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A software program that mines Monero to save people from prison has seen a surge in use as protests over the police killing of George Floyd continue in the U.S. The software is called Bail Bloc and runs in the background of your computer , passively generating the monero which is then distributed for the deposit of the funds.
“I noticed a 20% increase in our hashrate this week compared to last week,” Grayson Earle, who developed the Bail Bloc software, said in an email.
“We are dedicated as a project and as individuals to the movement for the lives of blacks and we believe that the urgency of the situation requires direct action and people should direct resources to organizations on the ground that can respond quickly.”
The hashrate is the measure of how fast cryptographic calculations are performed for mining. According to Earle, the Bail Bloc hashrate is currently 94.5 KH / s.
The funds are used to pay bail for those in custody, which can last for weeks or even months. Preventive detentions have increased by 433 percent since 1970, according to research from the Center for American Progress. According to a study by the Vera Institute, a non-profit organization fighting for judicial reform, in 2015, more than 60% of the total prison population in the United States was made up of people held for pre-trial detention. In the wake of protests against police brutality, more than 10,000 protesters were arrested in the United States
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Earle originally conceived the Bail Bloc after President Trump’s 2016 election as a way to address clicktivism (where people signal their allegiance to the cause without doing anything about it). Monero is a leading privacy-focused coin that hides the identity of miners, and Earle said Monero’s mining algorithm helped Bail Bloc.
“The Random-X mining algorithm helped our project because most of the people running Bail Bloc on their computers use mid-range laptops without dedicated graphics cards (GPUs),” Earle said. “Now that the GPU and CPU are on even ground in terms of hashrate, we are harvesting Monero at a much faster rate than before.”
So far, Bail Bloc has raised over $ 8,000, or enough to save 13 people. The next check will go to the Immigrant Bail Fund in Connecticut.
Several bail funds accept direct cryptocurrency donations.
The Bail Project is a national nonprofit that provides free bail assistance to thousands of low-income Americans every year and accepts donations in bitcoin. So far, it has ensured the freedom of over 10,000 people in over 20 cities across the country, working with community partners to drive systemic change.
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“We use the National Revolving Bail Fund to support bailouts in over 20 jurisdictions and assistance is provided by our full-time community-based Bail Disruptors and Client Advocates teams,” said Robin Steinberg, CEO of the Bail Project . “We started accepting cryptocurrencies from the start, largely because [billionaire investor] Mike Novogratz, chairman of our board of directors, is a staunch supporter of cryptocurrency and encouraged us. “
Pilar Maria Weiss, director of the Community Justice Exchange, a non-profit organization, said some bail funds that have multiple infrastructures accept bitcoin but many bail funds for protest are very informal and therefore use the Cash app only for Go Fund Me pages. However, the Cash app allows users to pay or donate using bitcoins.
All three bail projects recommend taking direct action as well as donating.
“Get closer to the problem,” Steinberg said. “Don’t close your eyes to injustice. Speaks. Make sure your elected officials know that you will not allow these injustices to continue. Listen to the black community. Hear the voices of those most directly affected by our criminal justice system. “
