By Larry Wright
The University of Pennsylvania has recently confirmed that it holds $5 million worth of Bitcoin, which it received earlier in 2021. The University of Pennsylvania is among those educational premises which started accepting donations in the form of cryptocurrencies, despite the fact that fiat donations were transferred to the university, but Bitcoin-oriented ones remained a big part of the donation money this year.
In a recent interview, the senior vice president John Zeller from alumni relations for the University of Pennsylvania told New York Times that the decision to accept Bitcoin-oriented donations was because of the wish of the anonymous donor. According to John, the initial goal of the donor was to make a significant gift to the university, and we, by accepting this gift, put out a message that we are into the crypto world and we welcome your gift.
Educational Entities are Accepting Donations in Bitcoin
Another play that the University of Pennsylvania did by accepting Bitcoin donations was to give out the impression that the university is willing to accept multiple donations other than fiats, such as bonds, stocks, and real estate. Mr Zeller commented that the university’s personal policy was to sell the donation’s complete volume in its entirety immediately, even if it were $5 million donated in stocks.
When asked about why the university didn’t stick with its conventional protocol in relation to the liquidation of the donations, John said that they have liquidated some of that Bitcoin holding and are holding onto some of it. There are years of discussion behind this decision of the university to accept the donations received from the nonprofit entities and how they should be treating those made in the form of cryptocurrencies.
Some lesser discussed elements of the trade are the benefits to the donors, such as being able to void the capital gains taxes, which otherwise would have incurred if they weren’t to make a Bitcoin donation to a charity. The greater benefit of the crypto donations can be seen in the form of the ease of making the payment and the time frame the whole thing is transferred, such as for a Bitcoin oriented transfer, usually a time period of ten minutes is required.