<story><title>EFF now accepting Bitcoin again</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-will-accept-bitcoins-support-digital-liberty</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fianchetto</author><text>EFF taking Bitcoin is good for Bitcoin but they won&apos;t get a single satoshi from me. I joined EFF not long after the Steve Jackson days and supported them until relatively recently.&lt;p&gt;I didn&apos;t believe their original &quot;we don&apos;t want to be the story&quot; explanation for not wanting to accept bitcoins. The EFF  didn&apos;t want to get tagged as &apos;fringe&apos; in their DC circles by accepting bitcoins in the wake of the Wikileaks/bitcoin story. Now that Bitcoin is being backed by startup money, EFF sees Bitcoin as socially safe again.&lt;p&gt;EFF alienated me by letting go of principle when it was more important to hang onto it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hristov</author><text>You have to keep in mind that the EFF get into some very important political battles and earn some very fearsome enemies.&lt;p&gt;In DC politics your enemies will not kill you but they will sue you, or they can do even worse -- they can ask their friends in Congress to open an investigation or to ask the DOJ to do so.&lt;p&gt;Thus, the lawyers for the EFF have to be really really careful and make sure that there are no open avenues of attack. When you are potential target, you have to be much more cautious than you would usually be. Especially if your enemies are very powerful and well connected lawyers, powerbrokers and publicity people. These people can take the slightest infraction, real or imagined, and weave it in a complex and snowballing story that ends with you having lost all credibility.&lt;p&gt;Note what happened to Julian Assange.&lt;p&gt;So no you cannot blame the EFF for refusing to be adventurous vis-a-vis bitcoin.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, their change of policy is probably not related to startup money but to the government providing guidance for virtual currency.</text></comment>
<story><title>EFF now accepting Bitcoin again</title><url>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-will-accept-bitcoins-support-digital-liberty</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fianchetto</author><text>EFF taking Bitcoin is good for Bitcoin but they won&apos;t get a single satoshi from me. I joined EFF not long after the Steve Jackson days and supported them until relatively recently.&lt;p&gt;I didn&apos;t believe their original &quot;we don&apos;t want to be the story&quot; explanation for not wanting to accept bitcoins. The EFF  didn&apos;t want to get tagged as &apos;fringe&apos; in their DC circles by accepting bitcoins in the wake of the Wikileaks/bitcoin story. Now that Bitcoin is being backed by startup money, EFF sees Bitcoin as socially safe again.&lt;p&gt;EFF alienated me by letting go of principle when it was more important to hang onto it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>streptomycin</author><text>They didn&apos;t want to get tagged as fringe, so they wait to accept bitcoins until right after the largest bitcoin exchange had funds seized by the DHS?</text></comment>