The charity unit of mutual fund giant Fidelity announced last week that have raised over $22 million from bitcoin donations for the year 2017. This was revealed by Fidelity Charitable, which is the charitable trust fund under Fidelity Investments. The charity unit announced that it had witnessed an increase in bitcoin donations so far this year, with the total amount raised so far nearing $22 million.
According to the report by CNBC, Fidelity Charitable had raised $11 million from January to November, with the sum doubling over the past few weeks. The $22 million recorded so far this year in bitcoin has dwarfed the $7 million raised last year.The increase in donations this month can be attributed to the “giving season” that started from late November and will last until the end of the year. This was revealed by Fidelity Charitable SVP of donor engagement Matt Nash.
He further added that “People are getting smarter about donating appreciated assets, and bitcoin is the epitome of appreciated assets this year.”
Fidelity Charitable uses Coinbase which has over 11 million users as a payment processor. The charity trust converts the bitcoins donated into cash which is them deposited into benefactors’ funds. The report further added that bitcoin trader and investors are in a rather charitable mood as they look to avoid the capital gains tax that would become compulsory once they cashed out their bitcoin. In turning their bitcoin into a charity, investors and traders would be able to collect a charitable giving deduction for the year’s taxes.
It takes Fidelity a period of two to four days to process due diligence on bitcoin donations and have stated that they continue to accept cryptocurrencies this December 22 for this year’s donations.
This is a very good development at a time when governments across the world are picking interest in cryptocurrencies. Yesterday at the G20 meeting, the French Finance Minister asked the G20 to come up with a regulatory approach to this new form of money at the next meeting. Bruno Le Maire during the meeting stated that “There is evidently a risk of speculation associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. We need to consider and examine this and see how…with all the other G20 members we can regulate bitcoin. I am going to propose to the next G20 president, Argentina, that the G20 summit in April we have a discussion altogether on the question of bitcoin.”
