Charitable organizations in the United States and around the world have seen an increasing amount of their donations be cryptocurrency denominated.
Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which unites donors with various charities, has around $4.5 billion USD in digital assets, which is about a third of its 13.5 billion USD investments. Fidelity Charitable, one of the largest US charities in terms of annual donations received, said digital charities was its fastest growing category in 2017. Then there are many other smaller charities that are also accepting cryptocurrencies. Some charities have even encourage individuals to donate their idle computer power to mine cryptocurrencies, such as UNICEF Australia.
However, these charities are at just as much exchange volatility risk as other cryptocurrency investors. Since these charity groups only have to file their financial reports once a year, it is not yet known how much these charity groups suffered loses or unrealized loses during the exchange price declines of 2018.
Competitive advantages of cryptocurrency donations
One advantage mentioned in the article as a reason for the increase in cryptocurrency donations has most likely been the tax breaks that many individuals within the United States can receive for donating directly is cryptocurrency assets rather than cash out, pay capital gains taxes, and then donate in cash. This is what leads many to believe that much of the cryptocurrency donations occurred during the all-time highs cryptocurrency experienced a little less than a year ago. However, unless these charities cashed out immediately, they either suffered realized or unrealized gains. Although, these charities could also be holding onto cryptocurrencies for them to accumulate value in the future or to use for donation purposes directly in third world nations such as Venezuela.
Another strong advantage of donating money in cryptocurrency is that the transactions can be semi-monitored depending on the cryptocurrency used to make the donation and how it was moved. This is a significant improvement from cash or debit/credit donations, which could easily be misappropriated. Additionally, using cryptocurrencies helps charities save time and money over traditional payments that typically have relatively large processing times and fees associated with the transaction. Cryptocurrencies are able to easily move between boarders to reach individuals directly without having to pay hefty transportation or wire transfer fees. Cryptocurrency donations also allow easier funding for groups that are not liked by government agencies and sometimes even have their traditional banking accounts shut down. Overall, each cryptocurrency offers different features to donation senders and receivers, but Dash stands out with it numerous attributes that makes it even easier for charities.
Dash makes charitable donations even easier
Dash is striving to become a cryptocurrency used in everyday transactions no matter how small or larger, which is very conducive to charitable donations where both donations and benefits paid out to those in need can be in small denominations. Dash’s high rates of increasing merchant adoption also allows for Dash to be used by the charity organization or those in need to directly buy goods and services, which further saves the charity organization time and money. However, if the charity does require fiat, they can easily adopt one of the POS systems that have integrated Dash and link it with Uphold to easily transfer funds into a traditional bank account as fiat.
Recently, a Venezuelan NGO started accepting Dash to help feed hungry Venezuelan children. Then there has been initiatives by the Dash community to help out the larger community through direct charity such as Dash Cares, which has helped hurricane victims and built homes in Mexico after an earthquake. These attributes of Dash and its community not only demonstrate Dash’s usability to make donations made in cryptocurrency even easier, but also the willingness of the Dash community to help others in need.
