The BitGive Foundation announced today that it has become the first nonprofit bitcoin organization to achieve 501(c)(3) status, meaning the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officially recognizes it as a charitable organisation in the US. This means that any gains made by the foundation will not be taxed, thus directing more money to its supported causes.

BitGive executive director Connie Gallippi told that it is about more than just money, however, “It does give us legitimacy with the US government, which has been a huge struggle for bitcoin as far as businesses are concerned.”

BitGive is dedicated to improving the public health and environment worldwide by giving funds that it raises to various philanthropic organizations and projects. It accepts corporate and individual donations, and counts BitPay, Xapo, LibraTax and Roger Ver among its founding donors.

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Today the foundation also launches two new initiatives: the Founding Donors Campaign and a membership program for individuals. Each is open to donors worldwide.

The new campaign is aimed at one-shot donations from larger groups or companies to help get the foundation’s activity rolling, whereas the membership program is being offered to individuals on an annual basis to support the underlying operations of the organization. Furthermore, in the following year, the foundation plans to offer an annual component to corporations and larger donors.

Gallippi said that the organization’s long-term functionality is to have the equivalent of a multi-million-dollar investment trust, in bitcoin, from which it can give to causes and projects.

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It may be cliché, but perhaps no single word sums up bitcoin quite as well as “disruptive”. Computer scientists have been trying to create secure and sustainable digital cash since the earliest days of the Internet, and until Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper introducing bitcoin was published in 2008, their efforts were in vain.

While the public may still be polarized by the digital currency, most people who take the time to learn about bitcoin and the block chain come to realize the significance of a decentralized, trustless network and the impacts it could potentially have in many areas of everyday life.

The use cases of such a technology are only beginning to be explored, but the bitcoin protocol has already proven to be a game-changer, allowing its users to do things that had previously been thought impractical or even impossible.

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Previous forays into online-based currencies have resulted in failures like e-Gold or centralized currencies often found in gaming communities, but bitcoin is the first digital-only currency that is completely decentralized to gain significant traction. There are many implications of this, but one key value of a decentralized digital currency is that anyone can create a bitcoin wallet to hold their money, without needing to rely on a bank’s approval or their government’s issued currency.

It’s no secret that money transfer services like Western Union and Moneygram are flawed. These companies often take days to transfer money across the globe, and they charge a hefty service fee for their work. Bitcoin, on the other hand, allows anybody with Internet access to send any amount of money anywhere in the world. The notion of smart contracts—contracts that can be digitally created and verified—has been around for years, but is now being approached in a whole new light in the face of bitcoin.

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Given that the design of bitcoin’s peer-to-peer system was partly inspired by gold, it’s not a surprise that many bitcoin enthusiasts are also fans of the precious metal. Both gold and bitcoin are scarce commodities used as stores of value by those who might be distrustful of fiat currencies.

The bitcoin community has long been interested in courting gold users – Ripple, for example, recently introduced gold trading to its platform. Even so, gold enthusiasts have not always been bitcoin champions. Some even go so far as to vocally oppose bitcoin as an investment vehicle.

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It’s important to establish why bitcoin users believe the digital currency could take the place of gold in the global market. One of the main reasons is because some see bitcoin as an investment without the common pain points associated with gold. In addition, significant investment capital pouring into the bitcoin market could make it more valuable than gold. The high-water mark for those who share this value belief took place on 29th November, when the price of bitcoin on then-operational Mt Gox exchange reached a high of $1,242, trading two cents above gold’s $1,241.98 at the time.

That price similarity was short lived, however. Soon after the start of 2014, bitcoin’s price fell due to uncertainty in the Chinese market – along with the collapse of Mt Gox. Despite a brief correlation in price, high volatility is the reason some still think that most gold bugs don’t believe in bitcoin as an investment.

Gold prices fluctuate too, but not as much as bitcoin has this year. BTC has seen an over 62% drop in 2014 after hitting a high of $951.39 in early January down to $360.84 in April.

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