Hi, EFF employee who worked on our acceptance of Bitcoin here.
The linked article simplifies the history somewhat. In fact, we attempted to give away all of our BTC to the Bitcoin Faucet because of legal uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin.
When we decided to start accepting Bitcoin donations again, the developer who runs the Faucet offered to return the remaining value to us. Because of increases in the price of bitcoins in the interim, EFF was able to sell the BTC that came back to us from the Faucet for about $95,000.
By my calculations (using contemporary market depth data), that's coincidentally just about the same amount of U.S. currency that EFF would have realized if we'd sold all of those bitcoins at the time that we donated them to the Faucet. I'm glad that that value was eventually able to be used for EFF's purposes as the donors originally intended.
Since deciding to accept Bitcoin again, EFF has used a payment processor to sell all bitcoins as soon as they're donated, so we never possess them and never make individual decisions about when to sell or hold them. (That's what will happen if you donate in BTC today.)
