--- title: "any coin, steady money" canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/any-coin-steady-money markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/any-coin-steady-money.md subtitle: "a donor wants to give in a coin that swings. the place's account can take it in and keep dollars or euros instead." category: onchain --- # any coin, steady money *a donor wants to give in a coin that swings. the place's account can take it in and keep dollars or euros instead.* A donor emails the land trust: they would like to give, and they would like to give in a coin. The director's first thought is not gratitude. It is the board meeting where someone asks why the gift lost a third of its value before anyone could spend it. That fear is reasonable. Plenty of coins swing hard, some lose most of their value, and a land trust is not a trading desk. But the choice is no longer between refusing the gift and holding the swing. Picture a stretch of the [Crystal River](/crystal-river.basin?from=guide) in Colorado. The riffles, the cottonwoods and the snowmelt keep working whether or not anyone pays them, and the people who keep them are usually paid last and late. The money people trust most, dollars and euros issued by regulated firms and banks, now moves on public ledgers at any hour. **[ensurance](/?from=guide)** gives a place like that river an account that can receive money directly and keep routing it to the work. A coin can arrive in that account. It does not have to stay a coin. :::johnson **a gift in a coin that swings does not have to stay one.** — the place's account can take it in and turn it into dollars or euros you can count. [see the swapper that turns coins into dollars →](/proceeds/0x12ed09e837f9aec86b2a2d88b8d85b0eef33b792?from=guide) ::: ## how to accept crypto donations without holding the swing **To accept crypto donations without the swing, a nonprofit gives the place it keeps an account on a public network, receives the coin there, and swaps it into a dollar or euro stablecoin such as USDC or EURC. The gift is commonly recorded at what it was worth on arrival. What the organization keeps is steady money, not the coin.** Is this crypto? Yes: a public ledger and a service that keeps accounts on it. The rest of this post is about what the account does with what it receives. Here is the sequence on **ensurance** today: 1. **Give the place an account.** A place on ensurance can have an [agent](/agents?from=guide): an account that belongs to the place, not to a staff member's personal wallet. The account is not the place. It is where money for the place lands. 2. **Share the address and the network.** The account lives on Base, the public network ensurance runs on. A donor sends the coin to that address on Base. A coin on another network has to be moved to Base first, so say "Base" in the ask. 3. **Let the account propose a swap.** When a coin arrives, the account can propose swapping it into USDC (dollars) or EURC (euros). The proposal shows what goes out, what comes back and the network fee. Nothing moves until a person confirms it. That shape is described in [the account proposes, you confirm](/guide/the-account-proposes-you-confirm?from=guide). 4. **Hold or cash out.** Keep the dollars or euros in the account for the work, or move them to a bank through an exchange or off-ramp that serves your country. Cashing out is a separate service from the coin's issuer, and it has its own terms. Take any coin. Keep steady money. ## the system already does this for the whole tree You do not have to imagine how this looks at scale. The [proceeds tree](/proceeds?from=guide) on ensurance is public. Money from sales and trades flows through splits to the accounts of places and the people who keep them. Some branches end in a **swapper**: a contract that holds whatever coins flow into it and converts them into one target currency when a swap runs. Two of those swappers are the plainest example of this whole post. | swapper | converts into | different coins waiting (read 1 November 2026) | some of the names | |---|---|---|---| | [USDC swapper](/proceeds/0x12ed09e837f9aec86b2a2d88b8d85b0eef33b792?from=guide) | US dollars (USDC) | 20 | boreal forests, pollination, habitat, upstream | | [EURC swapper](/proceeds/0xb589c6363c74bfc6ed36b6acf31afbc6f5dd7761?from=guide) | euros (EURC) | 24 | boreal forests, giant redwoods, pollination, condor | Those names are not invented for this post. Many are coins named for living systems, each one a [general ensurance](/general?from=guide) coin; the rest are common coins such as ETH. When one trades in its pool, the pool fee goes to that coin's payout recipient, usually a split that pays the place and the agents tied to it. They sit in the swapper as a mixed pile, the way a donation box fills with different bills, and the swapper's job is to turn the pile into one currency the next account can count. The point is the shape, not the size: two dozen different coins on one side, dollars or euros on the other, and a public record of both. ### why some coins wait Whether it is a swapper or a single place's account, a swap needs two things. There has to be a market for the coin deep enough to sell into, and the network fee has to be a small enough share of the trade to be worth paying. The swap code a place's account uses checks both. It refuses a pair with no liquidity, and it flags a swap where the network fee is a large share of the trade; an automated run may skip it. So a small gift in a thinly traded coin may sit in the account until it is worth swapping. That is not a failure. It is the same judgment a finance officer makes when a check is too small to justify a wire fee. It is also why the honest answer to "can you take any coin?" is: you can receive any coin on Base, and you can turn it into dollars or euros whenever a market for it exists. ## what steady money means here USDC and EURC are dollar and euro stablecoins issued by Circle. Circle describes both as fully reserved and redeemable one for one, and EURC is issued in the European Union by Circle France under the EU's MiCA rules. Circle also states that these are not legal tender and not covered by deposit insurance. A stablecoin is a claim on the company that issues it. Whether that claim is safe enough for your reserves is its own question, answered in [are stablecoins safe?](/guide/are-stablecoins-safe?from=guide). What matters for a donation is the direction of travel. You start with a coin whose price can move a lot in a day. You end with a unit that aims to stay at one dollar or one euro. That is the step that takes the swing off your books. Converting by default is already normal at the checkout. Since June 2025, Shopify merchants working with Coinbase and Stripe can accept USDC on Base, and by default Stripe converts it to local currency and pays the merchant's bank on the usual schedule. A merchant can choose to keep the USDC instead. A land trust can make the same choice: convert what arrives, or hold the dollars for the work. ## the accounting, in plain words Many organizations record the gift at what it was worth when it arrived, and keep the record of that moment: the coin, the amount, the time and the transaction. Treat the swap as a separate step with its own record. If the swap brings back more or less than the value you booked, that difference belongs on its own line. Rules for valuing and acknowledging non-cash gifts differ by country and by the kind of organization you are. Ask your accountant before the first gift arrives, not after. The public ledger helps here, because every arrival and every swap has a time stamp and an address anyone can check. ## what this does not do Three limits, said plainly: - **No automatic conversion on arrival.** Today the account proposes a swap and a person confirms it. There is no switch that converts every incoming coin the moment it lands. - **No market, no swap.** A coin nobody is trading cannot be turned into dollars by any system, ours included. It waits, or it stays a coin. - **Not every coin is welcome.** Receiving a coin does not make it a good gift. If a coin's origin worries you, ask the donor about it, as you would with any unusual gift. A coin is not a currency you have to keep. It is a way some people prefer to give. The place's account takes the gift in, the swap turns it into money your board already understands, and the river gets the work it needs. ## frequently asked questions ### how can a nonprofit accept crypto donations? Give the place you keep an account on Base, share its address with the donor, and swap what arrives into USDC or EURC once a person confirms. Record the gift at its value on arrival and ask your accountant how to treat the swap. ### what happens if a donated coin has no buyer? It stays in the account as a coin until a market for it exists. The swap code refuses pairs with no liquidity and flags trades where the network fee is too large a share of the gift. ### do we have to hold crypto at all? You hold the donated coin only until a swap is confirmed. After that you hold a dollar or euro stablecoin, or you move the money to a bank through an exchange or off-ramp that serves your country. ### can a donor give in euros instead of dollars? Yes. EURC is a euro stablecoin on Base, and the EURC swapper in the proceeds tree already converts coins into euros. A place's account can hold either. ### is a coin donation the same as a certificate purchase? No. A donation is a gift into the place's account. A certificate is something a buyer purchases for a named place, settling in its chosen currency to the account the certificate names. That can be any coin on Base, or ETH; USDC and EURC are the steady choices. Both reach the same account. Start with the [USDC swapper](/proceeds/0x12ed09e837f9aec86b2a2d88b8d85b0eef33b792?from=guide) to see the pile and the target side by side, then [give the place you keep an account](/agents?from=guide). ## sources [Circle MiCA redemption policy](https://www.circle.com/legal/mica-redemption-policy) and [Circle EEA](https://www.circle.com/circle-eea) — USDC and EURC described as fully reserved and redeemable 1:1; EURC issued in the EU by Circle France under MiCA; not legal tender, not covered by deposit insurance [Shopify: stablecoins on Shopify](https://www.shopify.com/news/stablecoins-on-shopify) and [The Block, 2025-06-12](https://www.theblock.co/news/markets/2025-06-12-shopify-coinbase-stripe-usdc-357967) — USDC on Base at checkout with Coinbase and Stripe; converted to local currency by default, or kept as USDC ## the series - [the money you trust is already onchain](/guide/the-money-you-trust-is-already-onchain?from=guide) (read first) - [a stablecoin is a dollar with an address](/guide/a-stablecoin-is-a-dollar-with-an-address?from=guide) - [are stablecoins safe?](/guide/are-stablecoins-safe?from=guide) - [every currency is coming onchain](/guide/every-currency-is-coming-onchain?from=guide) - [paid on arrival](/guide/paid-on-arrival?from=guide) - [proceeds pay all the time](/guide/proceeds-pay-all-the-time?from=guide) - [any coin, steady money](/guide/any-coin-steady-money?from=guide) - [fund the dependency from the treasury you already hold](/guide/fund-the-dependency-from-the-treasury-you-already-hold?from=guide)