As a part of winding down phase I of Project Marilyn, I’m in the process of liquidating some of the assets of indysci to pay off some liabilities (namely, the cost of the xenograft experiment). As you can see, budget transparency is an important part of indysci, and so it’s time to sell off the bitcoin that was raised during the initial fundraising. I attempted to do this several months ago when signing the contract with the xenograft CRO (in anticipation of having to spend it then), but ran into some roadblocks, since it appeared coinbase was transitioning its requirements for merchant accounts. Because the CRO wanted payments in installments, I figured it would be OK to wait a bit.
Now, the time is coming close to pay for the xenograft, and I sent in an inquiry to get my nonprofit’s bank account approved. Instead, coinbase opted to suspend indysci’s account, “to comply with FinCEN”. They offered no further explanation.
So I will be looking for another place to liquidate indysci’s bitcoin. I chose to take donations in bitcoin in part because I believe that noninflationary currencies are better for global sustainability and better for charitable organizations than an asset that loses value over time. At the time, Coinbase was the easiest way to set up a donation link. Coinbase also provided a nice API that let me to show in real-time the value of the donations to that date, as a way to integrate it into my (Tilt open) crowdfunding. Unfortunately, I can no longer recommend this service for nonprofits: If you’re a nonprofit, don’t use Coinbase to collect donations.
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