San Francisco's SoMA district was a sea of orange and black on Saturday, as baseball fans gathered early to drink and dine in nearby restaurants before the Giants faced off against the Mets at AT&T Park.

Around 4:30 p.m., one small crowd started gathering in front of the Willie Mays statue near the stadium's entrance, but the game wasn't their first priority. They wanted to see Jason King finish his 3,200-mile bitcoin mega-marathon at the corner of 3rd and King Streets. There wasn't a ribbon at the finish line, but his supporters–including the BitGive Foundation's Connie Gallippi, Bitcoin Not Bomb's Davi Barker, CryptoCorp's Ryan Singer, and Ethereum's wiz-kid hacker Vitalik Buterin–were ready to welcome him with confetti poppers and custom license plates that read "Stop Forrest Stop."

Close to 5:00 pm, King came running down the street in bitcoin-orange shoes and a black t-shirt displaying a huge QR code and the words "Sean's Outpost Donate BTC." Sean's Outpost is the charity he founded to feed the homeless in his hometown of Pensacola, Florida, where roughly one in six people live below the poverty line, and BTC is bitcoin. Like a few other charities across the country, the charity uses the egalitarian magic of bitcoin–the world's most popular digital currency–to better serve the homeless, and King's cross-country run is a culmination of these efforts.

>The operation is built around the egalitarian magic of bitcoin–the world's most popular digital currency.

"The whole point of the run [was] to raise awareness for homelessness and bitcoin," King said. "I'm tired of the homeless situation in America, and if you do something stupid like run across the country, you might get the attention of a couple of people along the way." When he began his Bitcoin Across America run at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, King’s blue-sky goal was to raise 1,000 bitcoins to help those in need back home. In the end, he raised about 200, but with the value of the digital currency once again on the rise, that's no small amount. And it doesn't account for the attention his run has brought to the cause.

Many see the homeless as "stray dogs," King says, and the government is often more interested in getting rid of them than helping them out of a bad situation. Pensacola, he says, has made it more or less illegal to be homeless. Other cities are also chasing the homeless away. On any given night, nearly 110,000 people experience homelessness across the U.S. "That's astronomical," he said. "It's our responsibility to try to do something about it. Being able to push that message on a broader stage has been really good–and then, of course, just spreading the bitcoin gospel is awesome."

The Promise of Bitcoin

When King talks about bitcoin and charities, he perks up, and a smile fills his bearded face. As King tells it, digital currencies could ease the socioeconomic problems brought about by the country’s current financial system–a centralized setup controlled by big banks and big credit card companies. Bitcoin is overseen by open-source software that runs on a large volunteer computer network spread around the world. It's currency for the everyman–no government-issued ID, no credit score, no physical address necessary.

Jason King. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

All that's needed is internet access. That isn't yet universal, but it's reach is expanding, thanks to mobile devices and public Wi-Fi in parks and libraries. Plus, startups like 37coins are working to provide transactions through dumb phones and text messages.

All this means it could be easier for underserved communities to use bitcoin and for charities to raise money with the digital currency. Bitcoin transactions allow people to instantly beam funds for hot meals, beds, blankets, or housing, all without the hefty fees, restrictions, and time lags typical of more traditional methods–from anywhere in the world. "High fees opened the door for companies like PayPal, which enabled small organizations, charities, or individuals to collect funds electronically. More recently, Square has moved into payments for small businesses. Virtual currencies are a natural continuation of this progression–the smaller the transaction, the more the fees and frictions matter," says Stanford economics professor Susan Athey.

Today, the frictions of getting funds into virtual currencies are still high for average consumers, though that too is changing. As barriers melt away, Athey says, cryptocurrencies could become more important for charities and non-profits. And Sean’s Outpost is already putting Athey’s hypothesis to the test. Since launching, the organization has received roughly 430 bitcoins–or the equivalent of $280,000–mostly from donations of just fractions of a bitcoin.

Bitcoin has its share of problems. Recently, Mt. Gox–once the largest bitcoin exchange–imploded into bankruptcy. Several governments have attempted to ban the cryptocurrency, and its value continues to yo-yo. These fluctuations could mean trouble for charities that operate using bitcoin or are holding on to it as an investment. Originally, most of the funds raised during King’s Forrest Gumpian run were going to go into an endowment, with the hopes its value would soar. But the opposite happened, with the charity dipping into the endowment to cover its operations. Nonetheless, King is bullish on bitcoin's longterm future. "We believe in this currency," he says.

On the Road

Before hitting the road on January 26, King went to the doctor to make sure his body could handle the stress. "He said I was crazy, but fit enough to do it. I didn’t go see a psychiatrist though," he jokes. The 35-year-old cryptophilantropist ran an average of 32 miles a day, more than the equivalent of a full marathon, on-and-off for about four months. He crossed rivers, inadvertently ran through a highway, got in a car accident, was escorted off private property, and–not surprisingly–had to have a cortisone shot for his right knee. He even ran an 11-mile stretch on a Louisiana road that was raised above a swamp, with no shoulder.

King drives the bus through downtown Austin in March. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

"I was basically running through traffic above swamps and alligators. It was in the middle of nowhere, so I couldn’t turn around and go back," he says. "When they say the Google Maps pedestrian [option] is in beta, they’re not joking." But it wasn’t all "terrifying." He spent most of his running hours listening to Neal Stephenson's works on his Android phone–a fitting choice, since as King explains it, the science fiction writer predicted bitcoin 20 years before bitcoin.

When he wasn't jogging, he went to bitcoin meet-ups and stopped to talk to construction workers, cops, pedicab drivers, x-ray technicians, and the homeless. And he ate plenty–about 10,000 calories daily. Still, he ended up losing 72 pounds–the weight of his son. King slept in motels and Walmart parking lots inside the 37-foot bus bitcoin wallet startup KryptoKit donated. It served as his family's mobile home for most of the trip and now Sean's Outpost will use it to deliver meals. He paid most of his expenses with donated points for Gyft, an app that lets you turn bitcoin into gift cards for major retailers.

The trip opened his eyes to the different challenges homeless people in different parts of the country face. In San Francisco, people knew where to get services. In other cities, the local governments were so broke they have few options. "It's one thing to know what the statistics are," he says. "It's another thing to come into these areas where [homelessness] is even worse than what I consider terrible...It's something we all need to be aware of."

Power to the Homeless

King, a network engineer by training, spent eight years in the military doing chemical warfare reconnaissance before retiring and starting an internet service provider in Dallas. In 2009, he sold the company and tried his hand at a couple of startups, but nothing stuck. Then, in early 2013, he founded Sean's Outpost. About a year and a half later, King has become something of a celebrity in the cryptocurrency community, says Dmitry Murashchik of Bitcoin100, an organization whose mission is to encourage charities to accept bitcoin.

King speaks at conferences around the country on how charities can leverage digital currencies. He organized the Bitcoin in the Beltway conference in Washington, D.C., which takes place later this month. And he's now a moderator on the bitcoin subreddit. But the whole point is that, thanks in large part to bitcoin, Sean's Outpost is helping people.

Chris Kantola, Paul Harrison, and Jesse Angle are just three of the many homeless people that King has supported. He and Sean's Outpost give them clothes, blankets, food, and a network of friends. In April 2013, he taught Angle how to set up a bitcoin wallet, and after Angle shared this knowledge with his buddies, the trio had a new way of supporting themselves.

>King has become something of a celebrity in the cryptocurrency community.

Kantola, Harrison, and Angle are now living in a house that's partially furnished with King’s help. And Kantola just landed a job as a sandwich maker at Sean's Outpost. The charity has mushroomed to include a 11,000-square-foot facility that doubles as a storage space, homeless shelter and outreach center and Satoshi Forest, a nine-acre plot where the homeless can sleep. At any given time, as many as two dozen homeless people sleep there, King says.

Now, Sean’s Outpost is expanding to other cities. The Dallas chapter has already launched, and Toronto and Vancouver are just gearing up. And with KryptoKit’s Dakh, King is building an open-source system through which donors can fund specific Sean’s Outpost projects–a crypto-based Indiegogo, if you will. They’re hoping other charities will adapt the platform to fundraise money for their own initiatives. "I think the impact of Sean’s Outpost is enormous," says Angle. "Jason King and his family are generous, kind people who are willing to go the extra mile. We need more people like them in this world."

And while that is certainly true, there's still a lot more to be done. At the Bitpay-sponsored tail-gating party to celebrate the end of a months-long event meant to help the homeless, one thing stuck out: it didn't include any homeless people.