Transparent way to create a money pool

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: John Doe Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/67025 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Let's say I want to raise money for a project, and I want my investors to know the number of contributions and their amount. Obviously I can't give my bank or payment processor credentials (psw). This data must be completely transparent, public, operated by a third-party (can't be cooked up). My ideas: Bitcoin. Ok they are transparent (you can check a wallet's balance), but they are cryptic to the general public. Use a Forex broker, because with Metatrader they have an investor account (can see, but not operate). Any ideas?

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Daniel Anderson Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/67454 License: CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Rather than automating it, why not just create a listing that you maintain and display on your site yourself? That way you don't have to give out credentials or anything else. It also presents a bit of a marketing opportunity. You could group contributors by the size of their contributions and thank them publicly. For example, maybe your top contributors could be members of the "Heroes Club", and you could come up with jazzy names for other groups. It's a way of publicly acknowledging their contributions in a way that they appreciate, and perhaps it motivates others to up their own contributions to get into one of the more prominent groupings. It becomes a competitive "one-upsmanship" thing, if that makes sense. I understand your desire to be transparent, and that's admirable, but see the marketing and public relations opportunity it brings to you as well. I hope this helps. Good luck!

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: keshlam Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/67468 License: CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Why wouldn't one of the existing crowdsourcing systems meet your needs? Yes, they charge a commission, but they have already addressed the issues you raise and specifically they provide the third-party accounting you want.