Wasabi Wallet Donates 1 BTC (nearly $10K) to the HRF’s Bitcoin Development Fund to Protect BTC Users’ Right to Privacy.
By making a 1 BTC (nearly $10K) donation to the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Development Fund, zkSNACKs Ltd., a company fanatically devoted to privacy and creator of Wasabi Wallet, publicly supports work providing privacy to the world’s first truly independent digital currency.
Most people have no idea that the transaction history of each Bitcoin is written in the blockchain. As the Forbes journalist Laura Shin says,
Your financial transactions say a lot about where you’ve been, what you were doing, and what you intended to do — making them a perfect way to surveil you.
Wasabi Wallet believes it’s important that people become aware of the privacy risks when using Bitcoin and that there should be options for maintaining your privacy. HRF is continuously fighting for the freedom and privacy of individuals in difficult political environments.
They clearly recognized that although Bitcoin is a powerful tool, regarding privacy, it still has some shortcomings. If not used properly, personal financial information can unintentionally be leaked. This is something most of its users are unaware of and requires further development.
Imagine getting a $100 bill and in fine print, you can read every transaction that the bill has been through since its minting. This may not be a big deal where governments respect people’s privacy and puts the burden of proof on law enforcement. But considering that more than half of the world lives under some form of tyranny, it’s easy to see why and how privacy should be viewed as a fundamental human right.
Bitcoin has already proven its value as an invaluable medium to immediately transfer funds. Furthermore, because Bitcoin is independent of governments, financial institutions or business hours, users no longer have to rely on third parties or middlemen taking a cut or stringing out the process for transactions to take place. These onerous markups and fees end up pointlessly costing millions of dollars for its users.
Adam Ficsor, Wasabi Wallet’s co-founder, realized the privacy issues in Bitcoin and constructed an easy to use privacy wallet. For the past few years, CoinJoin software has been implemented to make 70,000 BTC (roughly $658 million dollars) private as of May this year.
Together with Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at Human Rights Foundation, we understand the concern for privacy in Bitcoin’s blockchain and how it can be used to surveil and oppress. Gladstein’s work in highlighting and promoting Bitcoin’s potential as a liberator “for the 4 billion people who can’t trust their rulers or who can’t access the banking system” meant that it didn’t take much of a leap to realize HRF’s Bitcoin Development Fund is the best place to make such a large donation and contribute to the development of privacy protections for cryptocurrency.
In today’s world, Bitcoin developers are often free agents, relying almost exclusively on the generosity of exchanges and corporations. Hopefully, HRF’s fund can inspire other organizations in the non-profit and academic space to support Bitcoin research and software development. ~ Alex Gladstein.
Wasabi Wallet has garnered an incredible amount of support from the bitcoin community. They hope that their donation brings further awareness to the need for privacy and is a catalyst for others to contribute to the fund. To follow in Wasabi’s footsteps and donate to the Bitcoin Development Fund, click on either of the links below.
