Neovim have a ~$800k Bitcoin donation sitting untouched since 2023

296 points by jakemanger 11 hours ago | 238 comments

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

ashkankiani 8 hours ago |

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.

matesz 9 hours ago |

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?

jackb4040 9 hours ago | |

I worked at a crypto exchange, yes we used shamir shares. But probably not as sophisticated as you're thinking, there was basically one big "break glass" text document with all the keys. And then a hand-rolled software on each person's laptop to distribute the plain text and run / practice the 3/5 recovery ceremony. So anyone losing their device would be equivalent to someone quitting and require its own ceremony to reissue a key, but I don't think that ever actually happened.

We explored using smart contracts to have logic perform the 3/5 consensus rather than a cryptosystem, but that was never rolled out while I was there. Social recovery wallets in general did not take off, which was a big learning moment for me that very few people actually cared about the technology and what they really wanted was an app with as many gambling features as possible that uploaded their keys to google drive.

IAmBroom 8 hours ago | | |

> Social recovery wallets in general did not take off, which was a big learning moment for me that very few people actually cared about the technology and what they really wanted was an app with as many gambling features as possible that uploaded their keys to google drive.

People who are not HN-profile never care about the technology, and always care about usable, convenient features. The shocker is: most HN-profile people feel the same way.

Also see: https://m.xkcd.com/2501/

ecesena 6 hours ago | |

A better solution (than Shamir secret sharing) are threshold signatures.

The difference is that with Shamir you have to reconstruct the private key in one place before you can sign. With threshold signatures multiple servers can collaboratively sign without ever reconstructing the private key in a single place.

For chains like Solana, Aptos, SUI that use ed25519 (schnorr signature), there's a pretty clean solution called FROST.

For Bitcoin and Ethereum/EVMs that use ECDSA it's a bit trickier but there's been a lot of research recently, so there are solutions.

imhoguy 9 hours ago | |

Worse when crypto exchange bosses go missing https://archive.is/lPpRz

TheSkyHasEyes 6 hours ago | | |

Or this. https://www.osc.ca/quadrigacxreport/

krageon 9 hours ago | |

Large exchanges handle this very simply: If they have the keys, it goes to the inheritor(s) once they get a court order. If they do not, it goes nowhere

slipwalker 9 hours ago | | |

but what sort of people keep their bitcoins on the exchange ? the whole point is about not being seizable by dirty governments...

seymon 10 hours ago |

I hope they still have the private key.

osigurdson 9 hours ago | |

It is an interesting fact about Bitcoin in general. There are 21M tokens in total AND some percentage are lost every year. Run this simulation long enough and there will be very few active Bitcoins remaining.

bryanlarsen 8 hours ago | | |

21M is the theoretical cap. At the moment there are 20M and more are constantly being mined. Miners have to convert bitcoin into real currency to pay for their electricity both for mining and transaction fees. This means that there is always a supply of bitcoin for sale. Which is fine if there is still demand for new bitcoin, but who's buying bitcoin these days? It has underperformed both the S&P 500 and gold over the last 5 years. I expect bitcoin inflation to continue. (AKA the bitcoin price to continue to go down).

jackb4040 9 hours ago | | |

Worth pointing out that the monetary policy of bitcoin is not written in stone; all you need to change it is a majority of hashpower. The current chain of bitcoin mainnet includes hard forks, like this one due to miners' manual intervention over a software bug that was exploited: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposu...

Roark66 9 hours ago | | |

Seems pretty silly to build in deflation into a currency. It incentivises putting your money in a mattress for 100 years.

derangedHorse 9 hours ago | | |

Tail emissions and infinite divisibility are proposals to address this.

wavemode 7 hours ago |

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

cranberryjoe 8 hours ago |

Rainy day fund. Everybody needs one. Love neovim for living under their means, great program!

DataDive 8 hours ago |

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.

mikeocool 8 hours ago | |

Neovim’s current donation page says that funds are managed by OpenCollective — a 501c6 organization in the US. 501c6’s are tax exempt.

So assuming they are the holders of the bitcoin as well, there would be no tax liability.

fl4regun 7 hours ago | |

then they would sell some of the bitcoin and pay the taxes. If they don't have the wallet anymore then they don't pay any taxes.

philipallstar 8 hours ago | |

Surely only an absolute lunatic would pass that sort of law. And by then it's too late, because it's Socialism with extra steps.

sebzim4500 8 hours ago | | |

Doesn't Switzerland do this instead of capital gains? Makes sense IMO, much better to tax wealth than discourage transactions.

wing-_-nuts 7 hours ago | | |

Why not? We tax property every year on it's assessed value. I think it's pretty clear that the wealthy will need to pay more taxes throughout the world to deal with an aging population.

I'm a little tired of billionaires 'buy, borrow, dying' to get around the paltry taxes they're currently subject to. We need a harder tax to dodge.

superxpro12 7 hours ago | | |

The fascism we CURRENTLY HAVE is far more preferable

IAmBroom 8 hours ago | | |

Oh, no, not Socialism! That's worse than attending a Macklemore concert!

nullocator 8 hours ago | |

Sounds good.

Edit: it seems perfectly acceptable and ideal even for society to say there is a cost to wealth. As others have mentioned Neovim is in the US is likely mostly tax exempt so this hypothetical doesn't even apply to them.

fgonzag 4 hours ago | | |

So you want a non profit to pay taxes on money it seems they do not have access to and have never touched.

Great.

wiseowise 8 hours ago | | |

Theft is good? What?

zicohacks 10 hours ago |

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

philipwhiuk 9 hours ago | |

Yeah, someone probably deposited an amount a long time ago and it's sat there earning interest.

benenrjdnz 9 hours ago | | |

Bitcoin doesn’t pay interest. And that’s a good thing.

tosti 7 hours ago |

At least a part of it should go to Kibaale Children's Centre imho.

xanthine 6 hours ago | |

I got the Bram Moolenar reference.

wyclif 10 hours ago |

The project no longer uses that Bitcoin wallet for bounties.

ricardobeat 10 hours ago | |

What does that mean for that donation, and why is the wallet still listed on the website?

ramijames 10 hours ago | | |

I think that a large part of the priced in "value" of Bitcoin is just lots and lots of Bitcoin that nobody can access anymore.

Razengan 10 hours ago |

This could become the premise of a near-cyberpunk heist movie..

Similar to Swordfish? :)

pluc 11 hours ago |

hodl

jakemanger 10 hours ago | |

They've hodled from the original ~$200,000 donation to $1.2 million, now down to $800,000.

If they haven't accidentally done this, they've definitely got some balls

esskay 10 hours ago | |

I know you're joking but keeping bitcoin now really does feel like a poor investment given it's showing no signs of ever being revived.

w4yai 10 hours ago | | |

https://bitcoindeaths.com/

accountrequired 10 hours ago | | |

Bitcoin died *again*? hehe :P

zeofig 10 hours ago | | |

Buy signal

JimBlackwood 11 hours ago |

I imagine they might wait, to make sure it’s legally obtained Bitcoin.

a3w 10 hours ago | |

In which country would waiting help?

cyberpunk 10 hours ago | | |

In Germany at least if you've held the coin(s) for 7 years before selling you don't need to pay tax on the profit.

Not sure how this applies to donations though, and of course this will almost certainly be changed in the future, .nl is leading the way in taxing _unrealised_ gains; we are sure to follow!

yieldcrv 10 hours ago | |

Something that takes 5 seconds with bitcoin, faster than any other property type, is something you rationalize as taking 7 years

Why does HN collectively tolerate this level of understanding when it comes to crypto

nottorp 9 hours ago | | |

> Something that takes 5 seconds with bitcoin, faster than any other property type, is something you rationalize as taking 7 years

> Why does HN collectively tolerate this level of understanding when it comes to crypto

Well that's really funny. Because the 7 years are about tax liabilities not the speed of bitcoin transactions.

So maybe you made a statement about crypto advocates here...