Donate to UNICEF by Mining for Cryptocurrency

Whether you're buying, selling or mining the stuff, cryptocurrencies - decentralised digital currencies - are hot property these days, despite most of us not understanding what the hell they are, or how in tarnation they actually work. But, if you can now get your salary in Bitcoin or pay for a latte with Ripple, then why not be able to donate Ethereum to charity?

That's the thinking behind Game Chaingers, a pioneering new campaign for UNICEF created by BETC Paris, which is aiming to reinvent charitable donations with a custom-designed fundraising tool that uses the blockchain-based cryptocurrency and ropes in the world's gamers as donors.

BETC came up with the idea in response to dwindling charitable support for the Syrian humanitarian crisis. With the donor pool getting older (71.6% of donors are over 50), UNICEF needed to identify a new generation of givers - and it set its sights on the 711 million gaming and eSports community.

But how to tap into this huge audience who spend hours sitting behind their computer screens? Simple: develop a new way to donate that requires no more effort than downloading a piece of software - and doesn't cost the donor a single euro.

Open to anyone who has a large graphics card in their computer, Game Chaingers uses a dedicated platform which harnesses the computing power of all the connected graphics cards, to 'mine' (generate) the Ethereum cryptocurrency for UNICEF. There's no minimum time requirement for mining; each participant can launch or halt the software whenever they choose. The cryptocoins mined by participants then go straight to UNICEF’s account, where they are converted into euros, with the total amount donated viewable at any time.

Scratching your head? Us too. Here's the techy bit: Ethereum, like other cryptocurrencies, uses a decentralised system. Ethereum transactions between individuals are authenticated, not by central trusted third parties (as with banks), but using a network of individual or professional computers known as miners. In return for allocating some of the computing power from their computers (predominantly from their graphics cards) to the network, miners are rewarded in Ethereum - hence why the process is known as mining.

If you fancy becoming a charity miner for UNICEF, simply visit the Game Chaingers site, download the software (preconfigured for individual participants) and launch the software to mine when you're next embarking on a Call of Duty marathon.

Gaming for good - what could be better?