Payjoin Foundation Gains 501(c)(3) Status, Enabling Tax-Deductible Donations for Bitcoin Privacy Development

Bitcoin Magazine

Payjoin Foundation Gains 501(c)(3) Status, Enabling Tax-Deductible Donations for Bitcoin Privacy Development

The Payjoin Foundation, a U.S. organization advancing the development of Bitcoin privacy software protocols, has just received 501(c)(3) Status, enabling tax-deductible charitable contributions for some U.S. taxpayers.

“Receiving 501(c)(3) status establishes a framework to sustain the Payjoin Dev Kit and future developments,” said Dan Gould, Executive Director of Payjoin Foundation. “It allows us to prioritize the development of infrastructure designed to endure, accountable to the public interest.”

Payjoin Foundation is a nonprofit research and development organization maintaining the Payjoin Dev Kit. It is dedicated to developing and distributing open-source software and standards that improve privacy, security, and usability in peer-to-peer digital transactions with a primary focus on Bitcoin.

The Foundation conducts research, publishes freely available software and educational materials, and supports the adoption of the technology it develops by providing reference implementations, technical documentation, and integration guidance to developers and infrastructure operators. The Foundation also works to advance public understanding of privacy-preserving financial infrastructure.

“Now that the IRS has recognized Payjoin Foundation as a 501(c)(3), donations from U.S. taxpayers are generally tax-deductible. The exact treatment depends on the donor’s circumstances. Consult your tax advisor,” said Gould of the announcement.

With more sustainable funding, the efforts of the foundation can accelerate, as it improves protocols like Async Payjoin, which protects Bitcoin users from indiscriminate or targeted surveillance of various kinds. Bitcoin has long been criticized for having poor privacy for users not savvy to its more advanced tooling, and the Payjoin dev kit makes it easy for wallets to upgrade the privacy of all its users with a high-quality open source software library.

The adoption of Payjoin as a privacy solution is not done at the Bitcoin protocol level and so does not require any kind of consensus change, soft fork or hard fork, instead, wallet providers can integrate the dev kit into their software, and unlock the capability to their users, which is backwards compatible with normal onchain address QR codes and intelligently identifies if the sender or receiver also supports the standard or not.

Users interested in easier and more broadly adopted Bitcoin privacy should reach out to their favorite Bitcoin wallet providers and encourage them to integrate the Payjoin Devkit, or consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the Payjoin Foundation.

A variety of wallets already offer some support for the Payjoin dev kit, including but not limited to: