The Tor Project, a digital anonymity-focused nonprofit, is now accepting cryptocurrency donations directly, with donors able to take advantage of nearly 10 different options to send funds. A donations page on Tor’s website with a list of crypto addresses has been available since March 18.
Tor fundraising director Sarah Stevenson told CoinDesk that the company had already accepted bitcoin for a number of years. What’s new is that previously, these donations were accepted through BitPay, a company that converts crypto payments to fiat before passing it on to its merchant clients.
Now, crypto donations can be sent directly to Tor, which will convert the funds through the Kraken exchange, Stevenson said. She explained that Tor donors “requested direct wallet addresses,” as well as for the project to accept a larger variety of coins.
“We decided to accept cryptocurrency because more and more donors requested that option. The Tor Project and the cryptocurrency communities both value privacy, so it makes sense,” she said.
According to its donations page, Tor will accept bitcoin, bitcoin cash, dash, ether, litecoin, monero, Stellar lumens, zcash and the Augur project’s REP tokens. Stevenson explained Tor has a small team, meaning it had to set specific goals when adding these addresses.
She explained:
“We focused on two things: the return on investment of time and effort and the coins donors had specifically requested. We are currently limiting the number of separate wallets we need to monitor and manage and also only accepting currencies that can be converted to fiat via Kraken.”
Tor looks to encrypt traffic and facilitate digital anonymity, with users able to use a variety of browsers (including Tor’s own browser) or apps to use the network. Its primary benefit is seen as protecting user privacy, which many in the crypto space also advocate for.
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