Minutes of The Bitcoin Foundation Board Meeting held on January 15, 2019

Present:

Bobby Lee

Brock Pierce (Chairman)

Llew Claasen (Executive Director)

Michael Perklin

Vinny Lingham

Absent:

Bruce Fenton

Approval of the agenda

The agenda for the meeting was approved by the Board.

Approval of the minutes

The minutes of the meeting held on November 20, 2018, were approved by all present.

Financial update – December 2018

  • December revenue includes Membership contributions of $398. There were seven new members.
  • A donation of $3,000 was received this month in the form of a discount to the conference costs for Llew to attend the Satoshi roundtable Conference in Cancun, Mexico hosted by Bruce Fenton.
  • Operating expenses for the period were $4,618. This was lower than the prior months because there was no travel expenditure incurred during the month. This expense was before a loss in BTC value of $297 and a gain in ETH value of $3,211
  • The net surplus for the period was $1,694
  • 12/31/18 Bitcoin Balance was 0.6131 coins equating to $2,174
  • 12/31/18 ETH Balance was 158.9459 Ether equating to $21,199
  • December BPI high was $4,138.49 with a low of $3,178.42
  • Total Cash assets including BTC, ETH and USD were $24,442 at 12/31/18.

Operational update – December 2018

Decentralized party January 3, 2018

The board was not able to assist with getting confirmed speakers and community groups committed to participating in time to organize the event. The video livestream was therefore also cancelled. There were initially a number of interested people in Amsterdam and Australia that wanted to organize meetup events associated with this event.  Brock Pierce went ahead with a party in Puerto Rico.

The Foundation issued a press release on Jan 2 and encouraged everyone in the community to share their thoughts on the last 10 years of Bitcoin and their view on the future of Bitcoin using #GenesisBlockTurns10.  The post received a good response and had 75 retweets, 157 likes and the hashtag was used 66 times.

ED Speaking engagements

Decentralized (November 14-16), Athens, Greece on the micro-economics of decentralized networks and the key role of Bitcoin in the future financial system

Blockshow Asia (November 28-29) Singapore on the micro-economics of decentralized networks and the key role of Bitcoin in the future financial system

Legal counsel

Received $70k in unbudgeted and unapproved legal bills from NYC counsel (Pierre Ciric) for full 2018, despite instructions to bill monthly for easier budgeting. The ED is currently exploring discounting, repayment & fundraising options for these bills.

The Foundation engaged Thibault Verbiest to assist with participating in drafting of French crypto regulations. Exploring ways for Civic, Bitcoin Private, Meetups in Amsterdam & Australia to assist with covering these legal expenses.

Brown Rudnick NYC office have accepted Bitcoin Foundation as a pro-bono client covering all US legal requirements. Second brief to them (after Theo Chino amicus brief exploration) is updating Foundation bylaws to mirror Board terms of reference accepted in March 2018.

2019 Planning

Llew will be running a half-day cryptocurrency investment training seminar series for Angel investors and financial services professionals. The event will be co-branded with Foundation & other partner organizations and 20{01de1f41f0433b1b992b12aafb3b1fe281a5c9ee7cd5232385403e933e277ce6} of ticket proceeds will be donated to the Foundation by Llew. Projected income for Foundation from this initiative is $10k in Q1, $50k during FY2019. This will also allow the Foundation to lean on other partnerships as they will provide support and promotion.

Foundation website will soon include a fundraising page with progress markers for key initiatives in 2019. This will encourage people to fund opportunities that they care about.

Llew will host online workshops with members during Jan to get a sense of what members would like to do in 2019 & how members can assist with increasing reach, awareness of our initiatives & fundraising capability.

Llew will host online workshops with partner groups during Jan to get a sense of what we can do together in 2019 & how they can assist with increasing our reach, awareness of our initiatives & fundraising capability. These organizations currently include Bitcoin Private, as well as Bitcoin meetup groups in Amsterdam & Australia.

The culmination of this process will be an operating plan & financial budget for FY2019 prepared in Feb 2019 & presented at the board meeting on Feb 26.

Director appointments

One of the nominees declined participation and another nomination was withdrawn after attempts to schedule discussions with the nominee failed. One of the shortlisted nominees would like to speak with more board members before confirming her involvement. She has already spoken with Bobby Lee.

Vinny and Llew will reach out to 2 additional nominees to assess their interest in joining the board.

Other matters

Michael mentioned the Satoshi Roundtable may be a good source for donations to the Foundation and that it would be good for Llew to attend.

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01.15.19 Minutes of Regular Meeting of the Board of Directors of The Bitcoin Foundation

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SOURCE: Bitcoin Foundation – Read entire story here.