The reason given was "Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items that could be considered obscene". This is wrong/false on so many levels. We used PayPal only as a means to receive voluntary donations from people who wanted to support further development of Voat and to help pay for our hosting fees. This is beyond crazy.
According to PayPal User Agreement, our funds can be kept by PayPal for 180 days. I requested further clarification from PayPal, but I would like to advise everyone who planned to donate to Voat - to NOT do so via PayPal.
Honestly, I don't know what I expected when I trusted PayPal with our donation money. I apologize to everyone who donated to us through PayPal and I will badge everyone who did so even if the funds are never released by PayPal.
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Spank_My_Bottom ago
What donation platform do you prefer now? Bitcoin? Patreon? Wireless transfer?
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Edit: I had researched and set up Bitcoin Wallet and sent some funds to it, they will be all donated to Voat. I encourage the rest of the users to do the same.
Nevertheless, many people will not be willing to go through that hassle, voat should consider setting up their own credit card gate or allow people to send money via SOPA transaction.
HappyCoffee ago
I would think Bitcoin is probably the surest way to make sure it actually arrives...
SpaceMonkey ago
I don't think most people know or are willing to know how to use bitcoin. Maybe there should be a brief simple explanation on the site on how to donate via bitcoin.
Vinegar ago
Bitcoin can be pretty intimidating at first, but it's actually fairly simple once you've gotten your feet wet.
The first step to using Bitcoin is to set up a wallet on your PC or smartphone. This link contains a small compilation of several excellent wallets, although my personal recommendation for a beginner would be either electrum or multi-bit. Another viable option is to store your Bitcoin in an online wallet such as Coinbase or Circle.
The second step of the process is actually obtaining the Bitcoins to fill your wallet. This link provides a variety of ways to buy Bitcoins, but since you're starting from scratch you are, in my opinion, best off getting your feet wet by using either Coinbase or Circle. You will need to register for these services using your real information and link a US checking account in order to conduct money transfers. It's important to remember at this step that you're not buying a product or service, you're exchanging currencies and therefore the process is a little less welcoming than simply hopping on Amazon. For a beginner I wouldn't recommend starting out with more than $50 worth of Bitcoin as that will be plenty for you to play around with and get your feet wet, but isn't going to break the bank in the unlikely scenario that you somehow lose your Bitcoins. Once you've either bought Bitcoins directly from Coinbase, or Circle, or used an actual exchange or some other means to acquire Bitcoins they will be deposited into your Bitcoin wallet.
And finally we have the easiest, and most fun step. Spending Bitcoins! It's as simple as entering an address, just like a postal address, or email address, in this case 1C4Q1RvUb3bzk4aaLVgGccnSnaHYFdESzY is the Bitcoin address for Voat. All you need to do is double check the number of Bitcoin you'd like to donate is correct, and quadruple check that the address is correct, click send, and the transaction will be finished.
Once you've played around with a small quantity of Bitcoin you should do some more extensive research into the benefits and disadvantages of different wallets, exchanges, and other Bitcoin Services. Research some of the disasters that have already occurred during Bitcoin's short history such as Mt.Gox and make sure you have a strong understanding of how to protect your coins. Have fun, be careful, get in early! ;)
binky ago
What scares me about bitcoin is that I suck at keeping dynamic data. I have backups of stuff from years ago but I'm always dropping my laptop, unplugging a hard drive, or having PANDA ANTIVIRUS BREAK MY ENCRYPTED HARD DRIVE WITH A WORKING. 80. MOD. SKYRIM. CONFIGURATION.
Sorry. As I was saying, I suck at keeping dynamic data. I do not want to bet a large sum of money that I'll always have a particular file that changes all the time. And I've never had an internet connection fast enough to do a backup in a reasonable amount of time.
AlLnAtuRalX ago
What you want to do is set up a hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet. This wallet has a master seed of English words that can be used to recover the wallet at any time, no other backups necessary. Electrum is an example of such a wallet, though it has some privacy tradeoffs as it's SPV (if you care about the NSA tracking your transactions, check the implications of this). Most BTC wallets these days are HD wallets by default, except some online wallets that control your keys (a la Coinbase, Circle, blockchain.info), and some older wallets that haven't yet upgraded (Bitcoin Core and old versions of Mycelium come to mind).
When you first create such a wallet, all you need to do is write down the 18 English words they give you and store them somewhere safe. As long as you never lose that word list, you will always have access to all the money in your wallet. Conversely, if someone steals it, they can steal all your money. Just like cash.