Digital currency exchange Crypto.com has donated $1 million to water.org, a clean-water initiative co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White in 2009. The direct donation will go toward supporting Water.org’s mission of ending the global water crisis by providing safe water and sanitation to people in need, the companies announced Monday. The partnership is also aimed at exposing Water.org to Crypto.com’s more than 10 million users, who are also being encouraged to donate to the project. Damon cited the ongoing financial transformation brought on by cryptocurrency as one of the chief motivations for partnering with Crypto.com. “As our financial solutions …

In her monthly Expert Take column, Selva Ozelli, an international tax attorney and CPA, covers the intersection between emerging technologies and sustainability, and provides the latest developments around taxes, AML/CFT regulations and legal issues affecting crypto and blockchain. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is holding its 76th annual meeting between Sept. 14 and 30 to bring countries together at a critical time for marshaling collective action to tackle the global environmental crisis, which has worsened the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Related: How will blockchain technology help fight climate change? Experts answer Ahead of the UNGA meeting, the latest report released …

A Redditor living in Yemen’s capital city of Sana'a claims to be using cryptocurrencies to buy food packages for families unable to access supplies during an ongoing civil war. According to a Thursday Reddit post from user yemenvoice, the Yemen national has raised thousands of dollars in crypto donations to be used towards fighting starvation in the Middle Eastern nation. They claim to have provided 22 families with flour, rice, oil and beans and hope to reach 30 more in the near future. “I have tried very hard to help my people by finding any possible way,” said yemenvoice. “I …

The Giving Block, a major organization focused on the cryptocurrency donations industry, continues to expand its crypto charity reach with a new partnership. The organization will be working with charitable platform provider RenPSG to allow its donors to move cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) into new donor-advised funds to support nonprofits and other charitable organizations, The Giving Block announced Sept. 23. As part of the partnership, RenPSG will start offering a solution that allows charities to accept more than 45 different cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Dogecoin (DOGE). Renaissance Charitable Foundation, a donor-advised fund sponsor, will be the first …

Cryptocurrency investment platform eToro has committed $1 million to the GoodDollar universal basic income protocol, supporting the nonprofit’s effort to bridge the global wealth gap through DeFi and smart contract technology. The additional capital will aid GoodDollar in expanding its protocol and introducing more recipients to cryptocurrency, eToro announced Wednesday. The GoodDollar system works by capturing the interest generated by staking donors’ contributions in leading DeFi protocols such as Aave and Compound. That interest is then distributed to a global community via GoodDollar tokens. GoodDollar token, which is marked under the ticker symbol $G, is described as a reserve-backed cryptocurrency …

American business magazine Fortune has launched a new decentralized donations fund alongside nonfungible token (NFT) artist Pplpleasr, with proceeds earmarked for independent journalists and programs that foster journalistic integrity. The new Fortune Journalism PleasrFund was launched on the Ethereum blockchain through Endaoment, a charity-focused decentralized autonomous organization, the company announced Monday. So far, the fund has been allocated 214.55 Ether (ETH), worth roughly $660,000 at current prices, which represents half of the proceeds of a limited edition Pplpleasr NFT sale commissioned by Fortune that concluded in August. The first four beneficiaries of the fund are Report for America/The GroundTruth Project …

Trippy Bunny NFT, a new nonfungible token project built on Solana, has announced that it is donating all of its mint sale proceeds to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The announcement was made on Suicide Prevention Day, a global awareness event observed on Sept. 10. The annual awareness day was first organized in 2003 by the International Association for Suicide Prevention. Today, it has the support of the World Health Organization and the World Federation for Mental Health. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE TRIPPY BUNNY TRIBE! Today is National Suicide Prevention Day and we've decided, as a team, to donate …

Between Bitcoin (BTC) breaking the $50,000 hurdle and the upswell in the altcoin markets, crypto has never been more appealing to speculators. But, stacking profits through trading is worthless unless that money is spent. Luckily, charitable organizations are waking up to the possibility of crypto donations as the world embraces crypto. For blockchain entrepreneur Wendy O, when a local gym was in jeopardy, she knew to tap into crypto Twitter for help. Using social media, her YouTube channel and Tik-Tok, the influencer sent out the call to save a business dear to her heart. The Self Care Lab is a …

A group of DeFi projects and U.S. crypto exchange Kraken have donated $250,000 each to the Ethereum Foundation to support client teams working on the Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 upgrade. On Aug. 24 the Ethereum Foundation announced that the donations were made by Kraken, Compound Grants, Lido, Synthetix, The Graph and Uniswap Grants. The funds will supplement the funding provided by the foundation earlier this year, to support Ethereum execution layer teams. “Ethereum’s diverse client ecosystem is at the foundation of all that we’re building together. This includes both execution-layer and consensus-layer clients, both of which are essential parts of Ethereum’s …

PAWS Chicago, an animal rescue organization in the midwest city aiming to have shelters stop using euthanasia for its resident cats and dogs, is now accepting crypto donations. In a Tuesday announcement, PAWS Chicago said it would be accepting Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), and other tokens to support its operations ahead of its new hospital for homeless cats and dogs. The organization is hoping to target “a tech-savvy demographic of potential donors,” promoting crypto donations with digital billboards featuring a dog shooting lasers out of its eyes. According to the organization, crypto donations may be used to further …

With thousands of Afghans currently being accepted as refugees in different countries following the Taliban’s takeover of many highly populated areas, many nonprofit organizations are accepting donations in cryptocurrency. Thousands, if not millions, of Afghans are attempting to or are in the process of fleeing their home in fear of what the Taliban may do now they are largely in control of the country. Organizations helping refugees and those on the ground have put the word out: They need funds to support Afghans arriving on foreign soil with often little more than the clothes on their backs. Hearts & Homes …

Charity fundraising risks being left behind in the shift to online activity. But taking inspiration from the COVID-19 pandemic trends, and new payment technology, could open doors. Change comes whether you’re ready or not, but being ready means you can seize the opportunity. The past year has accelerated the pace of digital transformation dramatically — sure, personal contact was already moving online, and contactless payments were slowly replacing cash, but the pandemic did not so much push as shove the world faster and farther than anyone expected. This creates specific challenges for the nonprofit sector — and with those, some …