On May 11, the first day of this year’s Consensus: Distributed conference and of our month-long [#NYBWGives](/crypto/new/NYBWGives) fundraising campaign for COVID-19 relief, it was a bit painful to watch the donations counter. With just a few hundred dollars clocked by 5 p.m. ET, it seemed we were never going to raise enough to match the $25,000 CoinDesk had pledged for the first of two donation-matching pools, let alone reach our $100,000 target.
But then the bitcoin and ether “whales” arrived.