I don’t understand #3. At the megabucks level, wouldn’t anonymity deprive the community of information needed to make plans? Here, we knew the approximate net worth of the donor and that the wealth was in a high-volatility domain (although admittedly this particular risk wasn’t known...), and people made various decisions with that knowledge in hand.
Although we would have probably been better off without that knowledge this time, in general trying to hide it would make long-term planning a lot more difficult. If you give enough information to allow for effective planning, you’ve probably given enough information to identify the megadonor.
Also, didn’t FTX establish its own organization (i.e., the FTX Foundation) to grant its money? I guess one could argue that EA-aligned organizations shouldn’t accept money from such an entity, although such a stance would mean that the money goes to less effective charities instead.
Finally, as a practical matter, I think some people have to know donor identity from a legal/compliance perspective. I suspect that “my large non-profit organization’s major funder is an untraceable Bitcoin address” would cause some significant practical problems. So you’ve created a bifurcation where some people have the knowledge ( = a potentially significant source of power), while others do not benefit from that transparency.
Ok, I’m not too clear about the legal perspective. I guess my main purpose is this post was to start a dialogue about how we could have avoided such a situation with some preliminary suggestions.
I don’t understand #3. At the megabucks level, wouldn’t anonymity deprive the community of information needed to make plans? Here, we knew the approximate net worth of the donor and that the wealth was in a high-volatility domain (although admittedly this particular risk wasn’t known...), and people made various decisions with that knowledge in hand.
Although we would have probably been better off without that knowledge this time, in general trying to hide it would make long-term planning a lot more difficult. If you give enough information to allow for effective planning, you’ve probably given enough information to identify the megadonor.
Also, didn’t FTX establish its own organization (i.e., the FTX Foundation) to grant its money? I guess one could argue that EA-aligned organizations shouldn’t accept money from such an entity, although such a stance would mean that the money goes to less effective charities instead.
Finally, as a practical matter, I think some people have to know donor identity from a legal/compliance perspective. I suspect that “my large non-profit organization’s major funder is an untraceable Bitcoin address” would cause some significant practical problems. So you’ve created a bifurcation where some people have the knowledge ( = a potentially significant source of power), while others do not benefit from that transparency.
Edit: punctuation
Ok, I’m not too clear about the legal perspective. I guess my main purpose is this post was to start a dialogue about how we could have avoided such a situation with some preliminary suggestions.