UNICEF Australia Launches Crypto Mining Website To Raise Funds For Aid Programs

Announcements, News | May 1, 2018 By:

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Australia has launched a website that allows visitors to donate to its cause by mining cryptocurrency.

The Hope Page will allow Australians to provide help and hope to vulnerable children by simply opening the page while they are online. It allows visitors to select how much processing power they want to contribute to the mining process. The longer they stay on the site, the more cryptocurrency is mined. The cryptocurrency is automatically donated to UNICEF Australia and is turned into real funds that reach children through life-saving supplies like safe water, therapeutic food, and vaccines.

The Hope Page is powered by an opt-in version of the Coinhive API, AuthedMine, and mines the Monero cryptocurrency. Mining efforts will be used to fund the current Rohingya crisis. Several children and families that have fled their homes in Myanmar to escape military-led violence are now living in refugee camps in the neighboring country of Bangladesh and require certain necessities while they await placement.

“We wanted to leverage new emerging technologies to raise awareness about current humanitarian crises and raise funds to support children caught up in them,” said Jennifer Tierney, UNICEF Australia’s Director of Fundraising and Communications. “The Hope Page allows Australians to provide help and hope to vulnerable children by simply opening the page while they are online.”

This is not the first time UNICEF has used a browser-based cryptocurrency mining platform to automatically generate funds. In February, UNICEF launched a fundraising program – called Game Chaingers – meant to help finance the needs of protecting Syrian kids. At the time, the site was using the crypto mining software Claymore to extract ether through visitors’ computers. It was able to collect $1,176 from 11013 participants.