As you all know by now bitcoin broke 1,000 fiat war dollars today, but what you may not know is one year ago today Antiwar.com finally jumped in to the currency revolution and started accepting bitcoin donations. Bitcoin was around 10 or 15 dollars at the time and Antiwar staff had some hesitation to get in involved in the relatively new crypto-currency. Back then the common objections were, “Can we get ‘real’ money for our bitcoin? Do we have to allocate our time learning some new strange technology?” After a short 15 minute phone call and setting Director of Operations Angela Keaton up with a CoinBase.com account, I assured her it was as easy as PayPal to use and I had her send the bitcoin address to my inbox. I was ready to send the first bitcoin donation to end war! At the time WordPress had just announced that it would take bitcoin for its website services and the bitcoin community was a buzz with coins being sent to just about any website that would start accepting them. Angela posted that long string of numbers and letters on the sites blog and thought for sure only a few donations would come in. It was an interesting experiment to the staff at Antiwar.com, but 72 hours later and after $1000 dollars in donations the experiment was no longer seen as just some fringe geeky internet money anymore.

Shortly after Antiwar found success in the bitcoin space big names in libertarian circles started taking bitcoin donations. Sites like Lew Rockwell and Ballet Access News announced that they would jump on the band wagon. The Austrian school economists could no longer ignore the bitcoin and discussion on libertarian blogs picked up. In May, along with Stephanie Murphy and Teresa Warmke of Fr33 aid, and Free State Project President Carla Gericke we traveled to the first US bitcoin conference put on by the Bitcoin Foundation. The ladies where to give a panel talk about non profits and bitcoin. (Video at the end of post) As we walked in to the San Jose convention center Friday afternoon we saw a huge empty arena and hundreds of empty seats. I remember remarking to my partner Davi Barker “It’s a barn, they will never fill it.” But by the first night, hundreds of Bitcoiners poured in to the hall and Angela later said to us “I had no idea it was this big, that so many people where excited about bitcoin and would come to such an event.” That was the moment and that night it finally became clear to all of us that this was not going away. Whether you’re a libertarian or not, this new state-bank-crushing currency is not going to fade away quietly any time soon.

So, it’s one year later and Antiwar is no longer looking to find an easy way to cash out. The site is holding bitcoin in a strategic reserve and ready to launch new efforts to end war and imperialism around the globe with a currency that is not directly contributing to the madness it seeks to end. Future efforts of oppression around the world will be met with contributions from a very generous community that is fundamentally opposed to bankers and political sociopaths sending our young brothers and sisters off to die in meaningless conflicts that we have no business fighting in the first place.