Pineapple Fund is a fund dedicated to distribute 86 million dollars in bitcoins to charity initiatives. Recently, the fund donated five million US dollars in bitcoins to the Open Medicine Foundation (OMF), an entity specialized in the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and other related and complex diseases.
The donation was announced on the official website of the Open Medicine Foundation, pointing out that the initial donation amounted to one million dollars that would help cover the costs of a group of research projects for the treatment and cure of this rare disease. Nevertheless, after the wave of gratitude expressed by the community of patients and doctors related to CFS, the Pineapple Fund decided to donate additional four million dollars in bitcoins.
The new donation will be used to accelerate the medical research of this complex syndrome that causes terrible corporal fatigue, sleep abnormalities, pain and symptoms that get worse with strain. By using these funds, the Open Medicine Foundation will be able to boost certain crucial projects, such as the creation of a diagnostic test, the analysis of patient’s data, development of a technology for identification of the treatment options and the research of a possible cure for the disease.
Linda Tamenbaum, the CEO of the OMF, assured the huge influx of comments on Reddit, Facebook and Twitter regarding the first donation influenced the decision of the Pineapple Fund to donate additional funds. Likewise, the mysterious person behind the Pineapple Fund said he or she was deeply touched by the letters and emotions conveyed by the community of patients, which convinced him to make an additional donation: “I have known chronic fatigue syndrome for a while and I know it is a serious condition without much treatment or research. Recently, I have received letters from well-known academics from the field, expressing their strong support to the OMF and that is what helped me make the decision to donate additional funds.”
One of the comments on Reddit said the following: “Thank you, Pineapple Fund, for seeing beyond the cloak of invisibility created over this terrible disease and recognizing the desperate necessity. The hope this brings is tangible.”
Besides this donation, the Pineapple Fund also participated actively in other fields by donating cryptocurrency funds to other projects. For example, a donation of one million dollars was made to the Bitgive initiative, a project that is trying to generate economic and social well-being for the most disadvantaged people by using the blockchain technology. The Pineapple Fund also participated in the Watsi project, The Water Project, The Internet Archive, Wiki Edu and WomanwhoTech. In total, the funds donated to 42 different projects until now.
The cryptocurrency donations are getting more popular each day, becoming a legal method to cooperate with different charity or non-profit projects in some countries. Bitso, a cryptocurrency exchange, created a channel used for the cryptocurrency donations after the terrible earthquake in Mexico.
