Privacy Cryptocurrency Grin Receives Mysterious $300K Bitcoin Donation

The developers behind the cryptocurrency project Grin have reportedly received an anonymous donation of 50 BTC – worth an estimated $300,000.

The news, shared during a weekly meeting of developers, is notable, as Grin came to market touting what it called a "fair launch," meaning project leaders did not raise any funds via an initial coin offering (ICO) or a private sale of the tokens that would power the technology.

This means development of the Grin protocol has been entirely reliant on voluntary donations and crowd-funding. A relatively new cryptocurrency launched back in January, Grin leverages novel technology to obfuscate transaction information.

One developer, Daniel Lehnberg, said about the large monetary gift:

"A really big and heartfelt thanks. We'll ensure [we] put that to good use."

Users can donate funds at any point in time to five different public addresses accepting Grin, bitcoin, ethereum and zcash. The most recent donation of 50 BTC was placed in the Grin bitcoin SegWit address and mined on the bitcoin blockchain Sunday.

Still, the donation is also a sign that Grin's funding model may be working.

According to a recently released financial report, funding for the project has increased almost two-fold over the past four months from an estimated $65,237.35 to $123,423.73. Now, with the additional 50 BTC donation, the project holds roughly six times the amount of funds it started out with at the top of 2019.

Going forward, funds are expected to be put towards project needs including building and deploying key infrastructure, website design and marketing development, mining hardware design and more.

Grin application image via CoinDesk archives