Crypto Investors Recognised for Charitable Giving

Wouldn’t you know it?  Of all the people in our global community, 2021 was the year that cryptocurrency users received the accolade of being the most charitable investors on the planet.  As society embraces cryptocurrencies on a wider scale, it’s a fact that people are increasingly using digital assets instead of fiat to make donations to their favourite charities. 

United Way Worldwide, the international network of 1,800+ non-profit fundraising affiliates, reported a jaw-dropping 350% increase over the past year in donations that were made using cryptocurrency.  No less impressive, the largest grantmaker in the U.S., Fidelity Charitable, recently reported receiving over $274 million in cryptocurrency donations in 2021.  That’s almost four times the grantmaker’s prior record of $69 million in 2017.

Crypto-Philanthropy

While crypto-philanthropy may be surging in 2021, it isn’t because the concept is entirely new.  Remember when the cryptocurrency market had its “coming out” party during the 2017-18 bull market and American actor turned celebrity tech investor, Ashton Kutcher, donated crypto on “The Ellen Degeneres Show?”  Or when a philanthropic project called the Pineapple Fund was initiated by an anonymous investor who went on to donate more than 5000 Bitcoins to over 50 different charities through the fund?

Tech and crypto wealth are rapidly becoming a big part of global philanthropy.  Now, faith-based organizations, churches, and non-profits are beginning to recognize that, with the proper online platform in place, they can draw in larger donations than regular fiat would alone as crypto expands its role in the rapidly growing online economy.

While the larger and more widely recognisable charities and international “do gooders” like the American Red Cross and Save the Children are already active in providing platforms that allow donors to contribute crypto instead of fiat, smaller organizations are still struggling with how they can set up a similar system to benefit from the recent wave of crypto-philanthropy and are determining if it even makes sense for them to do so.  It’s a compelling question considering that smaller charities make up the majority of registered non-profit's in America. 

Bitcoin Donations

In 2018, Engiven and The Giving Block were launched.  These two sites have become the most popular crypto-giving platforms for assisting non-profit's and especially churches in setting up online platforms for making cryptocurrency donations.  This year The Giving Block has said that it expects to facilitate cryptocurrency donations for charities totalling between $100 and $150 million.  This past November, the cryptocurrency donation platform Engiven said it accepted what the company is calling “the largest single Bitcoin donation known to date” which turned out to be a Bitcoin donation made to an undisclosed faith-based organisation totalling $10 million.

How liberating it is for the crypto-community to beat the traditional philanthropists to the top of the “most charitable” list?  But perhaps the better part of the story is how the cryptocurrency market has opened a new way for charities to source their efforts to make the world a better place.