correctly. You would have to hack into all of these individual computers and get them to simultaneously, uh, agree that an incorrect proof is actually a correct proof that says instead of your wallet is the endpoint someone else’s wallet is the end point, which was impossible. More or less when there were even like 50 of these computers doing it. You’d have to orchestrate and crack into everyone’s system which all has their own security protocols. Um, it just becomes infinitely more impossible over time. So at a bank you can log into one bank uh computer and you can change the records on the spreadsheet or you could push money out of an account to another person. You’d actually have to convince, um, you know, millions of these super computers more or less that the money isn’t actually an Tony’s accounts in someone else’s. And then the same thing is true for changing a transaction record, which is why law enforcement um prefers crypto transactions to cash. Why they think it’s so much more traceable and safe. Um If you’re a criminal who’s moved Bitcoin, let’s say, from one wallet to another, you could never change the record or cook the books like it has moved from a wallet to another wallet. You would need that same level of computer takeover to just pretend you didn’t move money or you took it somewhere. So at an individual level, it allows for its privacy if I send it to you and we’re not being investigated by the FBI. If you’re a company, I could transfer funds without having to go through all the protocols. But if law enforcement were to try to investigate, did you do something you weren’t supposed to do. There’s no way for me to pretend I didn’t commit a crime or move money to that other person. It’s permanently locked in and traceable. All right. Reassuring. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers. Just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to accepting Cryptocurrency gifts. All right. So let’s let’s move to um the value, you know, why, why should, why should nonprofits pay attention to this? I mean, I let’s talk a little about like giving trends a bit to, I’m sure this skews by age younger, I I happen to be a baby boomer, young, young, very young, very very young, baby boomer, very young baby, boomer uh mathematic. No, but mathematical proof by, by, by birth year. Uh I, I’m very young baby boomer. Um in case I hadn’t mentioned that I am young baby, but you know, I’m sure there are not many boomers uh giving crypto donation. So let’s talk a little about the giving trends but, but also just, you know, generally why, look, why bother. We’ve been doing this fine with checks, stocks, wire transfers. Why, why should we bother? Oh, it’s a great question. So, if, if the methods of payment you accept as a charity were driven by the nonprofit trying to solve a payments problem, you wouldn’t really have to adapt at all. Right. The nonprofit gets cash through a check the same way they would from a credit card. But you take credit cards as a nonprofit because eventually there are so many people using them and they’re so much more convenient to the ability to get that donor and convert that donor and have them pay in a way where they’ll actually send you the money. Once credit cards become their thing, you eventually have to just adjust to it. Right. The same reason nonprofits take stocks, you don’t take stocks because it’s easier than a credit card. You take stocks because it’s so much more tax efficient for a US donor. If they’re gonna send this appreciated stock to the charity and it’s a million bucks or they send a million in their bank account, they might be erasing an extra 150 grand in capital gains tax liability because the donor doesn’t pay capital gains tax on the donate stuff and neither doesn’t charity. So the example I use is like, think about credit cards, merged with stocks. Credit cards are used because people move money using credit cards and actually there’s so many people doing that, that if you don’t have that option on your site, a lot of people come there to look for it. You ask for bank details or a check instead and they just drop off. They go, this isn’t the way I like to move money. Um And there is a conversion issue with that and then people take stocks again because if you’re gonna get a big donation, 5 to $15,000 average gift size, plenty of them, a lot higher than that. Donors who get into those types of gift sizes. They’re thinking about the numbers, they’re thinking about the math. And if I can give 100 grand to one charity and save $20,000 more, I’m gonna consider that nonprofit. Um, a lot more often than a charity I can always send the cash to. So there’s a sort of a supply side push. That’s right. You can say the donors, there are donors, the supply side of the charities being on the demand side. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a push among don’t when checks became popular, when stocks became popular, when credit cards became popular. Absolutely. Right. Ok. That’s right. So there’s, there’s tens of millions of people in the US who use Cryptocurrency and there’s about 600 million worldwide. So it’s, it’s at a size and scale in terms of the user count and people participating in these systems that it’s not, you can’t not have it as an option at a certain point. So like there’s more users on Coinbase than there are on fidelity or Charles Schwab at this. Like it’s, it’s at a scale that most people who don’t participate in. It aren’t really aware of. Like Gen Zs are more likely to trade crypto than trade stocks, like more likely. And then millennials, 90% of millennial millionaires are crypto traders. Like it’s if you are a millennial or gen Z, that cares seriously about investing in any capacity, it’s a part of your world. It’s part of your portfolio and it’s part of the way you think about money. So when it comes to giving, it’s the same thing. So there’s that element of just the widespread uptake and then there’s the element of it’s so tax efficient. So when something appreciates again, you don’t pay capital against tax on it. So if I have a million dollars in Bitcoin, that’s gone up a lot. And I have a million dollars sitting in the bank, I can move the million dollars in Bitcoin to the charity if I want to make that kind of a donation. And let’s say the 150,000, 200,000 that I owed in state and federal capital gains tax on the appreciation of that investment that evaporates the charity gets the full million. I give them the full million to get the full million dollar write off. And that $200,000 tax burden disappears. And then I, as the donor can even take the million I had in the bank and buy more Bitcoin or whatever crypto I’m donating and now I have a million dollars of Bitcoins if I gave the cash. But it’s at today’s cost basis. I don’t know any taxes on it yet. So it’s this magical tax liability eraser that people have always dealt with stocks, especially older donors, younger donors never really did it because it’s inconvenient. We need to work with the broker. But with crypto, you can send the transfer as easily as you said it with a credit card with this enormous additional tax benefit. And the more of these younger donors who keep their cash in crypto to interest and then move out of those stable cryptocurrencies into investments like Bitcoin, the more of their money that’s parked there, the more convenient it is for them to send it that way, the more tax efficient it is because crypto has outperformed all the other asset classes for the last 10 years. All of those things compound to the point where if you want younger donors in particular young donors to consider that major gift pathway. So you can kind of future proof that donor base for the great wealth transfer and beyond, they’re becoming this larger and larger swap of what that world looks like. Now, what about the charitable uh federal income tax uh deduction? Is there, is there that for a Bitcoin gift. Is there a charitable deduction? Yep. You get the same deductions if you gave anything else, you the tax liability and it’s really convenient. Ok. So you avoid the capital gains and there is a charitable deduction which would be at your, whatever your marginal tax rate is. Ok. And that’s been locked in by the IRS year after year over and over. It’s not going anywhere. Ok. Just making it, making sure the basics are covered. Ok. OK. What more, what more do you want to say uh about uh value, importance, relevance, anything? II, I didn’t wanna, I didn’t wanna end your, your explanation. I just wanted to make uh I wanted to make sure people understand the basics. No, that was it. I was out of important things to say, I guess. Uh the only other thing I would say is um for nonprofits to understand the uptake. So like the majority of the Forbes top 100 nonprofits in the US already have crypto fundraising programs. So it’s, it’s more common than not the bigger and more established. The nonprofit is, it’s becoming pretty much universal for small and mid size nonprofits. Um It’s less common in the same way that they tend to lag on other technology adoption, but it’s, it’s not like a fringe thing from the charity side either. Right. Billions of dollars have been donated. Um Nonprofits actively present this to donors in particular younger donors and it generates revenue, increased average gift size. Like it’s, it’s pretty well adopted over the last 67 years. All right. How do we reassure folks about the headlines that they see, you know, a Bitcoin dropped from? Yeah, I don’t, I don’t really know what the numbers are. I know, like at the low end it went down to $30,000 but it had been as high as, I don’t remember how much, you know, per per coin. How do we reassure folks who read headlines about crypto, Bitcoin? Well, they’re not synonymous. Bitcoin is a, is a, is a coin, one of many cryptocurrencies, but people read headlines about Bitcoin the floor dropping out. How do we reassure people about that? That’s a great question. So there’s um in short, there are several considerations that matter a lot for folks involved in crypto that don’t matter for nonprofits depending on how you’re using it. So, one of the big misconceptions charities think about with crypto is that they have to hold crypto to accept it. So like one of the first things we built into our tool is it immediately liquidates any balances instantaneously. So it’s just a program that scans you have a crypto exchange account on a heavily regulated crypto exchange platform tied to your institutions. Ein it sits there and as soon as crypto hits any wallet in that account, it says automatically sell for the US dollar going rate value instantaneously. So from a volatility standpoint, as an investor or as a nonprofit who wants to add crypto, let’s say to your endowment. Um and invest in it long term price volatility is a concern for sure if you’re investing and you’re not interested in things that are that volatile. Um Or you worry about the, the risk of losing value on the funds that you’re holding and the idea of holding crypto or investing in it as a, a donor or a nonprofit isn’t for you. But for 99% of nonprofits, they use that auto liquidation feature. Even the nonprofits who hold it for the most part liquidate the crypto that comes in and they’ll invest in more stable cryptocurrencies like a Bitcoin Ethereum. They’ll make sure that if there’s some of these smaller all cryptocurrencies that are extra volatile, they don’t hold those things. So as a nonprofit, you can accept the fact that let’s just say us, for example, that there’s 60 ish million people trading this stuff, they have decided to participate in the system. Despite the volatility, this is how they’d like to invest and potentially give to us when it’s up. We’ll probably get more when it’s down. We’ll probably get a little bit less. But ultimately, that volatility is not something we have to endure because it hits our account and it automatically liquidates. So the price volatility thing is optional for charities, whereas it’s not optional for investors. Ok. Right. You’re making a distinction between accepting it and investing in it. Uh, and there’s also price volatility in the stock market. Absolutely. And that’s why stocks, stocks are quickly liquidated. It’s so, it’s, it’s identical. Nonprofits don’t hold stocks that are, that are donated. They, uh, they liquidate that day usually and, and then they can decide to invest or, or spend, you know, what, whatever and if they’re gonna invest in stock it, it’s, it’s obviously a decision that they make independent of the, the, the stock that was donated. That’s right. And it’s probably for the best because there are a lot of, a lot of our nonprofits, like, around this time, like Bitcoin almost hit a new all time high yesterday. Like, cryptocurrencies has been doing really, really well. It’s up like 100 and 50% over the last year. It’s, it’s like, tripled since the bottom of the last Bear market. Um, a lot of nonprofits. I mean, dozens in the last couple weeks have been, like, turn off the auto conversion and I’m like, let’s have a meeting and let’s talk about it. It’s just bad. It’s just natural. You see a thing go up for 12 months and you’re like, it’s gonna keep going up forever. I feel like an idiot. I’m not a sucker like I know. And it’s like, well, let’s just, let’s say let’s not time the crypto market anymore than we’re gonna try to time the, uh, the New York Stock Exchange or you know, or the S and P, we’re not, we’re not gonna be able to, let’s not time these things. Let’s not get carried away either. All right. So now that not only that, not only accepting it, but let’s keep it, let’s hold it. So, so our general, we cannot give financial advice back. We can’t tell anyone not to do. But like, usually after a conversation it’s very rare that any of our nonprofits ever don’t have auto conversion on. And some people get annoyed about that because we’ve been doing this for seven years. So the nonprofits who haven’t had auto conversion on have actually made uh an extraordinary amount of money. If they actually held it through, they didn’t pan excel at different points. It’s gone up a lot over the last seven years, of course. Um But there’s a lot of volatility. So like we said, ever, it’s just like you could turn it on today or turn it off tomorrow and easily lose money. Like there’s a lot of risk in investing and a lot of no in particular, let’s just say if you don’t have an endowment making, the only asset you’re deciding to hold and invest in Cryptocurrency is I don’t think reasonable. And even if you have an endowment, it should be a very small percentage if you’re even considering it just because of like you’re saying, there’s some volatility there, you mentioned different kinds of coins. Uh Let, let’s do we, we’ve used Bitcoin as an example. You mentioned a couple of others. What do, how, how does all that? And there are many right, there’s, there’s hundreds, hundreds, aren’t there maybe thousands? Thousands? All right, thousands of different coins. How does that play into uh what we accept? Uh do we need to accept certain coins? Only ex explain that the basics there? Yeah. So there are some cryptocurrencies that solved really important problems just from a technological standpoint that made it really easy to write codes called smart contracts that like automate processes and allow people to build these kind of applications that tie into the networks. And then there are some cryptocurrencies that are, it’s like open source code related to some other crypto and you make kind of a copy and paste version of it. Like you hear about these meme coins where it’s just kind of um you’ll see a Cryptocurrency and it’s got like a picture of a dog and there’s like $30 billion invested in it. And that’s sort of like baseball cards or certain types of art where it’s like people are investing in it because they’re trying to catch a wave and there’s like momentum and timing and it’s not really doing anything that’s fundamentally changing anyone’s life. It’s just like people want it because other people want it and those tend to muddy the water in terms of people understanding the value because they’re like, oh all cryptos kind of feel like this. But in short, um there’s probably uh you know, a few 100 that are doing unique technological things and those tend to be the top Cryptocurrency. So even if you get down into the top 2030 5080 these are very high market cap um assets, like more than most other types of investments. Like I think on the stock market with the Bitcoin ETF S for instance, like I think the Bitcoin ETF S have well surpassed silver. Like there’s a lot of interest in some of these technologies. But if you made an ETF O one of these like Doge coins, um you probably wouldn’t necessarily see the same level of interest. Um What a nonprofit needs to understand is similar to what we said about the auto conversion. This doesn’t need to be a consideration of yours because again, you’re not investing in these cryptocurrencies or choosing which ones to invest in. You just wanna make sure that whatever is being sent to you isn’t like a scam or something that like the SEC or some other regulatory agency would consider. Um not OK, or maybe classify as a unregistered security. And then you want to make sure that there’s enough liquidity on the order books to accept this and not get caught, hold in the bag you don’t want because we’ve heard these horror stories of very small cap crypto gets donated to charity. It’s $100 million type donation and then they try to move it to an exchange and sell it and they lose 80% of the value because again, the volatility. So that is solved for by using an exchange on the back end instead of just a wallet. So these exchange accounts that we use through Gemini, it’s just like Coinbase, it’s like fidelity. It’s like e trade. It’s a uh exchange with a ton of order book liquidity. Um millions of users people trading into and out of assets and the uh assets that get listed on that exchange. These cryptocurrencies are ones that, that exchange and their legal team in uh relationship to all of these regulators that they interface with have decided are OK to list and have enough interest in market activity um where they can easily liquidate, um buy and sell orders. So when you’re taking crypto through the giving block, it’s only the assets that GM and I the most regulated Cryptocurrency exchange in the US has listed. And then if a donor came to you trying to send you something else, we have something called private donor services where we have a, a lawyer on our team and we can talk to the exchange and other partners to decide like is this a legitimate asset to accept from that donor? But those cases are very rare. So you should almost never. And for pretty much every nonprofit work with the answer is never um be in a situation where you’re deciding, should I accept a particular crypto or not? That should be handled by this exchange with a giant legal team and strong relationships with all the regulators. It’s time for Tony’s Steak Two. Thank you, Kate. We will have a new president. My thinking is around our national nonprofit community. Um And I feel that there’s potential for some of our work to be uh defunded or threatened or, or just minimized. And if we see any of that, we all, all of us have to speak out against it. We can’t only support our, our lane, our mission. We all need to stand together as a nonprofit community. So, like I’m thinking, there’s the potential for nonprofits that do work for uh immigrants rights. LGBT Q plus rights people who fight climate change, those who product uh protect uh reproductive rights and women’s health. Those of us who are advancing public education, fight for uh uh fighting for economic justice and equality and equity, protecting vulnerable populations. Those who work for safer gun laws, advancing social justice and the rule of law. Those of us who champion first amendment rights of speech, assembly and religion, the folks who promote a free press, those who assure ethics in government. Those are the ones I have so far that you may very well think of others. It might be your work or the work of other nonprofits. But the point is that we need to stand up for the work of each of our nation’s nonprofits, not just as I said, not just our own lane. Um, and I’m very willing to say, you know, if these things don’t happen, you know, if, if agencies, uh, aren’t threatened, if, if there, if there isn’t that kind of trouble then, uh, you can call me, uh, an alarmist. I’ll, I’ll accept it six months a year from now. If it’s not happening, Tony, you’re an alarmist. But I do think it’s more likely now than it was before the election. Um, and some of the things I’m thinking of potentially, um, maybe a tax on the, uh charitable deduction, maybe carving out some nonprofits that are no longer considered 501 C three and, and eligible for the federal charitable income tax deduction. That would be enormous that some people, some nonprofits donors can’t get a deduction anymore for giving. Um, it could be rhetoric, you know, it could just be talk whether it’s official or it’s just some random asshole or so it could be some official asshole. Uh, you know, or it could be some random official. You know, if, if we’re talking, if we’re hearing, talking down missions or even specific agencies, we need to all call that out it. We, we, we have to stand together. Um, maybe, maybe the federal government starts unfairly favoring some nonprofits over others in, in some other way, you know, beyond the charitable deduction or rhetoric. We have to all stand up for each other, please. Because if we’re divided, then our community is weakened. We all need to stand for each other. And I do think the potential is there because the country did vote for big change and we’re gonna see it. I also want to salute my fellow veterans, Monday where the show is being published on Monday the 11th Veteran’s Day. I admire your service. You made enormous sacrifices to serve the country in any of our military branches. So I admire that service. I salute you on Veterans Day and those are the issues. Those are the things for Tony’s take two, Kate. A lot of things might change. But what will never change is the love for our veterans. Thank you guys. That is very well said, Kate, you’re right. We can never waiver our support for our veterans and, and our admiration for their service. Well said, well, we’ve got bookoo but loads more time. Here’s the rest of accepting Cryptocurrency gifts with Pat Duffy contrast in exchange which you just explained very well with wallet wallets, which you’ve, you’ve mentioned a couple of times. Uh, what, what, what’s the difference here? Well, well, first, what is a wallet? What is a wallet? And then how does it differ from an exchange? Yeah, this is why nonprofits should be set up with some even if it’s not us. But like a solution that has an exchange account and everything else because donors will often tell nonprofits just pop open a wallet. So for each of these cryptocurrencies, you can participate in them and move value back and forth by having what’s called a wallet. So, like we talked about with Bitcoin, there’s an end point where the Bitcoin we’re sending needs to go and there’s an end point where the Bitcoin was originally sitting. So those are referred to as wallets. So exchanges when you’re holding, um, Bitcoin on exchange, for instance, they have the Bitcoin wallets and they’re holding on to the keys to those wallets. Um You’re kind of giving over the security component to them similar to when you’re buying and selling stocks on a lot of these exchanges. You don’t actually have like a paper stock sitting in a safe somewhere. Um This would be the equivalent of that paper stock example, but digital. So you can actually have Bitcoin sitting in a wallet that you have and it’s your own wallet that you can open up, not a wallet held by the exchange and you can take that Bitcoin keep it in a wallet. Um, that only you have like a private code phrase to get into. So that was the original idea behind the technology. This, when you hear it decentralized and disintermediating, like part of what’s really cool about something like Bitcoin or theorem is you can, if it was just you and I, and we were working on some deal, I was building you a fence and I wanted to send you money. I could send you that full amount of value using something like Bitcoin for my wallet years without ever needing to use an exchange or a lawyer or someone else as a middleman. And the code is written to allow for that. And, and if II, I remember this about wallets too. If, if you lose your, if you lose the key to your wallet, that’s it. You’ve lost, it’s like a 16 digit code or something like that or maybe it’s even longer. I don’t know. Maybe, but if you lose the key, you’ve lost what, everything that’s in your wallet, you can’t prove, you can no longer prove that, that you owned what, what was in, what is in your wallet that you can no longer access. Yeah. And that’s the trade off. There’s a lot of misinformation on this or I wouldn’t even say misinformation. But misunderstandings like, um, the only way that can happen to you is if you lose the information, right. So on, there’s nothing, there’s no security issue with the technology when you hear, like this person lost $100 million of Bitcoin. It’s like, well, it’s like losing your email password but you can’t get another, like, be careful with it is what a lot of people say. Like, if you’re gonna do that, like, then if you have $100 million and you lose the information you wrote down about it, like it’s kind of on you is done. And then the, there’s an inverse to that too, which is sometimes exchanges that you’re trusting with that money. Um, they get hacked and now people think about that as a Cryptocurrency hack. But it’s actually the opposite. What the crypto people will tell you is like, well, if you had your Bitcoin sitting in a wallet and you had the private keys to no one could have ever taken it. So in both scenarios, people think about it as a, uh, Cryptocurrency and security issue, but it’s actually the opposite. There’s a 0% chance you will ever lose your money if you have it in a wallet in your own private keys unless you lose the password. Now, if you’re, and like my parents and other folks, like they will lose that password. I know it just put it on the exchange because the odds of an exchange being hacked for crypto is still less than even traditional banks and find it. Like, it’s, they’re very regulated, they’re very secure. It’s the same as having money in a bank. And a lot of the like cash that you have there is FDIC insured as well, just like you would in a bank. So like there’s a lot of reasons to use an exchange for institutions like a nonprofit. You should definitely be using exchange, not a wallet because if you put in the wrong code and you send it somewhere. It’s not supposed to go, you can’t get it back and if you lose the code that you wrote down to get into that wallet, you can’t get it back. So if you’re very careful and pretty libertarian in nature, it’s an amazing technology for actually having stuff, but being able to move it, um, online, it’s like having gold in the safety, you can actually use to buy goods. Um, but if you’re not that specific person just use an exchange. It’s, it’s like having a bank account. OK. OK. Let’s move forward then to w what we, what we uh like we wanna bring this to our board or our, you know, we’re not, we’re not the CEO we’re gonna bring it to our vice president. Help folks. Um uh We’ve done a lot, we, we’ve, we’ve done a lot of that already. I was gonna say help folks make the argument. But what, what would be steps that we would take? I mean, II I think is there, I think we’ve helped folks understand what it is. Why it’s valuable to accept. Uh Are, are, are you ready to move to? How would we, how would we start to implement a AAA crypto acceptance platform? Yeah, absolutely. So if I were a non bro, let’s say I’m, I’m talking to the board, I’ll just like hit the key points here both in terms of the why and the implementation. I would say there’s trillions of dollars invested in it. There are Bitcoin theory, ETF s. Now on the actual stock market, every hedge fund has it or is moving money into it. Every millennial or gen Z has some invest this way if we want to grow our major gift program, which generally speaking, probably has an average donor age of like mid sixties um and not slowly have that eaten away if we want to win out the Great Wall Transfer. Um We want to get a a younger, more robust uh donor base that actually has major giving potential. Like we wanna grow this nonprofit and kind of not get left behind by a very serious financial trend. Like this is a donation method. We need to accept kind of point blank period like it just needs to be an option for our donors. Um Now, in terms of how we implement it, there’s a couple of really important things we need to do. One. We need to make sure that it’s easily discoverable on our website. Um This mistake has been made with stocks, with donor advice funds, sometimes even with bank transfers where it’s really hard to find alternative giving options. Um which is why platforms like ours, in addition to this donation form that we give to nonprofits, um We aggregate all of our charities on the giving block.com with a search bar where donors go search for charities that take crypto and give and we get tens of millions of dollars donated through that channel because donors look on the nonprofit site, they don’t see it and then they just go to Google, Google take this donation. It’s too, there’s too many tax implications for me to not give it directly. We don’t want to be that charity because like every day so it goes to the giving block looking for some heart related charity, they don’t see it. So they give this giant crypto donation to American Heart Association instead, like our donors need to know we take this. So I would take seriously like our ways to give menu and then like the donate button on our site where it takes you to this giving interface. Like I wanna make sure that I’ve got a very clear other ways to give type options, crypto stop donor avi funds a bank transfer. Like let’s get that infrastructure right? So when donors are on our site looking for a way to give, they’ll find this if they’re looking for it. Um Then two, I would say in terms of how we integrate it on our site, I would remind the board and it’s a copy and paste donation form, just like anything else. There’s nothing crypto technological involved here. All of that is built into the code on the back end, we are just pasting a giving form on our site where donors select which crypto they wanna give, enter their details and then send uh money. What happens for us is that crypto hits an account, it cashes out, it swept to a bank account. We get cash as if they use the credit card or anything else. But the donor gets the crypto giving journey they’re looking for. So to explain that we are accommodating the best in class crypto donor journey. They can send money from any of the major exchanges or wallets, etcetera. It’s fully accommodating. And for us, we’re just getting cash. This price volatility concerns which cryptos we take, how do we hold it? When do we hold it? All of that is off the table. These things have been solved for. Um And then the real conversation from there is like, how do we fundraise it? And that final step is one that a lot of nonprofits missed our 1st 30 clients that we signed for the giving block were charities that already took crypto that we signed over to our product instead. Not even because our product was so much better. It had a lot of features that were good. Um But because we knew how to fundraise it and we helped them do some basic stuff like talk about the fact that they take it on social and add in other ways to give button in their capital campaign emails. We added QR codes to the direct mailers people were sending out and people started ho their phone over a piece of paper and sending $50,000 in Bitcoin because so it’s available for them. Um, those sorts of considerations often get missed and then you could still do all of those other things. Right. And end up being one of these great nonprofits with a donate Bitcoin button that just sits somewhere collecting dust because you never really told your donors about it. Um That’s the final consideration. Do you have any more fundraising tips? Oh, yeah, I mean, sure. All right. Well, uh infinite. Uh That’s a lot. But uh we could, we could do with AAA very small, finite number like two, just another couple more fundraising tips because it’s very analogous to gifts we’ve been taking for, for decades and generations. I mean, you, you mentioned, you know, talking about it on social, uh adding a button making it clear on your ways to give, drop down menu. Yeah. So to reassure folks that this is not so something esoteric and uh, I don’t know, forbidden or, you know, whatever nuanced share, share a couple more simple, you know, fundraising methods. It’s, it’s probably an overstatement anyway. I’ve probably got, I’ve probably got three good ones and then a bunch of share a few more. But yeah, so to your point, I feel like this is, it’s, it is fundraising advice. It’s, it’s like a bit more um high level but like just pretend it stocks is like a really important thing for every fundraiser to think about for at the organization. They just pretend it stocks. What would you do. And unfortunately, for a lot of nonprofits, when you make that list of what you would do for stock, what you realize is everything you’re writing down you’re not doing for stocks. You know, like, well, I’d make it really easy to find on my website when I am having a major gift meeting. I would of course, bring it up as an option with the donors because maybe they don’t think of their stocks as a donation method. They think of it as an investment. And maybe this donor who gives us 10-K a year is like, well, the S and P is up 25%. Like I would, can I fulfill my $100,000.10 year pledge right now because I have a huge tax incentive to do it at this. It’s like I would have it featured there. I would make it really easy. Again, I put a QR code that opens up this giving page slash form so younger people could send this stuff from their phones. I would make sure that if I’m sending a capital campaign email that like this is such an important giving option with a way higher average gift size, like let’s make sure it’s easy to find. So think about it like a stocks is what I would say first and foremost. And then the second piece I would say is blended with stocks and with donor advised funds, right? And with these other tax efficient giving options, if you take real estate, whatever that is, blend it all together. Because what that solves for is one of the biggest sticking points for nonprofits donor segmentation and strategy. They’re like, who is a crypto donor? How do I know when to ask for crypto versus something else? How do I find a crypto donor in my database? Like, how do I know for sure that I should be asked for crypto and not these other things. It’s really hard to figure that out and it takes time and depending on the quality of your data and Wealth engine tools, like not every charity has availability um or access to those things. If you just take crypto and you mix it in with stock and that whatever other things you take. Now, suddenly every email you send makes sense. It could be going to every donor you have at every agent just goes, hey, we take tax efficient options like stock d crypto, et cetera, right? It’s, it’s all directly analogous to forms of giving that you just named. I mean, how do you know if somebody has a donor advice fund? You don’t? So you could just mention in your, in your, in your over your lunch that, you know, you know, donor advice funds are, are, are a great way to give. Stocks are a great way to give. We accept Cryptocurrency, you know, and there’s something resonates with somebody then they’ll say, oh, crypto, crypto, oh, I have a donor advice fund. So, you know, you don’t need to know, you know, just like you don’t need to know someone’s wealth necessarily to ask for a gift. You can look at their giving history and you can just promote, promote it in the same breath that you’re promoting stocks and stocks and donor advised funds. And we accept, we accept crypto as well. 100%. No, you nailed it and it, it’s helpful to know. It’s nice to know. And even then it’s a lot less complicated. People think leave cryptos up a lot in a particular year. And you have these donors who gave crypto the last year, like my version of stewardship is like, we just email donors and we’re like, hey, cryptos up a lot like you feeling generous and if crypto is down a lot, sometimes we’re like, hey, we know crypto is down a lot. Like we’re not gonna ask you for money right now because it’s the way you like to give. But maybe you could introduce us to some friends or run a fundraising for us, maybe some like, like maybe there’s other kind of crypto things we could be doing. Like it’s helpful as an indicator, but it’s to your point, it’s not necessary you can just open up the options. And I guess the last thing I’ll say is that if you’re trying to get them to come out of the woodwork. A match is so powerful for all these giving options. I, until we started this company, like it’s, it was seven years ago and still throughout this period, I’ve never found a nonprofit who independent of us did a crypto specific match, a stock specific match. A da A specific match. And das was always the one that blew my mind the most. I’m like, there’s $260 billion sitting in accounts earmarked for charity. It’s the only money these donors have that they can’t spend anywhere else. It’s already sitting in, it can only ever go to a charity and what they’ll probably do, especially if they’re in their thirties or forties, they’ll let it sit there for decades and they’ll add it to an estate plan eventually. Like there’s no urgency they got the taxes out of when they parked it there. So how do you get the money out? Like if a donor gave me 25 grand tomorrow, I go. Can I use this as a match? They always say yes, you’re like, yeah, but why not help you fund raise? And I would just put an email out and be like if you have a DA account will match the next 25 grand in given. And I wanna know who in my donor base, who has the debt, how much will they send? And once I get 1000 bucks for someone who has one of those like now when I’m steering that donor, like how much money do they have in that account? Can we block it in as a commitment to us? Like, you wouldn’t even have that conversation without prompting it? So, in short matching the specific giving options occasionally, especially with the targeted email to particular high value donors, let’s say really nice way to get people coming out of the woodwork in addition to just sprinkling it in as a passive option. Let’s talk a little about something you you mentioned in passing like to flush it out a bit. Uh mining energy consumption. Uh The popular press uh explains that uh these, these mining operations can be very energy intensive. Let’s uh can you flush that out? I don’t know if you can reassure folks, but at least explain what it is. We’re explain what it is that I’m talking about. I’m explain, explain, explain to the listeners what I’m talking about because I don’t, I don’t fully understand it, but I know there’s a lot of energy behind all these calculations and proofs and they have uh they have an energy, they have an impact on our energy infrastructure. No, 100%. So there’s like there’s warehouses with these computers, like thousands of them sometimes and they’re like running these computers that are trying to solve um these proofs to authorize transactions um for a network like Bitcoin in particular, like it requires the most they use crypt or cryptographic proof of work is what it’s called. And there’s a lot of value in it that other types of um networks don’t have in terms of like the utmost security and traceability and everything. Like it’s, it does a lot of really powerful things, but it uses more energy than it should. However, it’s exponentially less than is reported. Um because a weird thing happened, like the, the media more or less than it came from a Columbia research thing that was like quickly debunked, but no one seemed to care. Um They confuse what’s called a block with a transaction. So we talked about it earlier. You could have one transaction like one Bitcoin transaction that goes out to the network. And if it was the only one, that’s all that would be in one of those blocks on a Blockchain. So once uh once the system gets a block, then the computers all fight to try to figure it out as fast as possible and it cracks the code. But when there’s a lot of transactions happening in each of these blocks, there’s usually between like 1000 and 2500, they took a number like the amount of dollars per Bitcoin transaction. And I think they said it’s like 100 and 5 to 100 and $35 worth of energy per transaction. One, if that were the case, no one would do it. Obviously, just everyone would be losing a ton of money all. Like it just mathematically, people should have seen that number. But like, well, that’s impossible. Obviously, people wouldn’t spend more than what they’re sending hundreds of thousands of times a day. Like, it’s just not a thing. Um But you, when, once you divide it down, it’s like a few sets of transaction for the most energy intensive. So like Bitcoin and a zillion zeros and ultimately a decimal like fractions of a cent for every other Cryptocurrency that uses proof of work with these more efficient systems. So even at that scale, it’s a ton of energy for something like Bitcoin and people are always trying to find ways to make it more efficient. Um but it’s exponentially less than what’s reported. And I think it’s inarguable that Bitcoin is still more efficient than the traditional financial system. Like no one runs numbers saying like, well, if we want to use banks, like we said, we have infinite skyscrapers and commuters and like lawyer, like there’s just an infinite amount of waste and energy and like little sheets of plastic getting dumped into landfills to like make traditional finance work. Like the Bitcoin ecosystem is not nearly as significant as I feel like people reported on. Um However, it’s definitely the least energy efficient of the cryptocurrencies and it’s like, it’s a good thing that people are like, let’s make it a lot more efficient because it’s using more energy than it should over time. I’m just kind of like you said about the postal service. I’m betting on Cryptocurrency even something like Bitcoin over the next five years in particular to become exponentially more efficient. In the same way, I would bet on emails over time being a less energy intensive way to move mail than like the post office. Like, just having code versus infinite, like actual physical infrastructure and commuting. Like, it just, it’s a better bet from an ecological standpoint even though it started off, I think, pretty inefficient. OK. And, and that’s where a lot of the press came from. All right. Plus this, plus this misunderstanding that you said was debunked. But you know, the that rarely sees, sees a lot. It gets anywhere near the number of eyes as the original reporting does. OK? All right. Um What, what proportion of all the crypto transactions is Bitcoin? Is it, is it an enormous proportion? Is it, is it, is it as outsized as it seems uh to, to AAA non crypto investor or, or do you know what? It’s a great question. I don’t know if there are more versus all of the other cryptocurrencies out of all the transactions as the denominator. How many are, are Bitcoin in the numerator? I’d have to look usually not a lot. So what’s interesting is a lot of people because um Bitcoin requires more energy like this is what happens, right? It requires more energy to send a Bitcoin transaction. It costs more to the users. Um They tend to move their funds using different networks. Um So even people have like Ethereum, which is more efficient than um Bitcoin. It gets kind of technologically. It’s, it’s, it’s not extraordinarily complicated. But what happens is like, you can take a Cryptocurrency like Ethereum and you can what’s called rapid. So you can have a asset that’s sitting on a different chain. So like, let’s call it solana totally different Cryptocurrency. Um You can have a asset sitting on the Salana chain that’s just pegged to the value of Ethereum. But you can move it across their network at which point you can then move it back on to like a the, you cash out the salon and you exchange it for a theorem. So people do that kind of stuff all the time, um where they’ll move Ethereum or they’ll move Bitcoin or other assets, but they’re moving it across other chains that use less energy because it saves everybody money. So I’d have to see the actual number. I think it’s a Bitcoin is, I think more than half the total crypto market cap. But I’d be shocked if it was more than like 10% of the overall network activity. Like I think a lot of people tend to move value on some of these newer cryptos that, that got a bit more efficient. But in terms of the total value, it, it’s, you’re saying a little more than half yeah, a lot of people park it, they treat it like a lot of people call it digital gold. Um It’s the least um the least volatile versus some of these other cryptos that just have smaller user bases and more kind of uh speculation on it. Um So a lot of people will kind of invest in other cryptocurrencies and they rotate back into Bitcoin in the same way. Some people rotate back into like cash or gold uh store value type thing. It’s valuable. You make all these analogies to the, the traditional, you know, the longest established um stores of value methods of exchange. No, because I think it’s comforting for folks. You know, it’s, it’s just like, you know, you promote stock gifts. You, you accepted, you decided to accept credit cards 40 years ago, et cetera, right? You know, there’s, there’s value in these analogies that are based on known understood uh exchanges of value. Oh, definitely. I mean, I wouldn’t understand. I have a political science degree. And the other guy that I found the company with was the crypto guy. Like he got me into it and like it took a lot of these types of analogies for me because I was like, it’s sounds like vaporware, it’s backed by nothing. It’s just like code based money. Like I don’t. And then he was like, no, it’s the double spend problem. It’s like, wait, this is the only kind of money you can’t counterfeit. He was like, yeah, I’m like, that’s very valuable. That’s interesting. And you can’t make more of it. Yeah. So it’s like, cool. But you could actually move it like you can move it like, instantly anywhere, like, yeah, and then you can write code that moves it around and it’s all, like I say, yeah, I’m like, this is ok, I get it. This is kind of cool. This does a lot of things that nothing else does. He’s like, yeah, that’s why people are buying it. They’re not just dumb. I was like, OK, it makes more sense. I, I, one quick thing on this, I listened to a podcast before starting the company maybe six months before where I’ve gotten into trading crypto at all. And I went on a trip with friends and which, you know, we drank beers and we were at the beach and I talked about 10 people out of ever buying crypto because I listened to this podcast and I was like, backed by nothing. It’s paper and I told everybody about it. Just traditional financial guys I was listening to and then eventually got into it and invested and like, never circled back with some of those people. And then they saw that we had started the company and the stuff we were doing and I tried to like, what the hell dude, why didn’t you tell me to buy this? It’s like quadrupled. And I was like, I was being gen, I wasn’t trying to trick you. I just didn’t get it yet. Not only why didn’t you tell us to buy it? Why did you tell us not to buy it? I was adamant before six months before you co-founded a company based on the, the exact, the exact store of value that you told people to avoid. All right, I needed to do some research. You’re a hypocrite. You’re a hypocrite. All right. All right. Leave us, leave us with some closing thoughts. Pat or, or maybe there’s something we haven’t talked about that. You want folks to know, I’ll throw that out first before closing thoughts. Anything, anything I didn’t ask you, maybe that you want, you want to talk about? Uh I touched on it lightly but it’s a timing thing. So, uh Bitcoin almost hit a new all time high yesterday, like the market’s done really well this year. So in a year where crypto is down, you have significantly less people who have appreciated assets uh to donate for that tax incentive. Like this year is uniquely good for that. Like we’ve had a huge recovery and are looking at new all time highs. Um And then the other piece is the end of year giving for crypto similar to stocks, um is even more extraordinary than um the end of your search we see for things like cash because they’re trying to get up against that end of your tax deadline. So a lot of these transfers happen in November and December. So the main thing is like, if you’re a nonprofit who isn’t taking crypto now is definitely the time to consider it seriously. Um You don’t wanna be like, we’ll look at this in February of next year just from a timing standpoint. Like it’s a really, if you’re at all thinking about it now is the time to like have a conversation and do a bit of research. Uh Just cause like for us, generally speaking, in that end of year window, it’s like 60% of our donation volume um in just a couple of months versus the rest of the year. So it’s a significant um fundraising opportunity. Ok. That’s a good place to wrap, I think because we’ve talked a lot about why do it, what, what the value is? Thank you. All right. This is the, this is the time, it’s the fourth quarter and values are very high. Pat Duffy co-founder of the Giving block at the giving block.com. You’ll find Pat on linkedin. Pat. Thanks for sharing your, your wisdom, your uh your expertise on this and uh your hopefulness. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This is great pleasure next week, scaling altruism with Donald Summers. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. 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Nonprofit Radio for November 15, 2021: Bitcoin & The Future Of Fundraising

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Transcript for 567_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20211115.mp3

[00:00:02.84] spk_1:
Hello

[00:00:10.84] spk_2:
and welcome to

[00:03:09.04] spk_1:
tony-martignetti non profit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer the embarrassment of hydrogen itis security Eva if you rubbed me the wrong way with the idea that you missed this week’s show, Bitcoin and the future of fundraising. That’s the new book by ANn Connolly and Jason shim They share the potential in Cryptocurrency donations and explain simply how to get started private keys, public keys, wallets and exchanges. It’s time to learn what’s inevitably in your nonprofit’s future. I’m tony state too, Veterans Day, We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o here is Bitcoin and the future of fundraising. It’s my pleasure to welcome co authors to nonprofit radio and Connolly is faculty at singularity University. She’s worked at Doctors without Borders and been a member of their board. As director of fundraising at Dignitas International. She set up one of the world’s first Bitcoin donation programs and is certified in strategic disruption from Harvard business school, Which sounds like a degree in anarchy. We’ll talk a little about what that what that’s about. She was named one of Canadian broadcasting corporations. 12 young leaders in changing. Canada and one of the 50 most inspirational women in technology in Canada. She’s at an underscore Connolly and welcoming back Jason shim he’s director of digital strategy and transformation at pathways to education. Canada his experience spans the nonprofit and academic sectors helping organizations stay ahead of the technology curve In 2013, he led pathways to become the first charity to issue tax receipts for Bitcoin donations. He’s an editor at ledger, a peer reviewed scholarly journal at the University of Pittsburgh Pit, publishing original research on Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology. Jason is on the board of intend where amY sample ward, our listeners know her is Ceo and Jason is at Jason shim together they wrote the book Bitcoin and the future of fundraising. A beginner’s guide to crypto, crypto currency donations and welcome to non private radio Jason. Welcome back.

[00:03:12.14] spk_0:
Thank you so much.

[00:03:13.50] spk_2:
Thanks for having us.

[00:03:52.24] spk_1:
It’s a pleasure pleasure to have both of you. Uh and let’s start with you, the the Cryptocurrency is like a new technology like at one time the telephone and talking movies, right? Talkies and the T. V. And internet and cell phones. Uh these technologies all had their their naysayers and those who thought it was just a fad, you know, talking movies, those will never last. So what do we what do we say to folks who are naysayers. Uh thinking that Cryptocurrency maybe it’s just a fad or it’s too dangerous. How do we allay those concerns about this new technology,

[00:04:43.64] spk_0:
It’s very reasonable for people to be nervous about new technology. I mean I can remember my parents talking about the Internet back in, you know the early to late 90s and saying, you know anyone will be able to look up the recipe for a bomb like we need to stop this, this is dangerous. And you know, that’s true in today’s world, anyone probably could look up the recipe for a bomb, but no one would ever consider saying we should stop the Internet. It’s a bad thing for society. Um And I think that’s where we’re at with cryptocurrencies as people are still in that phase where they’re learning about maybe some of the scarier elements. Uh and they haven’t quite gotten to realizing just how powerful and incredible this technology is, both for themselves, but also for society and people around the world who might not have access to the same financial services that some of us do.

[00:04:53.64] spk_1:
Yeah, that’s a very interesting point. Uh let’s say a little more about how this can be liberalizing for a lot of folks, a lot of parts of the world where banking infrastructure is not something they take for common or, or financial infrastructure broader than just banking is not, is not something that they take for granted the way those of us in the, in the west do.

[00:05:43.04] spk_0:
Yeah, I think there’s two sides that really is for many of us in North America, we have easy access to banking services and um but even in the states, more than 25% of people are unbanked, they don’t have access to that. And when you look around the world, those rates are even worse and so many people just operate in a cash economy, it means they’re locked out of any sort of loan systems or being able to better themselves through more formal financial services and then there’s a whole set of countries where people can’t even trust their national currencies. So if you look at places like Argentina, Iraq Venezuela, sorry Iran where inflation is astronomical Even right now in Canada, inflation is more than 4.5%. But if you look at Venezuela in 2018, their inflation rate was hundreds of millions of

[00:06:08.39] spk_1:
was not more hundreds of millions or billions of percent. Yeah,

[00:06:53.04] spk_0:
it was wild. And so you know if you can imagine your life savings disappearing overnight simply because the government is printing too much money or isn’t a good custodian of the national financial system. That’s the reality for a lot of people. And so I think when I think about Bitcoin more than anything, it’s not. Its goal is not to replace national currencies. Its goal is to provide people with choice so that you know, if they’re really happy with the currency their government is providing, they can certainly use that. But if they don’t have access to it, they don’t have access to banks or they don’t trust their government to do a good job of managing their money. They have another option. And that’s what for me is so exciting is it’s this global permission list system where anybody can take part um and use it to fundamentally change their lives.

[00:07:10.44] spk_1:
So Jason is it is it as simple as just needing an internet connection for anyone in the world to to participate in in cryptocurrencies?

[00:07:12.44] spk_2:
Yeah, I mean that’s pretty much the foundational building block that you know, if you have access to an internet connection and you can download, you know, the uh you know, there’s a few different approaches of accepting Cryptocurrency. But yeah, it starts with an internet connection in terms of getting getting access to that that wider network for sure.

[00:08:05.44] spk_1:
Okay. Um uh the uh I did a quick search of just comparing the us and Canada and adoption rates are much higher in uh in Canada than than in the us. I found like 13% of Americans Have bought or traded Cryptocurrency but it’s it’s like 30% of Canadians. So much much wider adoption for our well for your country, for our neighbors here, for me, for our neighbors in the north, for for your country, for the two of you, any any explanation as to why it might be 30% in Canada vs just 13 in the us.

[00:08:09.94] spk_0:
I think what might be Oh sorry, go ahead.

[00:08:12.24] spk_2:
Go ahead. And

[00:08:12.63] spk_1:
I

[00:08:48.84] spk_0:
think what’s even more exciting really than comparing the United States and Canada is looking where it’s growing globally. You know, some of the greatest adoption rates are in places like Nigeria or South east Asia. Um and that’s really demonstrative of, you know, when you have locations that maybe aren’t providing the financial services that we have in north America, the rates are exploding um from a Canadian perspective, I know people are really keen to explore new technologies and we also have a massive immigrant population that wants to send money back home. Um so trying to find mechanisms that enabled them to do that without paying fees of 8-12% through Western Union. The coin is a really great option for a lot of those people.

[00:09:28.14] spk_1:
Mm hmm. Alright. Uh now and I was, I chose you but you didn’t answer. You didn’t answer the question. So I’m gonna try Jason although it was anarchist. Uh that is that the degree in anarchy. I knew it. Um what is what we call it? A strategic disruption. Alright. The anarchy degree or certification. So uh, Jason any, any, do you have any insight into why so much more widely adopted in Canada than the U. S. Not that what I said was not valuable. I, I appreciate what’s happening in *** et cetera. But I just wanted to bring it, I don’t want to try to bring back to to the north America here.

[00:12:01.94] spk_2:
Yeah. In terms of adoption rates like what I found over the years is that, you know, when, when tech companies in the past have been looking for like pilot areas that I, I know that Canada has stood out as being, you know, the place where, you know, um, initial kind of rollouts or pilots that have happened. So, you know, when I know that when, you know, folks are testing out like new apps, you know, for their organizations, it’s a multinational organization, it’ll tend like what I’ve observed is that it has tended to be uh tested in Canada first and I, I imagine, you know, that may reflect, you know, that it’s a fairly, you know, uh text avenue connected, you know, uh population, but also uh there were some hotspots for Cryptocurrency, you know, in its early days, I mean, ethereum was born out of Toronto battalion, peter in is, you know, Canadian the founder of ethereum and uh there there are several clusters in Canada that, you know, a lot of the initial developments encoding around, you know, Bitcoin and ethereum and subsequent projects uh I think really grew out of that. So I think what we’re seeing in terms of the increased adoption rates is an extension of that where uh you know, not unlike, you know, early silicon Valley where, you know, a lot of, you know, tech development happened there that, you know, for, I think the early 20 tens, um uh Toronto really served as kind of, that, that initial hub in those communities that really got engaged, so no surprise that, you know, subsequent, you know, companies emerged and uh, you know, adoption uh may have been a bit quicker here. Um, but you know, I think that we are seeing that definite dispersion where there are multiple uh you know, crypto hubs that have emerged in the last 10 years for sure. But yeah, I mean Canada is also a wide place of you know being able to send uh send payments um easily and by a practical example and this isn’t particular to Canada, you know specifically, but you know when when working in international context, you know, hearing from, you know developer contacts in the local community that when you’re considering paying developers overseas and all the options that available like Bitcoin is emerging as you know uh when uh when when speaking to folks about you know how they’re managing payments, you know, Bitcoin is often an easier way to pay um developers in other parts of the world than it is going through traditional payment mechanisms um because of that the lesson administration and at times even just the availability where you know trying to pay someone, we’re banking systems are limited, you know, as I mentioned earlier. Uh so I think all these things combined have contributed to higher um you know, Canadian adoption as you pointed out.

[00:12:39.04] spk_1:
Yeah, interesting. All right, thank you. Um so you mentioned ethereum or ether being the the second most popular Cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin, Jason was was Bitcoin originated in in the States or was that was that also in Canada? That’s uh interesting somewhere else. Well no, I’m sorry, it was another country, wasn’t it? Uh, Bitcoin,

[00:12:47.04] spk_2:
I location wise, I think it’d be best described as um kind of Bitcoin emerged online that, you know, to this day, the, the, the founder, founder or founders of Bitcoin. Um, you know, uh, so in terms of like a specific location, videos created, uh, you know, Bitcoin would have been online and then, you know, Ethiopia, many of the major players who are known were based out of Toronto.

[00:13:34.64] spk_1:
Right, okay, okay, that’s right. You say in the book that the founders of Bitcoin are still unknown to us. Right, okay. All right. Um, and with some trepidation go back to you. Uh, so since I made fun of this, tell me about what a certificate and strategic disruption is. What is that? I

[00:14:48.64] spk_0:
think the key element about it is it helps you develop a mindset about how to think about moving forward with your organization or your company, where you try to essentially disrupt yourself. And that’s why companies like Apple were so successful is, you know, they had a product and a product that worked, they could have just, you know, kept producing that same product for many years until some other company came by and beat them out and the company would go under, but instead of waiting for someone else to come out with a better product, like she said, hey, we’re going to actually cannibalize our own offering. We’re going to make a better product. So you know, we’re not going to just make the ipod, We’re now gonna make the iphone, Um, and our customers are gonna buy that instead. And so they were constantly creating new and imaginative things and changing the lives of their customers and so strategic destruction is really that. And you can apply the same type of mentality in the nonprofit sector and say, listen, you know, we’ve got a pretty good fundraising program. We’ve got major gifts that come in. We’ve got direct mail that goes out and um, we can sit here for 20 more years and raise money this way. But the nonprofits that are going to do the best in the long run are the ones that really look at their program and say, hey, let’s, let’s actually shake up the way that we’re doing things. Let’s try some really new and innovative stuff. Some of it will fail. Some of it will succeed spectacularly. And that’s actually gonna help us future proof the organization, um, and help us be, you know, essentially a stronger longer lasting organization moving forward.

[00:17:06.64] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. Communications. It’s in their name. So they don’t only do the public relations and the media work that I’ve talked a lot about communications is so much more vast than that. So think about documents, documents you used to communicate case studies, your annual report, white papers turn to, can create these documents for you. They’ve got a journalism background, a writing background. They know how to understand your, your tone, your core messages and how to bring those out in your written documents. So you got this content that needs to be created and it’s not getting done. You need help think about turn to because your story is their mission there at turn hyphen two dot C. O. Now back to Bitcoin and the future of fundraising. Let’s uh, let’s, let’s bring it back to Cryptocurrency and north America. Give us give folks some motivation uh, in terms of raw numbers and potential growth. Uh, so we can help allay fears because you know, aside from it being a new technology, you know, lots of folks get the, uh, pay me $2500 in the US in Bitcoin or else I’ll release these bad things about you on the internet, you know, and I’ll share your contacts with their, you know, etcetera. So there’s some that contributes to some of the fears, these, uh, these um, uh, you know, email scams. So help help allay some fear with some hard numbers about where crypto is and where Bitcoin is maybe specifically and about the future.

[00:19:00.64] spk_0:
Yeah, I think the best numbers I can help relay are really numbers around donations that have already happened. And so you know, last year, the talent veteran who is the founder of ethereum, He gave a billion dollars to Covid relief, a billion with a b. So tell me about any other billion dollar donations that you heard about last year, you know, in any country around the world. And so, and that’s just, that’s, you know, it’s not the only one we had. The Pineapple Fund gave away $55 million borders Australia just got a $35 million dollar gift last week. Um, so the numbers that I really want to convey our, that, you know, there’s a community of crypto donors that are waiting to make these gifts that have just enormous amounts of money and a real passion for changing the world. That’s why they got into crypto because they want to make a difference. And so now they’ve got all this money and they’re trying to find organizations that they can actually give this money to. And right now that’s, that’s a challenge. Like right now there’s some incredible organizations accepting. But in order to find charities that are accepting crypto, most donors will google, they say which charities accept Cryptocurrency and then they pick one off the list. And so there’s this amazing opportunity for charities that are out there are nonprofits to actually uh, connect with this donor group that’s really being ignored by most of the community and really make deep relationships with them because they’re very different from traditional donor groups, how they like to give, what interests them, that type of thing. But the potential for their giving is just astronomical and the potential to create change together. Um, is what really gets me excited

[00:19:02.91] spk_1:
about cryptocurrencies

[00:19:04.01] spk_0:
in the space.

[00:19:30.44] spk_1:
Yeah. At the end of every chapter, you have a little call out box about a donation, a big number donation that was made in Cryptocurrency. Um, but yet the penetration rate, I think in the States, there’s only three or 4% of charities only are accepting, uh, Cryptocurrency donations. Uh, and some of them big ones that you name our United Way Red Cross. Do you want to, do you want to shout out a couple in, uh, in Canada that are accepting.

[00:20:58.14] spk_0:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean pathways to education of course, which is Jason’s organization was one of the first war child has been accepting for a long time. We have organizations like the Mississauga Food Bank, which is a, you know, a major site pita United Way up north as well as accepting. So it’s not the case that there aren’t, you know, well recognized organizations with good brands and, and that are well trusted. There are many names. Um, I think what sort of holding some organizations back is just, is education, You know, we’re at the stage where Bitcoin can be a little bit scary. Um, people don’t necessarily feel comfortable, They’re not sure whether it’s gonna be worth it. Um, and, and that’s really just a small hump to get over, you know, you can watch a lot of great videos online to learn about it. You can, you know, get the book that Jace and I put together, which is specifically written for fundraisers who don’t know anything about crypto and want to get started. Um, but more than anything, the best way to kind of get excited and start learning about cryptocurrencies and is just to buy some And you don’t have to go out and buy, you know, a $10,000 worth or anything just by a dollar’s worth of Bitcoin. Um, think of it as, you know, investing in evening of your time and learning something new and fun. Um, and that will really help you understand, you know, how it works, what it’s like, what you could do with it. Um, and uh, it’s a great way to get your foot in the door.

[00:21:29.44] spk_1:
Yeah, and Jason you in the book, you to recommend that as also establishing credibility with the crypto donor community is buying some, buying some on your own even before your organization has a, has a mechanism has set it up so that you’re not, you’re not just testing your, your own organizations, uh, infrastructure for accepting these gifts, we’ll get to that, but just buying and buying some on your own sounds like gives credibility to you, gives you credibility among the donor community

[00:23:52.64] spk_2:
for sure, and I think that many who are involved in the Cryptocurrency community, You know, I think it goes to really, how do you build that deeper relationship and have a conversation with folks that it’s it’s not just, you know, solely talking about, you know, the, you know, yes, there’s a donation part, but it’s also, you know, I think, you know, being able to speak knowledgeably about it, um, and, you know, as as people are involved in it and interested, you know, it, um, showing up in the communities as well. And I mean, that that that’s another kind of tactic that, you know, we do mentioned, you know, in the book and, you know, have seen used to to get the fact that, you know, if if you’re going to engage, you know, communities of donors that are very interested in, you know, something that they have self identified that, you know, before folks get into it. You know, folks typically, you know, do a lot of research and um, and you know, form, you know, uh, in person communities are online communities around it and just showing up in those spaces and being like, yeah, you know, I’m often, what I found over the years is that, you know, when participating in, you know, those Cryptocurrency spaces and everyone’s doing introductions, it was a few years before I was, you know, for a long time, you know, was the only charity in the space of reasons like, hi, you know, I work for a charity. So what brings you here and immediately there’s a way to connect over that and focus get really interesting. It was a few years before a second charity arrived. And you know, that was an indication to me that, you know that this was growing in awareness and such. But you know, I think that having that background of even having purchased a small amount, you know, gives that it gives that experience and credibility around, you know, it’s not just you know, saying, hey, you know, uh can you make a donation? Okay thanks, bye. It’s you know, how do you cultivate that longer term relationship where we’re part of something bigger here? Like there there’s um Cryptocurrency, you know, emerging as uh as a new asset class as a way to facilitate transactions that, you know, uh bigger, bigger possibilities. And in terms of, you know what we’re seeing with um uh with the ways that people are transacting, interacting, you know, uh, N. F. T. S around the corner. We haven’t touched on that yet, but it’s uh it gives more surface area for to connect with people on and you know, I think that, you know that one building a relationship, you know, having having more of those commonalities is also important.

[00:24:41.14] spk_1:
So, and mentioned the the fact that a lot of lot of crypto donors now are just Googling, you know, where can I make a crypto donation, but we wouldn’t expect that to continue as the penetration rate becomes higher among charities. Mean, so it is going to be building relationships and, and eventually it’ll become just another way of making a gift from folks that know, you, you know, like, like writing a check or transferring stock, eventually they’ll be the world will be just, you know, it won’t be, where do I make a donation by, through crypto?

[00:25:03.94] spk_0:
It’s no different really than, you know, when charity started adopting online donation platforms and, you know, website donation forms in the early days, there weren’t that many that had them and people wanted to use their credit card to donate online would have to figure out which charities made that possibility. But today, no charity would ever think of not having an online form. And so really it’s just, it’s just a timing thing, we’re just still in the early days and very exciting days. And because of that, there’s an incredible opportunity for the organizations that do get on on board early

[00:26:20.14] spk_2:
and, and, and to that point, like, I I think that, you know, when, when we think about, you know, early days when there were opportunities to donate online that, you know, I think there was a period in which organizations would have, you know, um competed on, you know, features that even just having the ability to accept credit cards online would have set you apart and, you know, as more people, you know, adopt online credit card payments, then you have to, um, you know, compete on a different kind of, uh, on like service provision. So, you know, the, the ease for which someone can make it right. And you know, I think we’re seeing that similar transition where, you know, right now, it’s still that, that phase where it’s like, okay, you know, does someone accept it? Yes or no? And that, you know, as that, um, as that number increases, then it’s going to be a different proposition where it’s like, alright, who, who does it with the most ease or who provides that additional added experience? That is, you know, absolutely fantastic. Um, and you know, as we look into, you know, how, um, how folks are engaging. Like, you know, it is there a future in which, you know, folks, you know, have some sort of representation on, you know, the Blockchain that’s like, you know, this certifies that, you know, you have donated to this organization or you know, you, you can unlock, you know, uh, different online, you know, possibilities, you know, through your donation that’s embedded on the Blockchain or opportunities like that. So, you know, I think that that’s kind of a possible feature that, you know, things can move in that direction as well.

[00:27:27.44] spk_1:
Jason, let’s make sure everybody understands the Blockchain. Uh, it took me a good amount of reading and many guests before you or well give myself a break a few guests before you. Maybe not many, uh, you understand what Blockchain is but it’s really it’s really something very simple once I once I once I understood it was simple but it took a little I’m trainable I guess I’m trainable. That that that’s the good news but uh you know so every every Cryptocurrency is on a Blockchain and you the book is a very good primer about all the, about the whole world of Cryptocurrency not just about Blockchain but I found your book to be a good primer use good analogies, I mean simple analogies that are easy to understand. So well let’s make sure everybody understands what a Blockchain is and and why each Cryptocurrency has its own Blockchain. Can you explain that Jason since you just mentioned Blockchain?

[00:29:06.64] spk_2:
Yeah yeah so so when we’re making a transaction you know there there is a record that has kept it and traditionally you know there may be like you know 11 record that is kept but what’s different about a Blockchain is that as a transaction happens on the network uh everyone who is participating in the network keeps a record of um of all the transactions that are happening. So you know the three of us right now that um you know uh tony Jason and that you know if I were to transfer Uh you know $5 you know worth of Bitcoin over to end That the record that has kept. You know imagine all three of us scribbling that because we we witnessed that happening. And so, you know, it’s between, you know, uh someone could claim it’s like, oh you didn’t actually give and you know $5 you gave her three and be like, no, no, wait a minute. Like you had seen that transaction, you had written it down. And so that is kind of a really basic explanation of, you know, what, how the Blockchain operates except instead of three people, imagine that with 30,000 people or more like, you know, just every single person who’s participating, the network keeps their own, you know, extremely detailed ledger of everything that is happening within the network and that that’s, you know, in part what keeps it secure that instead of trusting, you know, one single party that, you know, could, you know, alter, you know, those those records. It’s like you you have the collective that, you know, everyone sees everything that’s happening simultaneously in electronic format.

[00:29:45.94] spk_1:
And you to explain in the book why that’s enormously secure, secure from, from hacking from financial fraud and theft, uh, secure from mistakes. So, you know, listeners, you gotta get the book to get to go into the depth of the security of of the Blockchain. Um All right, so let’s let’s let’s start getting into the nitty gritty of of how to and can you start us off with, I think it’s important to explain what the keys are, the private key and a public key and then we’re going to get into how folks get their own are going to buy and maybe sell their own Cryptocurrency but you started off with the keys and.

[00:31:25.64] spk_0:
Yeah no problem. So if you think about your wallet um that you have in your purse or your back pocket and you store your cash in their Bitcoin uses something called the wallet as well. Um And it’s where you store your Bitcoin but it’s digital. Now if you think about your house, every house has a public address so 123 any street and you can give that address to anybody in the world they can send you a letter. They can you know show up and look in the windows but they can’t actually open the door to your house and take any of your stuff. And so your Bitcoin wallet also has a public address. And what you can do with that public address is give it to anyone that you know wants to send you money and they can send you money and it gets deposited into your wallet. But your wallet also has something called a private key and it’s kind of like the key to the front door of your house. And so if you give that key to anybody um they can open the front door of your house. They can come in and take all your furniture and all your electronics and whether they’re legally allowed to or not they can do it And the same sort of thing applies to your wallet’s private key if you give them that private key, anybody can then open up your wallet, take your Bitcoin and there’s really no recourse. And so, um, essentially what that means is you want to always keep your private key safe, always keep your private key backed up in a number of secure locations. Um, and what’s really nice about that is if you ever have any issues with your wallet, like let’s say you lose your phone or you know, something happens where the company making the wall, it goes under and you’re suddenly like, where’s my money? As long as you have your private key, you will always have access to your money. And so that’s what’s really amazing about it versus say if your bank went under, you might not have access to your money ever again. If Paypal froze your account, you wouldn’t be able to access your money with Bitcoin. As long as you have your private key, you always have access to your money.

[00:33:39.24] spk_1:
Okay. And again, as I said, the book, such simple analogies that the public key is like your address and the private key is like your house key very very, very comprehensible. It’s time for Tony’s take two veterans Day was last week and I was remiss in my show planning for last week’s show. So I don’t want to let it go. Unmentioned. I’m grateful. I’m thankful. I thank the many millions of people who have served our country in the military and also my gratitude to families who have lost folks because of their military service families that made that sacrifice and the military members themselves, that made those sacrifices. I’m thankful to those people as well. And if there’s someone in your family who died in the military, died supporting and defending our nation, I thank you. I had my own service. I was in the Air Force uh Military services is a calling and I I admire those who continue to answer that call. That call to to service duty to our country. Thank you. Thank you. Mhm. That is tony stick to Veterans Day. We’ve got boo koo but loads more time for Bitcoin and the future of fundraising and you know, you want to continue. It seems to me like the next step is, or the way you lay it out is the next step is getting a wallet.

[00:34:00.54] spk_0:
Yeah, so there’s lots of different ways to get a wallet. Um There’s most, the most easiest ways just get download a mobile wallet on your phone. Um There’s ones on the web as well and there’s a number of different companies out there now. Um

[00:34:01.66] spk_1:
and just explain what the wallet is for.

[00:35:27.24] spk_0:
Oh yeah, the wall is just restoring your Cryptocurrency, that’s it. So it’s kind of like the wallet you’ve got in your purse or in your back pocket. Um it’s just where you keep your crypto and it enables you to send it to other people. So if you have like Venmo or something like that, it feels a bit like Venmo um you just open it up and you can send your Bitcoin to someone else. The difference is there’s just no centralized company behind it, the way there is with Venmo or Paypal, um so you know, there’s a number of different wallet companies out there, some of them will enable you to hold on to your private key. Like Blockchain dot com is one example of a wallet that I use, that enables you to hold on to your private key. Many of you probably heard of coin base coin base is a little bit different because they actually hold on to your private keys. So it’s probably less secure from that perspective because it’s always good to have your key, but if you’re afraid of losing your key, coin base is probably a good option for you. Um So once you pick the wallet, you download it onto your phone um and then you can use an exchange to actually buy Cryptocurrency. So typically you would either connect your bank account or use a credit card um and just trade some of your usd or eur Canadian dollars for us northern folks and they’ll give you something corny return kind of the same way, like if you were going on vacation to Mexico, you would take your usd to an exchange booth at the airport and they would just trade you some usd for mexican pesos here. You’re going to get usd and get some Bitcoin back.

[00:35:34.14] spk_1:
So and if it’s a, if it’s a wallet like coin base, you said they hold your private key, you can also hold your private key. I mean like they can’t have it and you have it.

[00:36:17.53] spk_0:
No, because at the end of the day it’s like your house key. You know, if two people have a copy of the house key and all of a sudden the contents of the house are gone. Who stole them? You don’t know, you fundamentally need to have, you know, one person that, that’s responsible for the contents of the wallet and that’s either gonna be you as an individual or the company will take on that responsibility for you. Which has its pros and cons. Um, and so yeah, for a lot of people that’s, that’s a huge plus having someone else manage that responsibility for um, others in the crypto space. It’s really important for them to manage and own their own money.

[00:36:22.73] spk_1:
Can you name any other of the more popular wallets you mentioned Bitcoin dot com coin base

[00:36:29.96] spk_0:
coin bays bread wallet. Um, there’s electra. Um, there’s Jason. What other ones can you throw in there?

[00:36:37.93] spk_2:
I think that that, that covered off all the big ones, the

[00:36:47.23] spk_0:
metal pay exodus. Yeah, there’s, there’s a number a number of different options out there for folks to choose from these days, which is great.

[00:36:52.57] spk_1:
Okay. And it’s just a matter of googling right. What what are the top 10 wallets or what what’s a wallet for my, is it is it country specific? Do you need a wallet that works in your country, Jason?

[00:37:21.43] spk_2:
No, it’s uh it’s pretty cross border. So you know the song is that you can download it from uh you know, your respective app store and it works, you know, just uh you know, making sure that you’re finding a reputable wallet that you know has solid reviews and but you know, there’s uh no country specificity aside from, you know, uh if it is attached to a certain provider, a company that accepts a certain currency. So I know that there are some wallets um on the international side that are particular for um deposits, that you know, if uh if you want to deposit in a certain currency, then that may be the only kind of particular about it. But otherwise, you know, it’s pretty uh pretty universal.

[00:38:08.22] spk_1:
Okay? You make the security point in the book about not keeping your private key on your phone. But you both have mentioned the phone and using a phone app, but you’re supposed to just write your private key down and keep it somewhere secure. Like uh I get like a safe deposit box or something.

[00:38:44.82] spk_0:
Yeah, safe deposit box is a great spot safe in your house somewhere where you’re keeping really important documents. The way to think about it is you know that key will fundamentally open access to all the money in your wallet. So if you had $500 in cash where would you store that? Would you store it in your desk drawer? Would you store it in your bedside table? Probably not. You probably store it somewhere a little more secure. So based on how much money you have in your wallet, that’s sort of where you want to think about storing your private key if it’s 20 bucks, yeah, maybe put it in your desk if it’s $100,000 you definitely don’t want to leave that lying around.

[00:38:48.12] spk_1:
Um And Jason can you say a little more about exchanges?

[00:40:30.41] spk_2:
Yeah. So in terms of exchanges um you know we talked earlier about, you know while it’s exchanges are where the many of the transactions are around the world, you know take place. And really that it functions you know similar to regular kind of currency exchange or a stock market exchange where you know there’s it establishes a market where there you know those buyers and sellers and so you know um uh as I mentioned earlier, you know if you’re looking to exchange something like us dollars for you know. Bitcoin that um you know you’re you’re usually gonna be working with an exchange in order to uh to do that and on exchanges, you know, depending on on the exchange. You know, they may list a whole bunch of um different currencies, cryptocurrencies, you know, uh So you know, they may list in U. S. Dollars, you know, Canadian dollars, you know, Bitcoin ethereum, you know, if folks are looking at things like, you know, dodge coin um uh and it’s going quite quite extensive. I mean, you know, some of the larger ones are definitely, you know, listing uh many many different cryptocurrencies. Um but you know, if those who are looking for like, you know, the major ones that you don’t have emerged, you know, primarily, you know, Bitcoin in theory. I mean those are pretty standard almost across all exchanges these days. And uh they they the exchanges are really the mechanisms for which um you know, as a release back to two nonprofits that uh you know, after someone does make a donation of of Cryptocurrency um you know, having that exchange, you know, connection or um and some providers, you know, have that baked into their uh their services. That’s how you convert the Cryptocurrency back into, you know, a currency that the uh charity can use, you know, so if you s you know, how do you get that big pointed us dollars, you know, you’ll you’ll be working through an exchange in order to convert that so you can deposit into your bank account as well,

[00:41:05.61] spk_1:
Jason, let’s make something explicit because you know, when we’re recording Bitcoin a single Bitcoin is around $55,000 roughly a single ether is around $3500. Let’s make explicit that you don’t have to spend $55,000 if you want to participate in the in in buying some Bitcoin.

[00:41:08.31] spk_2:
No, absolutely not. So you know the uh it goes up to eight decimal places and I think that that’s something that is uh that’s helpful to to be aware of. So you know it is possible to buy like you know 0.00000 won worth of Bitcoin or ethereum. So um you know they’re uh definitely do not have to participate entire Bitcoin or entire. Either in order to participate in the in the ecosystem.

[00:42:15.20] spk_1:
Okay. And so you have in the title of your book you you you you you say Bitcoin but non profits could be accepting any of the any of the coins that you mentioned. But does it become so when you when you stray from Bitcoin and ether which are the two most popular, are you are you taking a greater risk if you get into like stellar and you mentioned dodge coin and by finance does it become riskier for for you personally if you’re doing your your experimental purchase and your credibility building purchases or or for your non profit if you’re accepting those other less popular like all the old coins.

[00:44:43.99] spk_2:
Mm it’s similar to I would say like you know in kind donations or stock donations that charities would ordinarily receive. And so you know, I think that when considering Cryptocurrency donations, like the vast majority of them are being transacted in Bitcoin followed by either in that order. However, when looking at all the coins, you know, what’s worth kind of thinking about is you know, imagine a prospective donor who you know may have, you know, picked up Dodge coin when it was valued at 0.0001, you know, sense and held onto it. And you know, now I think the last I checked it was like 26/27. And so you know what with regards to risk, I think it’s more helpful to assess like, you know what what’s the conversation that’s being had. You know, is someone approaching your organization with, you know, uh a donation was like, hey I like to contribute, you know, 100 $100,000 worth of dodge coin. You know, generally speaking, I would hope that, you know, a charity that is approached with that kind of um offer. You know, it’s okay, let’s, you know, let’s find an exchange that that will, you know, help us convert, you know that that amount of dodge coin, you know, into uh into U. S. Dollars to allow us to to accept it. And and so um, you know, I think it really depends on the audience. Um and so you know I think that’s what drove some of the early adoption where, you know, as Bitcoin started, you know, rising in price, you know, more offers of donations were emerging and you know, I think that you will see, um, you know, similarly with the old coins that are out there that, you know, definitely for folks who have gotten in early on some of the old coins and you know, um, it, I think it still remains to be seen which ones will, will take off. You know, we’ve already seen, you know, the emergency, you know, Bitcoin and ether. But you know, five years from now. You know, who, who knows, you know what, maybe up there. And so, um, what I have observed is that many of the exchanges are responding accordingly as well. So as as a, uh, all coins or other cryptocurrencies are taking off. You know, they get added to exchanges, which does make it easier and simpler for, um, for organizations to uh, to exchange and transact in that. So, um, you know, there, there have, there have been instances actually of folks donating, uh, you know, all queens, I think dodge coin, you know, definitely has a lot of fun stories about how, uh, how supporters have, uh, have donated their, um, their, their rapidly rising uh, currency.

[00:45:49.99] spk_1:
Yeah. Because you know, like you’re saying dodge coin, someone could have bought it for uh, tens of thousands of a penny. And at one point, I think it went up to like 60 cents or 65 cents in value. So if someone had spent like $100 or even a foul, all the more of 200 or 500 or $1000 buying millions of shares and then the price went up to 60 cents. You know, they’ve got, they’ve got a lot of money in dodge coin all of a sudden and if they then converted it to dollars Canadian or us, uh, they’ve got a lot of money potentially to give. And, and the, the book points out a lot of folks who are very, very generous with their, with their Cryptocurrency windfalls,

[00:46:34.98] spk_0:
Jason correct me if I’m getting the numbers wrong, but if something approximately where if you had, you know, invested $100 in ether at its launch, you’d have over a million dollars today for $2 million dollars today. Like it didn’t take a lot at the beginning. If you were really passionate about this project, you put a little bit of money in um, to suddenly have this astronomical wealth that would be almost impossible to generate in any other way in our society. And so it’s, it’s really what you end up getting is fairly ordinary people, you know, that came from ordinary means that that now have this wealth that, you know, they’re not interested in buying gold plated sneakers, you know, they want to create change and that’s where the nonprofit sector can really help them do that.

[00:47:23.18] spk_1:
And let’s stay with you and move to the organizational level Now. Let’s talk something about getting, getting buy in uh, in the book. You make the point that you’re not even sure the board should be approving this, they shouldn’t be involved. It’s more like, should we start accepting credit cards? You know? Uh, so it’s more um, asking for support rather than permission. But let’s talk about, you know, Ceo by in or maybe vice president of development by in uh, what are some of the reasons you might you as a crypto advocate in your organization? Might might start putting forward for why your organization should get into this. So

[00:49:16.07] spk_0:
the reason that I used when I was convincing my Ceo back in 2014 was I said, look, you know, it’s really what we can do is accept it, we can sell it immediately. There’s no fluctuation, there’s no currency risk, anything like that. And fundamentally that’s no different than accepting a stock. Like we already accept stocks and other securities. So if we do exactly the same treatment as we do with stocks, there’s really no risk to the organization and I think this day and age, there’s no brand risk, there’s, there’s no another stigma that used to exist around Bitcoin is really not there anymore. We’re seeing it adopted by not only charities, but major organizations and companies Microsoft, IBM, all kinds of different companies are heavily involved in cryptocurrencies. So I think that’s, that’s the key one is saying, okay, we already do this with another volatile asset on the stock market. Here’s another opportunity where we can essentially bring in A whole new set of young donors. And I think that’s probably my favorite argument for Cryptocurrency is most of the donors and most of that community are between the ages of 24 and 40. Um, and so if you’re really looking to bring on a whole new set of the younger generation of donors, this is a great way to do it. And you won’t be cannibalizing any of your other activities. You’ll have this whole new set of donors with no risk. Um, and for any organization that fundamentally says, hey, we want to be innovative. We want to be new here is a great way that you can do that. That is not only exciting and innovative, but it’s also a revenue driver. And so it’s pretty hard to say no to something where you say, okay, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna give this a try. It’s going to cost us essentially nothing to set up. We can set it up over the course of the week. There’s no risk and it might make us some money and bring in new donors to me. That’s an absolute hell, yes.

[00:49:56.87] spk_1:
Okay. There was like four or 5 very good reasons why, you know innovate, prepare for the future, expose yourself to do constituents. Uh, it’s becoming mainstream. There’s no stigma. Um, and and help you raise more money just in a different format. Um, let’s just make explicit. And is it is it your your recommendation that non profits would sell their their Cryptocurrency right away as you would with stock or what, what is your recommendation for? What to do with a crypto currency gift once you have received it,

[00:51:17.86] spk_0:
I wouldn’t recommend it. But that’s my risk tolerance. And so what’s really most important is to look at, like, what is the risk tolerance of your organization? You know, And I think, um, every organization should really sit down and say, okay, how much cash do we have on the balance sheet? You know, how much money do we have every year to play with? And what percentage of that Are we willing to put in a high risk investment? So maybe we decide that as an organization, we want 99% of our money that we raised to be there at the end of the year, and that’s totally fine. Um, but take that 1% and hold it in a Cryptocurrency and see what happens. Um, and say, look, this is a microscopic risk that we’re going to take for the potential upside of making a lot of money. Um, or maybe your organization might be a little more risk friendly. You say, look, we’re gonna we’re gonna have safe, secure investments or just keep our money in cash for 75% of what we bring in 10% we’re going to put in, you know, uh index funds with the stock market and the rest, we’re going to put in Cryptocurrency something a little bit higher risk, like I think really at the end of the day it’s not so much, you know, should you sell it or not, it’s how much of your portfolio are you putting in high risk versus low risk assets? And I think the thing to keep in mind this day and age is with inflation, where it is putting your money in cash is not safe, You’re losing money every year by holding that money in cash. So if you’re trying to maintain the amount of money that you have by the end of the year, you need to be doing something with it. So is that something high risk, low risk, what percentage is it? Um That’s up to the organization to decide. But I would really recommend that every organization actually take a critical look at what they’re doing with their money um and reserve at least a tiny portion of that to take a look at holding cryptocurrencies for the longer term.

[00:51:49.66] spk_1:
And the reason you say you’re losing money if you’re holding cash is because of inflation.

[00:51:53.89] spk_0:
Absolutely, yeah,

[00:51:55.76] spk_1:
Jason anything you want to add to the organizational policy.

[00:52:00.85] spk_2:
Yeah, I think from just looking over a trend lines, you know to the point that that and made about risk, it’s you know really aligning overall organizational strategy with what organizations looking to achieve and how you know their asset holdings maybe um may reflect that and that their risk tolerance and I think when looking at trends like it was as early as I believe it was 2014 at the time that Canada was looking at digital currency programs and you know, although that program at the time that it was called the mentorship program, you know didn’t proceed, you know uh

[00:52:32.83] spk_1:
I’m sorry Jason who would you say was looking

[00:53:11.45] spk_2:
at? I’m sorry the Canadian government or the Bank of Canada was looking at a program called the uh the mint chip program and that was really a Canadian digital currency that was being explored. But now there’s been a resurgence I think just in the past week, you know the G seven group of nations you know agreed upon, you know a set of standards to examine, you know digital currency. So I think when looking at, you know overall trends, you know digital currencies and cryptocurrencies are not if but it’s a when and you know for organizations are preparing for the future, strategically it’s it’s really you know do are by by participating in the ecosystems. Now you’re especially future proofing organization for that future which is going to come of, you know as governments are seriously looking at digital currencies that the same principles that govern you know, how do you treat you know, cryptocurrencies that this is all going in the digital direction and you know that much is evident. And so, um, it’s more of a timing consideration now. It’s, you know, would you like to do it now or later? It’s

[00:54:24.84] spk_1:
coming right. It’s it’s not, it’s not if, but when I think that’s a terrific place to wrap up. You know, there’s, there’s a lot more in the book. There are checklists for how you set this up at your organization. But I wanted to focus on the basics a person venturing into this because with the statistics that that I mentioned, so there’s still 87% of Americans are not involved in crypto and still 70% of Canadians are not involved in crypto. So I want to, I want to overcome that and then move to the organization level. And as I said, the book is a very good primer, lots of easy to understand analogies. The book is Bitcoin and the future of fundraising. A beginner’s guide to Cryptocurrency donations. The co authors are an Connolly at an underscore Connolly and Jason shim at Jason Shim and Jason, thank you very, very much.

[00:54:32.94] spk_0:
Thank you so much, appreciate it.

[00:54:34.68] spk_2:
Thanks tony

[00:55:08.54] spk_1:
pleasure thank you for sharing and and doing it in a simple way next week. Mission uncomfortable. That’s a working title with stew Swinford, that’s not a working name. He’ll he’ll stick if you missed any part of this week’s show, I Beseech You find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff

[00:55:10.73] spk_2:
shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman

[00:55:14.50] spk_1:
is our web guy

[00:55:15.65] spk_2:
and this music is by scott. Stein.

[00:55:30.94] spk_1:
Thank you for that. Affirmation. Scotty You with me next week for nonprofit radio Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.