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@Ross Ulbricht just got a 300 bitcoin donation. Many people speculating it was a self donation with a stash of bitcoin left over from the Silk Road days. It doesn’t bother me if it was, but from an optics perspective he should definitely come out with a post that’s like wow, thank you whoever did this I’m overwhelmed with gratitude etc… if you’re silent about a 30 million dollar donation it definitely looks like a self donation. Just my two sats.

Replies (71)

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↩ replying to npub18zsu...lyv6
Huh? It’s absolutely a meaningful distinction. Advice comes from a place of support, it’s an offer, not an indictment. Judgment assumes superiority and finality; advice assumes agency and choice. One says ‘you’re wrong,’ the other says ‘here’s another way.’ If you can’t tell the difference, maybe you’re too used to criticism to recognize help.
↩ replying to HODL
given that specific meaning of judgement, i see what you are saying. i read the word judgment, and assume it’s general definition, as our intellectual faculty, ability to discern. advice is giving one’s subjective discernment/judgment of an objective situation. that’s why i said no difference. two different pages. should have asked what you meant instead of assuming. 🫡
Eh, it's a bit tricky with these things. I remember back in 2017 when Roger Ver made fun of Antonopoulos for not having much Bitcoin and the community donated a bunch of Bitcoin to Andreas, and he got 100+ BTC from a single donor. He wrote a long post about securing those coins and thanked people generally, but he didn't thank the whale donor. Obviously a different case here, but as a recipient, you want to be careful not to put too much attention to your donor who might want to stay anonymous.
I have mixed feeling on this. Transparency is important, but it’s also important to remember that not only did the government steal and sell the bitcoin they seized from Silk Road, but federal agents decided to do crimes on their own and steal some for themselves. We always expected that someone would eventually come around with a donation for Ross, and it’s easy to imagine why that someone wouldn’t want to be identified, whether it’s actually him or not.
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If it was a self donation, someone needs to remind him that if you have 300 bitcoin that people don't already know you have, don't go moving it into an address that they know is yours. I'd HOPE he's learned a thing or two about the importance about privacy on the Internet after that whole post as altoid on Bitcointalk...
if i was him i'd finish with all this fanfare and vanish to a ranch in a remote part of siberia or something with fake documents and make anonymous donations randomly to awesome stuff well, anyway, i know Ross well enough that he likes to teach people austrian economics at least. but he will definitely have enemies who will mess with him. also i don't think he wants to be famous, he wouldn't have become a DPR if his own person was important to be recognised. you gotta watch The Princess Bride to get that.
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Very interesting… Gifts from Anonymous Individuals 🇺🇸 “If you receive a gift from an anonymous individual, it is typically not taxable to you. The donor may be subject to gift tax if the amount exceeds certain thresholds. As of 2025, the annual exclusion allows individuals to give up to $19,000 per recipient per year without incurring gift tax. Gifts exceeding this limit may count against the donor’s lifetime exemption of $13.99 million, and the donor is required to file IRS Form 709 to report such gifts.” Source: ChatGPT