The popular social petition platform Change.org has launched a screensaver which mines the cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) as a donation for the Change.org Foundation. This is a new initiative which seeks to empower people by building various social movements worldwide.
According to the official website, the screensaver (which is the result of a partnership with the marketing agency Traceylocke Brasil) is a “totally secure and easy way to help” and “mines cryptocurrency when you’re not using it [your computer]”.
“The amount you earn is directly donated to the Change.org Foundation”, the website adds, describing cryptocurrency as “an alternative economic system that has the potential to revolutionize the way money circulate [sic] in the society”.
Change.org estimates that 10,000 computers using the screensaver for 12 hours a day can generate around $10,000 worth of donations in a single month.
The download link is available on the official website, and currently, the screensaver is only available for Windows users.
Change.org is not the first organization to harness the phenomenon of cryptocurrency mining for charity and social change. Earlier this year, UNICEF launched a crypto-based charity campaign for Syrian children, inviting gamers worldwide to use their high-level graphics cards as “a humanitarian tool” to mine Ethereum for donations.
In addition, UNICEF Australia also launched “The Hopepage”, which is a website using visitors’ processing power (with their consent) for mining XMR, which is then donated to UNICEF Australia.
While governments and regulators worldwide may hesitate to grant digital currencies any legitimacy, crypto is slowly becoming a popular choice for charity donations. Earlier in the year, an anonymous donor set up the Pineapple Fund, which donated $55 million in Bitcoins to numerous charities. In addition, Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin and Ripple have also made sizeable crypto donations to various causes.
More recently, popular crypto exchange Coinbase set up a charity fund called GiveCrypto, with the aim to raise $1 billion within the next two years.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
