Kiva Bitcoin Project on Hold Due to Legal Concerns

On October 11th, I reported to you that some of Kiva's engineers were planning to push forward with a proposal to senior management regarding the implementation of a Bitcoin donation option for Kiva.

More than two months later, we've now heard back from "mrchilly," and it doesn't sound promising:

Basically, as we talked to many people in the organization, it became clear we wouldn't have widespread support to start, so we thought we'd just go ahead and build something and ask forgiveness later. However, we did want to at least do some good due diligence on how to proceed. Thus, we started by talking to many people about their experiences with Bitcoin. We talked to some fellow non-profits, and the lawyer from one particular organization gave us some strong reasons to not move forward. We then talked some with our lawyer, who cautioned against doing anything that could distract from Kiva's core mission by bringing about controversy.

So, we shelved the project for now, out of respect for our colleagues wishes. We'd still like to proceed, but we would have to find a way to do so while knowing that everything we do will meet our mission and not place us in a position of legal questionability.

What exactly were the legal concerns? Likely they had to do with donor identification and compliance with Anti-Money Laundering regulations. Hopefully "mrchilly" will provide a little more insight in the Bitcointalk Forum thread.

Posted in: Kiva,legal