🔑Supporting Let's Encrypt, 🐶pet rescue, 🏞river protection. And how we hilariously thwarted a scammer. 😄

Hello bitcoiners! I hope the recent rally has been making you happy. I'm here to share probably the second last Pineapple Fund update, and hilarious logs of an attempted scammer getting what they deserve.

First:

• I donated $250k to Let's Encrypt. Started by Mozilla alumni, they provide free, automated TLS certificates to secure the web. With an annual budget of $3m, they're on track to encrypt more than 120 MILLION websites!

• I'm making a $1 million donation to Nuzzles and Co. They are a small, no-kill shelter in Utah, and they're even serving the Ute and Navajo Native American Reservations. This donation will help Nuzzles pay off their hefty mortgage on their rescue branch, increasing their sustainability and reducing their expenses forever!

• Also donated $250k to the Tennessee River Gorge Trust, a nonprofit protecting 17,000 acres of the Gorge since 1981. This donation will go towards not only land acquisition, but also water quality and migratory bird research projects.

• $1 million to SoGal Foundation, a newly established nonprofit from SoGal Ventures with a mission of closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship and venture capital. I'm excited by what they can do!

• $250k to Many Hopes, who are rescuing children from abuse and poverty, providing education and support, and with the goal of creating intergenerational change.

I also want to share a hilarious story of how Pineapple Fund supporters helped thwart a scammer. A month ago, I receive a reddit PM from a user who claimed to have inside information that Pineapple Fund was scammed by a dummy organization. That caught my attention, so I did a comprehensive review of all funded applicants and transactions. Everything looked right.

I emailed back, asking for more information. This person sent me a screenshot, of a forum post where someone claimed to have stolen from the Pineapple Fund. Some things about it looked very off, and the person seemed to want some money to divulge more information. As someone who's been in crypto for years, I'm always vigilant and smelled a scam.

After a re-audit of our donations, I'm confident that every single donation reached its intended target. Not wanting to leave any stones unturned, I sent the screenshot to a couple of whitehats who had offered help to the Pineapple Fund.

A little while later, they were able to identify the forum. It was of a popular, invite-only torrent tracker, and the scammer used its layout as a base and Inspect Elemented a thread to make it about the Pineapple Fund. The usernames and avatars in the doctored screenshot were real users. Case solved, scam confirmed. But that's not it.

Our whitehat then got in touch with the forum admins, and they were even able to find the thread in question. Because it was an old thread, only one person visited it in 2018. I received the screenshot from the scammer minutes after that visit. The admins banned the user.

A while later, the scammer tried get in touch and make amends with the admin. I'll let the hilarious logs do the talking. This was sent to me by the whitehat. Thank you 'Pim', and thank you to the admins of the site! <3

https://pineapplefund.org/lol.txt

Anyways. Pineapple Fund has a few hundred bitcoins left. It's been an amazing experiment in charitable giving, and I'm looking forward to the final contributions and sharing my learnings.

I'm also looking forward to concluding the Pineapple Fund with an awesome puzzle filled with prizes. If you've ever wanted some money from the Pineapple Fund* as an individual... well, you will have a chance, but you'll have to earn it with your puzzle-solving skills :)

I'm excited to be working with brilliant artists, puzzle makers, and even a legend who you may know. Stay tuned!

*All puzzle money will be donated by me personally, and will not come from PF funds or donations :)

<3, Pine

Submitted February 15, 2018 at 05:21PM by PineappleFund http://ift.tt/2EES9V7