Anonymous browser Tor sees a major increase in crypto donations

Anonymous browser Tor, also known as The Tor Project, has seen a major increase in donations made in cryptocurrency in 2020. The project recently published an announcement that says that crypto donations have surged by 23% last year.

26% of total Tor donations were made in crypto

The Tor Project is a unique anonymous browser that uses a P2P network in order to avoid any centralized company from keeping the information regarding its use. In a way, it is similar to blockchain technology, as it follows the same principle of decentralization.


Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis?

Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today.

The project has been funded by the community which tends to donate to developers in order to keep them maintaining and improving the browser, and over the last several years, the amount of donations received in crypto has surged by quite a bit.

According to Tor’s spokesperson, the Project received $189,637 in crypto in 2019. In 2020, however, the donations made in crypto have grown to $233,019, or by 23%.

Also, the project has received a total of $913,110 in donations in 2020, with 26% of that amount being in digital currencies.

Bitcoin is the most popular coin for donations

The Tor Project representatives further revealed that Bitcoin (BTC) is the most popular cryptocurrency, as most donations have arrived in BTC. After Bitcoin, the most popular coin is Ethereum (ETH), followed by privacy coins, such as Monero (XMR). In fact, Monero and Ethereum donations are more or less evenly split.

The project started accepting donations in crypto a long time ago — back in 2013, before the crypto industry caught the attention of the public. At first, they only accepted Bitcoin, and it took six years for the developers to expand the list of crypto that can be used for donating.

They finally did it in March 2019, when they announced that they are accepting ETH, BCH, LTC, DASH, XLM, and other altcoins. This was quite appreciated by the wider crypto community, as many work with a variety of coins. With the project opening up to other cryptos, users could make donations via other altcoins and keep HODLing their BTC.