Philip Hands <p...@hands.com> writes: > Brian Gupta <brian.gu...@brandorr.com> writes: > >> Let's not lose sight of the fact that these donations will be matched so >> even though so small percentage of the donations will be eaten in fees, the >> net contribution to Debian will be on the order of 197% of what one >> pays. > > Given that there are people who'd prefer to avoid Paypal, one possible > alternative is BitCoin -- it would be trivial to create a wallet > specifically for this purpose, so that donations could be matched (once > converted back to CHF/EUR/...). Less trivial is keeping the wallet > secure, but we're mostly quite good at that sort of thing. :-) > > Explaining BitCoin to the Swiss accountants might be tricky, but if we > only account for the donation once it pops out the other end in the form > of a normal currency that should be OK (you wouldn't want to be > promising to match bitcoin in the current market anyway, so the matched > funding would have to be after they were sold). > > There is also the fact that there is much speculation going on with > bitcoin at present[2], which means that donors might pay for their coins at > a peak, only to see the value collapse before we get to cash them in, > but that's really the donor's choice. > > On the other hand, if past performance were any guide (which it isn't) > then we'll be able to sell the bitcoins for rather more than they cost > the donor. > > There is also the fact that the markets take a cut in one way or > another, and are mostly unregulated, so there's always a risk of fraud, > but then again PayPal seem to freeze accounts on pretty dubious grounds, > so I wouldn't necessarily trust them more. > > At least with BitCoin there is the choice of who one deals with, unlike > with PayPal -- we could even sell direct to individuals we trust, assuming > we can match coins to people that wanted to buy them anyway. > > Oh, and the main market for BitCoin is MtGox[3], which is based in Japan, > which is convenient given what prompted this thread.
For the same reasons that all ideas that DebConf should "speculate" on the EUR/CHF or USD/CHF exchange rate by preemptively buying CHF before they are granted by sponsors I also object to speculations on the BitCoin exchange rate. Doing this with BitCoins seems even more risky. IMO the payment options we offer for the matching fund should be decided by the matching fund donor and those that actually have to process the (possibly large number of) payments. If you don't like the options they offer, just don't donate to the matching fund. People are still free to use other methods to donate to DebConf if they wish. Keep in mind that doing correct accounting for this can be a lot of work if everything has to be done manually and in my opinion the volunteer effort for this is better spent on other things. Gaudenz -- Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~ Samuel Beckett ~ _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
