Change.org’s Screensaver Mines Cryptocurrency While The Computer Is Idle

By Kapil Gauhar

The popular social petition platform, Change.org is asking its users to download a screensaver that mines cryptocurrency when inactive. This is not for the profit of the organisation but an effort to help the platform’s charity. The website teamed up with the marketing agency Traceylocke Brazil to come up with this idea.

Being dubbed as the “Mining  Screensaver”, the tool gets activated once the user leaves their computer idle for some time. As long as the device remains switched on, the tool runs a software that mines Monero using the system’s processing power.

According to Change.Org, the activity is legal, safe, simple and has no relation with hackers, viruses or any other digital threats. Even though it is not very profitable to mine Monero on a single PC, the organisation hopes that if thousands of people could pool in, they could net a significant amount to help fund its charity. The platform estimates that if 10000 people use the screensaver for 12 hours each day, they could generate $10,000 worth of donations in a month.

The program’s website describes cryptocurrency as an “alternate economic that has the potential to revolutionise the money circulation process”. The website also states “the screensaver mines cryptocurrency when you are not using it” notably the amount earned from this “is directly donated to the Change.org Foundation”. The screensaver is currently available for Windows, with no current indication of a Mac version in future.

Change.org isn’t the first platform to converge cryptocurrency mining with donations. Earlier UNICEF launched a cryptocurrency based fundfor Syrian children. Moreover, an anonymous donor set up the Pineapple
Fund, that had donated $55 million in Bitcoins to various organisations. Ethereum’s Buterin and Ripple have also set up crypto-donations in the past. Recently, Coinbase has set up a charity fund GiveCrypto that aims to raise $1 billion over the next two years.

While governments around the world are reluctant to grant cryptocurrencies legitimacy, cryptos are slowly becoming a widely accepted choice for charity donations.