Burning Man and Bitcoin

While this may not be of interest to a lot of Burners, Burning Man is now accepting Bitcoin for donations. The full press release is below, the page to donate on is here, and the FAQ about them accepting Bitcoin is here.

I'm kind of excited about this as I've been involved in cryptocurrencies for a couple years now and had been invited into a couple meetings at BM HQ to help advise them on whether/how to accept Bitcoin (which was awesome! The first time I felt like I was visiting my own personal little Mecca, but with more dreads and tattoos.)

I think that Bitcoin is a fit with Burning Man because:

1. It enables you to become radically self-reliant when it comes to storing value and transferring value. No need to rely on banks, paypal, etc when you use it.
   
   
2. The centralized ledger (called the blockchain) that underlies Bitcoin is kept honest and consistent through the communal effort of many many individuals, operating in groups called 'pools'
   

Full press release:

San Francisco, Calif., December 22, 2014 -- Burning Man announced today that donors around the world can now contribute to the organization’s programs and capacity building using Bitcoin, and do so without having to pay transaction fees.

“Donations will help provide more grants, training and support to creators of radically interactive art and events on and off the playa, fund civic programs, teach communities the power of collaboration, strengthen our infrastructure and make the Burning Man experience accessible year-round,” said CEO Marian Goodell. “Accepting Bitcoin for donations is an experimental first step. We plan to explore other possibilities in the future, including expanding Bitcoin to the ticket-buying process.”

While ticket sales cover the cost of producing the event in Black Rock City, all donations support Burning Man’s year-round programs, projects and initiatives. Because Burning Man is a recognized non-profit, donations are tax-deductible.

Burning Man has partnered with Coinbase, whose platform is used by more than 1.6 million consumers, 36,000 merchants and 6,000 developers worldwide. Burning Man joins Wikipedia, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the United Way on the forefront of accepting donations via cryptocurrency. 

“Burning Man has been a crucible of innovation for nearly 30 years and it makes sense for us to give people the widest variety of options for supporting Burning Man culture out in the world,” Goodell said. “Coinbase provides a robust, secure platform that includes the added benefit to donors in that they do not assess fees to non-profits.”

In addition to building organizational capacity to respond to the ever-growing number of requests for partnership and collaboration, Burning Man is developing programs designed to increase self-reliance, civic involvement, creative capacity, sharing and inclusion.

Donations help support Burning Man’s Global Art Grants, the Big Art for Small Towns program and art honorariums for Black Rock City. Burning Man also supports civic art programs, Burners Without Borders and grants for community initiatives. Around the world, Burning Man facilitates a regional network of more than 250 volunteer regional contacts on five continents, hosts an annual Global Leadership Conference and a European Leadership Conference scheduled for February 2015.