Ars Technica published an article that the Bitcoin Foundation according to one board member, is bankrupt. The organization was created a couple of years ago to bring some sense of official community face for users and investors of Bitcoin. It seems the wheels are coming off as some of the original members have not had a great go of it lately. Of course some have always held that the beauty of Bitcoin was anonymity and open with no central command so to speak. The flip side of the crypto coin is that as more regulations come about and popularity grows, the community may want to speak with a central voice so that they have a specific set of goals when dealing with businesses and governments.
From the article:
One of the newly elected board members of the Bitcoin Foundation—the 2.5-year-old organization that was meant to bring order to the famously open source and freewheeling cryptocurrency—has declared the group “effectively bankrupt.”
While the Bitcoin Foundation obviously does not have control over Bitcoin itself, it’s the closest thing to a public face that the community has. Individual memberships start at $25, while corporate memberships start at $1,000 annually. The non-profit’s own tax filings from 2013 show that it ended that year with over $4.7 million in total assets—nearly five times as much as it had at the same time the previous year. It has yet to release financial details for 2014.
The organization was founded in 2012 by a number of Bitcoin luminaries who have since fallen, and the group itself has been marred by controversy in recent months. Of its original five founders, one is now in prison (Charlie Shrem), another oversaw the collapse of the largest Bitcoin exchange (Mark Karpeles), and yet another has since left the United States for a Caribbean nation known for offshore banking (Roger Ver). Of the original board members, only Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen has remained.
Read the full article on Ars Technica