More On The Coin Center
Last September, I blogged about a new policy organization called the Coin Center that had been formed and that USV was supporting financially along with a number of other entrepreneurs and investors. At the time, the Coin Center had only one employee and there wasn’t much information about them on their website.
In the roughly three months since that blog post, the Coin Center has already established itself in Washington DC as a credible and trusted source of information and education on bitcoin and blockchain issues and has also built a real organization that can deliver on all of that.
Today, the Coin Center has launched a fully functioning website that explains in detail what they do, has educational resources on it, introduces the staff and board, and of course, allows anyone to support it.
If you are active in the bitcoin and blockchain space or care about how it evolves and how policy makers and elected officials think about it, you should be aware of the Coin Center and consider supporting it.
Comments (Archived):
Great resource with nice design to boot. Will follow it. The Request a Meeting option is powerful, provided the resources are there to support it. An advocacy site like this makes a lot of sense and may become instrumental to the success of crypto currency.
Great logo and love the skyline that encompasses the world.They should put a running tally of the $ support they’ve raised on the homepage. Change.org widget enables this.
Its ironic that leading edge next generation technologies have to resort to lagging edge, last generation methods of lobbying washington DC.
Lobby or get out-lobbied
Or lobby AND get out-lobbied.
That too.
You have people who make laws and decisions that are important to your interests. So you have to educate them. The solution is very clear to me. This is a sales job at the core. How else are you expecting that education to occur exactly?
Follow the same proven methods of startups.
So let’s hear how the “proven methods of startups” can handle this education (specifically for the target audience that we are discussing). Now, not the way you want the world to work sometime in the future.
ironic but critical
Why ironic?
Ironic because critical comes just before terminal as in Citizens United vs. FEC
I guess I read Rich’s comment that it’s ironic to have to deal with the political machinery.Is this what business insider called Silicon Valley’s “arrogance bubble”??http://www.businessinsider….
It’s how many cogs need to gain traction – by inserting themselves into functioning ecosystems, going for some sort of mass legitimizing from government it looks like in this case. And in this specific case, attempts to be perpetuated by those with vested interest who are looking to gain billions in profits.For those who don’t know my stand point on Bitcoin, it’s current incarnation is very bad for people, for society as a whole, and it’s the early adopters who fair to gain massively in an unfair, very unbalanced way – and so I am opposed to it.There are a few other nuanced points as to why it shouldn’t be used as a currency.If it was a true currency then you’d exchange “$1” USD and “1” Bitcoin is what you’d get – while the “$1” USD is then destroyed, not then owned by the person selling the Bitcoin.Bitcoin is 90% printing money, with some printer costs (mining), and 10% (and gaining traction) of legitimizing it through people offering services/perhaps goods – who are gambling and hoping they’ll make more money with increase in value of Bitcoin.I don’t understand why others don’t see this, and why this view point and opinion isn’t gaining traction anywhere. Perhaps I’m not loud enough, I don’t have 100s of millions of $ invested in it to perpetuate the spread of that information though – the potential return on investment for that would be terrible too…
Honey Badger “don’t care” what you think and obviously doesn’t care about current speculators or Barry Silbert’s Bitcoin Trust. Me, I care but not for your dollar peg. Try again with another form of value.
Super great idea. Exactly what you need to be doing.
Especially this:”Learn the basics”and this:Request a BriefingOur experts are ready to help you understand digital currencies and their regulatory implications. If you are a policymaker or regulatory staff looking to understand the technology, please get in touch.
Great to see their progress. And winning advisors 😉 and fellows. Looks like George Clooney is long Bitcoin…
So funny, that’s exactly what I thought when I saw his picture. Ha ha! Where do I sign up?
Looks a bit like Kirk Love.
George is my older less good looking half-brother.
Kirk Clooney? So, Kirk Love is just your adult film screen name?
Your funny!
Impressive progress and agreed on very much liking the design. Just tested the donation mechanism and was mildly disappointed to see that it does not currently accept Bitcoin for donations. Not sure if there are legal/regulatory reasons why (501c3s not allowed to accept or something?) but the payment processing was only via Stripe. Also – I closed out of the donation when the Stripe thing popped up as I was still poking around and yet still received a confirmation email. I’m sure that there is some verification process before a t-shirt is actually sent out, but I wanted to flag this for the org as a potential minor bug in the system. Good work to all who are working on it!
Hi Jake,I want to let you know that we do actually accept bitcoin donations via our Stripe integration. When the Stripe box pops up, there is an option to switch your payment option over to bitcoin. From there you can copy a wallet address or generate a QR code. I hope you will give it another go! If you continue to have issues please let us know.Neeraj AgrawalCoin Center
Glad to hear and so obvious on second glance!! And it just shows that no matter how obvious and clear you make the design, even ostensibly clever users (or I hope I am!) will still get confused and lost…. Just donated! Again – good work and thank you for direct follow-up!
Checked it out and already learned something new about Bitcoin.
yesssss
Can’t find the RSS feed?
Does this work in your RSS reader?http://coincenter.org/feed/
That was it. Thanks.
No problem. Help Desk open 24/7
Can we get some kind of preemptive federal regime in place so we don’t have to worry about 50 state bitlicense versions?
i’ve been asking about that for a long time now. sadly i don’t think its going to happen anytime soon
they say politics is the art of the possible. which is probably why i’m not much of a politician…
I hope US will get it soon. Even India has 4 exchanges where Bitcoin is traded.https://www.unocoin.com/https://btcxindia.com/https://localbitcoins.com/c…https://buysellbitco.in/
This is awesome. The team looks awesome and very happy to see a world-class brand being formed.
As I mentioned, I like this a great deal and it’s a good start.However, these backgrounders need “dumbing down” or at least to be offered up in a way for the multiple audiences that will be reading them (more than one version in other words..):http://coincenter.org/categ…The language and information presented in the backgrounders is appropriate for some, but fails the “puny brain” test for an important proportion of people that will be reading this that they are trying to influence.So they need some extra versions of this down to an 8th grade level, something that someone’s aunt would understand (where the aunt works in some job in the government and you don’t want her to collapse or get frustrated when reading these). The patterns for doing this are very clear no big secret. Mr. Congressman isn’t reading this. His staff? Maybe? depending on the staff member.Here is an example for illustration purposes:The title is “How are Payments with Bitcoin Different than Credit Cards?”. Great title.Unfortunately, the answer, below is “college level” in complexity and doesn’t address the topic in the right way:http://coincenter.org/2015/…Here’s the bottom line. People are busy and have enough things to read and to do. Unless the writing draws them in (and is simple and interesting like a Malcolm Gladwell book let’s say) and entertains and educates them in a simple way, they aren’t going to take the time to read and understand this type of writing.The good news is fixing this is very simple the hard part has already been done.Many ways to fix this but one quick way would be to give the articles to some people and see what questions come up and what they choke on. Anyway to reiterate a good start.
Congratulations. It’s great to add a strong voice in the cryptocurrency movement. It seems they are focused on education and advocacy related topics, and that’s a good focus.
Fred, did your blog post have something to do with Coin Center becoming trusted source of information in less than 3 months? Or they were already on the path to achieve the same.
they were already there. the website launched yesterday so now there is public information about them
Ok.
Fred,I know you’re not getting a huge amount of tips, but you should direct the donations to coin center instead, seems fitting.
possible ideas for a future post. bitcoin exchanges + liquidity. Who buys if there were to be a herd like sell-off. What are the best ways to inject risk-free transactions into the system.
Re: Trust and TransparencyIt would be a good idea for them to list everyone in the past and present (and future?) who are or were (or will be?) donors – and along with what biases, vested interest, those contributors have.I’d also like them to list the following:- How much Bitcoin do they own?- What companies have they invested into that are part of or supporting the ecosystem?- How much Bitcoin do those companies own, including all interested parties?Maybe others here can add to the list.I’ve only taken more interest in Bitcoin lately as my girlfriend, co-founder, is cousins with Vitalik Buterin – and he keeps showing up at family events (who would have known!) – so hoping to dive into conversation with him at some point. With Ethereum it looks like he’s more heavy on the practical, utility side, outside of using blockchain as a currency – though I definitely need to be better armed with understanding the ecosystem so can have a healthy, vibrant conversation..
Hopefully, regulators will have an open door, and open mind.
Sorry, but that’s the official slogan for the Methodist Church. Try again but this time avoid IP infringement. There’s lawyering going on at Coin Center.