Grayscale donates $1M to Coin Center, pledges up to $1M more in matched contributions

Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital-asset manager, has pledged $1 million to Coin Center, Washington, D.C.’s most influential cryptocurrency advocacy group — a move it believes will help broaden “foundational knowledge” of the industry.

The million-dollar donation was announced Monday in a press release, which also revealed Grayscale’s plan to match contributions to Coin Center through the end of February. Over that period, Grayscale plans to match donations dollar-for-dollar up to an additional $1 million.

Grayscale got the inspiration for the donate-and-match program from Kraken, the San Francisco-based exchange that managed to raise over $3 million for Coin Center in 2018. That included $2 million in direct support from Kraken.

“Coin Center has played a key role in advocating for issues that affect our ecosystem,” Grayscale told Cointelegraph.

The asset manager added that in the past two months, “Coin Center filed two strong comment letters that played a key part in correcting issues in proposed rulemaking by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, that would have had serious negative consequences for self-hosted wallet users and the overall digital currency industry.”

Coin Center is a leading think tank focused on advancing public policy issues in the realm of digital assets and blockchain. In 2017, the advocacy group took to Congress to demonstrate to lawmakers how Bitcoin works. Last year, the organization reached out to the cryptocurrency community to help ensure that COVID-19-era lockdown measures don’t encroach on civil liberties and privacy.

When asked about the most pressing advocacy work needed for the crypto industry today, Grayscale said:

“It all comes down to education. Regulators need to have foundational knowledge of a topic to be able to make informed decisions about the bills that cross their desk. Education is both the biggest challenge and opportunity for our industry when it comes to policymakers.”

Neeraj Agrawal, Coin Center's director of communications, told Cointelegraph he was "blown away by the community and industry's continued support" of the advocacy group. "We are going to use these funds to continue representing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrency in general in D.C.," he said. 

In the coming year, Coin Center plans to remain focused on advancing financial privacy and "more sensible tax policy," Agrawal said.