Neovim's 10 Bitcoin: An $800,000 Donation Left Untouched Since 2023

It all started with curiosity. A Hacker News member going by the handle jakemanger noticed a Bitcoin donation address in the footer of the Neovim editor's website and decided to check how much money had piled up there. Opening the transaction history, he saw a transfer of 10 BTC that had arrived back in 2023. At the current exchange rate, that's around $800,000 — a more than impressive sum for an open-source project.

What puzzled him was something else: according to the blockchain explorer, the last outgoing payment from this address dates back to 2019. In other words, for several years the funds have simply been sitting there untouched, and the large contribution itself appears to have gone entirely unnoticed. jakemanger, who admitted to using Neovim every day, expressed the hope that the money would eventually benefit the project — and cautiously asked whether anyone on the team even knew about it.

Is the key still around?

The main question that immediately came up in the discussion sounded worrying: had the wallet's private key even survived? Without it, $800,000 turns into a pretty number on a screen that no one can touch. One commenter clarified that the project no longer uses this wallet to pay out developer bounties — but then it's unclear why the address is still on display on the site and what will now happen to the donation itself.

There were also those who offered a down-to-earth explanation for the inactivity: perhaps the team is deliberately biding its time. In some countries, holding cryptocurrency for a long stretch before selling affects taxes — though whether that applies to donations was something the participants never quite agreed on. A more practical concern was also voiced: the origin of the funds is unknown, which means that before doing anything, the money would do well to be run through anti-money-laundering checks.

A little philosophy for your Bitcoin

As so often happens on Hacker News, the thread quickly veered into the eternal debate over the nature of cryptocurrencies. Some advised the classic “hodl,” others grumbled that Bitcoin's era of frenzied growth is over and that the coin “hasn't died, it's just settled down,” turning into a dull asset with mediocre returns. The radicals went so far as to suggest sending all the money to a “dead” wallet to avoid dealing with taxes and accounting — to which it was reasonably countered that, as long as people are paying real money for this “paper,” it makes more sense to put it toward a living and useful project like Neovim.

For now, all that's left is to hope that the wallet's key hasn't been lost, and that the generous anonymous donor will one day see their ten bitcoins put to work after all.

Source: Hacker News