NGOs and charities often find themselves pursuing activities in direct contradiction to the rules of sovereign states. Whether NGOs that seek to foster political change in authoritarian states, to charities closer to home that seek legal changes or legal redress where fundamental rights have been challenged.

So it’s odd that so few charities accept Bitcoins (a currency devised precisely to go beyond the parameters of sovereign states) even after its general acceptance elsewhere.

The one exception is the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has accepted donations worth $102,000 in Bitcoins in recent weeks.

The EFF say:

Recently, EFF announced that we will resume Bitcoin donations on our website, using an intermediary service called BitPay. Gavin Andresen then returned all of these remaining bitcoins to us, stating:

I’m satisfied to see these bitcoins will be used as they were intended – as a donation to support the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Bitcoin Faucet was happy to receive the funds, but we are particularly glad to see them used as they were originally intended.

It’s very possible other NGOs in challenging environments will increasingly use Bitcoins as a method to circumvent restrictive financial laws devised to stop their work.