Neovim have a ~$800k Bitcoin donation sitting untouched since 2023
164 points by jakemanger 2 hours ago | 53 comments
I was looking at neovim's donation footer at the bottom of their site and saw a bitcoin donation address.

Thought I'd check how much in donations they've gotten. And I saw this massive 10 Bitcoin donation from back in 2023 (worth $800,000 now...)

From the activity history, neovim last sent bitcoin out of the address in 2019 so it's been max 7 years since they've definitely had access.

Does anyone from the neovim project know about this? Seems like a pretty significant amount of funding to have sitting there. Hope it can come to good use as I use neovim daily.

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/1Evu6wPrzjsjrNPdCYbHy3HT6ry2EzXFyQ

  • JimBlackwood 2 hours ago |
    I imagine they might wait, to make sure it’s legally obtained Bitcoin.
    • a3w an hour ago |
      In which country would waiting help?
      • cyberpunk an hour ago |
        In Germany at least if you've held the coin(s) for 7 years before selling you don't need to pay tax on the profit.

        Not sure how this applies to donations though, and of course this will almost certainly be changed in the future, .nl is leading the way in taxing _unrealised_ gains; we are sure to follow!

        • T0Bi an hour ago |
          It's one year, unless something changed recently.
        • la_fayette 37 minutes ago |
          1 year
          • ksk23 30 minutes ago |
            One year yes, and politics wants to change it..
    • yieldcrv 36 minutes ago |
      Something that takes 5 seconds with bitcoin, faster than any other property type, is something you rationalize as taking 7 years

      Why does HN collectively tolerate this level of understanding when it comes to crypto

  • pluc an hour ago |
    hodl
    • esskay an hour ago |
      I know you're joking but keeping bitcoin now really does feel like a poor investment given it's showing no signs of ever being revived.
      • accountrequired an hour ago |
        Bitcoin died *again*? hehe :P
        • esskay an hour ago |
          oh i dont think its 'dead' in the way people often describe. More...done. Like, the period of obscene growth is over and its now seemingly settled into a fairly dull investment with mediocre returns.
          • sph an hour ago |
            Well, that’s what people have said all the way to $70k+ price.
            • ForHackernews 30 minutes ago |
              It's underperformed the S&P500 over the last 5 years, but you know what they say about past performance not predicting future returns. Maybe AI will unlock an untapped reservoir of ever-greater fools.
          • singiamtel 32 minutes ago |
            Isn't that a good thing? The main argument I've heard against using bitcoin as currency is that it's too volatile.
            • Forgeties79 6 minutes ago |
              But the volatility hasn’t gone away. Compared to previous periods of broader interest in it (rife with the awful FOMO habits of people) sure it’s not as bad, but it’s still fluctuates wildly and without warning.

              Better odds than a casino, but still basically a casino.

            • hattmall 4 minutes ago |
              It would be, except when the primary value proposition is capturing the upside of that volatility. In the case of BTC a sustained lack of volatility is going to create significant downward pricing pressure. At some point that will trigger a run and as stakeholders have condensed the rut will get deeper and deeper as the upside of the volatility swings continually lower.
          • dmantis 4 minutes ago |
            Depends on the actor.

            From western perspective, maybe, but there are many people in the world who don't trust neither their government, not western ones: Iranians, Russians, some Chinese, etc.

            BTC is a nice safe harbor for money, which can't be touched by neither of state adversaries, and underperforming some other assets is totally acceptable, when your expectation for the brokerage account is effectively zero after arrest/freeze/sanctions.

      • w4yai an hour ago |
        https://bitcoindeaths.com/
        • pluc 31 minutes ago |
          what is dead may never die
        • suddenlybananas 31 minutes ago |
          The log scale is awfully misleading, especially since money doesn't really work like that.
        • sjbzbeiks 21 minutes ago |
          yeah I mean it just depends on time horizons, if you bought at 117k you are hurting now if you need the money ASAP.

          Also, I gotta say I do not think Bitcoin is a bubble or whatever (IMO a real value there), but really this sort of site makes it seem like it is a bubble with the sort of "blind to history" boosterism.

          Go read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, or Market Wizards series, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, or any number of books about financial history and there are endless people saying 'it will never die and all the doubters are just wrong' before any big market crash.

          • benrutter 6 minutes ago |
            [delayed]
        • imjonse 20 minutes ago |
          to be fair the majority of the statements that site mocks are not about bitcoin being dead but being a ponzi scheme, evil, hard to use by normal people, silly, a risky investment etc.

          All are criticism that can be evaluated on their own but it's irrelevant how much bitcoin grew since they were made.

      • zeofig an hour ago |
        Buy signal
    • jakemanger 27 minutes ago |
      They've hodled from the original ~$200,000 donation to $1.2 million, now down to $800,000.

      If they haven't accidentally done this, they've definitely got some balls

  • seymon an hour ago |
    I hope they still have the private key.
    • jakemanger an hour ago |
      Really hope so too. Would be devastating
    • osigurdson 18 minutes ago |
      It is an interesting fact about Bitcoin in general. There are 21M tokens in total AND some percentage are lost every year. Run this simulation long enough and there will be very few active Bitcoins remaining.
  • wyclif an hour ago |
    The project no longer uses that Bitcoin wallet for bounties.
    • ricardobeat an hour ago |
      What does that mean for that donation, and why is the wallet still listed on the website?
      • ramijames 42 minutes ago |
        I think that a large part of the priced in "value" of Bitcoin is just lots and lots of Bitcoin that nobody can access anymore.
        • abirch 34 minutes ago |
          Bitcoin's supposed to be "liquid" but I'm wondering what happens when there's a forced liquidity event.
          • altmanaltman 17 minutes ago |
            I mean, it's the opposite of that; it's forced illiquidity when people lose access to their keys. There is no way to gain access to those coins and you cannot "force" liquidity on the bitcoin protocol.
  • colesantiago an hour ago |
    Bitcoin really isn't money.

    They should send it to a dead wallet instead.

    • AIiscoming an hour ago |
      True and its also not compareable to gold.

      But as long as others giving you real money for this garbage, it would be better to use it for a project like neovim :)

      • deniska an hour ago |
        To never have experienced a usefulness of cryptocurrency is a privileged position to be in.
      • colesantiago an hour ago |
        A dead wallet has better use for Bitcoin though.

        We don't know where the Bitcoin has come from, so it needs to go extensive through anti money laundering checks.

        Save the hassle of all of that taxes, accountancy and just send everything to a dead wallet.

        • done_lurking 39 minutes ago |
          In what country does a bitcoin donation need to go through an "anti money laundering check"? Also, you could pay a lawyer 100k to handle the taxes and accounting and you would still have 700k left over.
          • colesantiago 4 minutes ago |
            Nah, you would have a lot more to pay in taxes.

            Might as well send it to a dead wallet, it's not real money anyway in many countries as legal tender.

    • gitowiec an hour ago |
      Exactly this! It was rendered money by some minds.
      • nullbio an hour ago |
        Unlike that paper money. That paper money was created by the Gods!
      • colesantiago an hour ago |
        It is even more useless than fiat.
  • Razengan an hour ago |
    This could become the premise of a near-cyberpunk heist movie..
  • zicohacks 41 minutes ago |
    I checked their official donation channel is OpenCollective. I think the Bitcoin address is no longer being used and they just forgot to update the footer
    • philipwhiuk 4 minutes ago |
      Yeah, someone probably deposited an amount a long time ago and it's sat there earning interest.
  • matesz 17 minutes ago |
    I’ve read so many news stories of people gone missing who had been know to have sole access to bitcoin wallets with large amount of bitcoins in them.

    I wonder how people at large crypto exchanges handle that. Perhaps shamir share the access to the pkey password and store parts at secure places like a bank? And make official access protocol akin to dnssec, but simplified?

    • krageon 13 minutes ago |
      Large exchanges handle this very simply: If they have the keys, it goes to the inheritor(s) once they get a court order. If they do not, it goes nowhere
      • slipwalker 7 minutes ago |
        but what sort of people keep their bitcoins on the exchange ? the whole point is about not being seizable by dirty governments...