Unicef wants you to do cryptocurrency mining (for charity). From today you can donate to Unicef by giving up part of the computing power.
On your own Unicef website has launched a page that allows you to donate to its Australian branch ... without paying a single euro. In fact, all you have to do is give up some of your hardware computing power to help cryptocurrency mining.
How The Hopepage works
According to what he says Unicef, over 2.600 people have already donated cryptocurrency through The Hopepage, where users are able to set the percentage of processing power they are willing to provide to the website - with up to 80 percent (be careful not to set the percentage too high). The longer users stay on the site, the more cryptocurrency will help to mine on Unicef's behalf: as imaginable, the cryptocurrency thus extracted will allow children to provide life-saving supplies "such as drinking water, food and vaccines".
After clicking on "Start donation", a pop-up will appear in your browser stating that "thehopepage.org wishes to use the computing power”, Making sure that the algorithms work via the browser sandbox, and therefore no downloads are required.
The notification will also declare that the mechanism will be powered by Coinhive's Javascript-based mining tool, the same tool used by Salon as an experimental alternative to generating advertising revenue, and also by some other websites, for periods of time more or less extended. Bear in mind that the tool uses Monero, an alternative to bitcoin: although Monero can be used more rarely to buy goods and services directly, it can still be easily transformed into fiat currency to buy supplies.
Still referring to its operation, The Hopepage shows the hash rate, or the speed with which the cryptocurrency is being extracted, in the upper right corner. When you start the donation, the page will also declare what concrete help you will contribute to making.
How much energy the Hopepage consumes
If you are on a laptop, you will notice that the battery will start to drain after a few minutes of using the site. Therefore, pay close attention to how much computing power you want to give to The Hopepage: the greater the power transferred, the faster the battery will discharge.
Anyway, The Hopepage is really a creative way to bring people to donate to charity, and it is also the second instance that Unicef has addressed to the world of cryptocurrency to finance yourself. Already last February Unicef launched a site called Chaingers.io asking visitors to extract Ethereum, to be turned into funds for Syrian children. The effort was not very successful as it raised just under € 1.000 in the months it was made available.
In any case, it is a sign of an evolution that could become increasingly insistent in the coming months. Facebook users can already ask their friends to donate to charities as a birthday present, while New Inquiry launched a similar mining service last November called Bail Bloc, which donates Monero generated by the computing power of users to The Bronx Freedom Fund.
