alt Hacker NewsNeovim have a ~$800k Bitcoin donation sitting untouched since 2023
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
Comments
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?
well, I just emailed the project just to see if they're aware of it
part of me feels like this is most likely a defunct wallet and nobody involved with the project has the keys anymore
What happens if some of those tax the unrealized gains bills pass in some country where they have obligations?
They would have to either pay the tax on gains or write off losses.
The project no longer uses that Bitcoin wallet for bounties.
At least a part of it should go to Kibaale Children's Centre imho.
Rainy day fund. Everybody needs one. Love neovim for living under their means, great program!
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
This could become the premise of a near-cyberpunk heist movie..
Similar to Swordfish? :)
Bitcoin really isn't money.
They should send it to a dead wallet instead.
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I imagine they might wait, to make sure it’s legally obtained Bitcoin.
For a reference point, when I was unemployed and between jobs, I got involved with Neovim for fun, and after some contributions, I eventually tried some full(ish)-time paid work. I wrote the native lua LSP client (:h vim.lsp, and the nvim-lspconfig repo) for Neovim in a few weeks for about $3k USD (circa 2019)? This amount could fund quite a lot of work to be sure.