The Pineapple Fund, a charity launched by an early bitcoin adopter who claims to have gone past the satiety point of money, has recently announced it’s shutting down, after donating 5,104 BTC, worth $55 million, to 60 different charities.
Through a Reddit post, the Pineapple Fund revealed that after making its last donation to the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization created to build an Internet library, “it might be a good time to say farewell.”
The anonymous philanthropist behind the fund used the post to thank the cryptocurrency community, both for helping him choose charities to donate to, and for helping cryptocurrencies like bitcoin become widely known. The post reads:
“I just want to thank everyone for supporting this project. Thank you for all the charity suggestions, many of which were funded. Thank you for all the positive messages and love sent my way. And also, thank you, the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency community, for turning a Sourceforge project into a $0.5T industry.”
Some of the charities the Pineapple Fund donated to include The Water Project, which provides people in sub-Saharan Africa clean water, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights watchdog, and the Free Software Foundation, a non-profit that aims to promote computer user freedom by defending the rights of all software users. All of the fund’s donations can be verified on the blockchain.
The philanthropist behind it has remained anonymous, as he claims the fund’s point isn’t about him or her. In his Reddit post, after claiming to “miss the old times when bitcoin was a small community,” the philanthropist stated:
“Every development since then makes Bitcoin stronger and better at solving the problems of the existing financial and monetary system. It's created a new generation of crypto early adopters, cypherpunks or technologists using cryptography to change the world; and now having the power and responsibility of capital.”
Near the end, the post hints at a potential new round of charitable donations in the future, as it reads that the Pineapple Fund is going to say goodbye for now, but “maybe there’s room for dessert in a few years.” The last paragraph asks other cryptocurrency community members who’ve been “blessed with crypto fortune” to consider supporting what they aspire our world to be.
