When Shaney Jo Darden founded the Keep A Breast Foundation 26 years ago, cryptocurrency did not exist, social media was still years away and online fundraising platforms had yet to be imagined. What did exist was a community of artists, skateboarders and surfers who wanted to help a friend. That friend had breast cancer and was also pregnant.
“My background is in design. I used to be a clothing designer, and I was hosting exhibitions for a few years with art exhibitions from the action sports and skateboarding community,” Darden explained.
“One of the women in that community had breast cancer. There was no GoFundMe, there wasn’t even social media, there weren’t ways that now when something happens to a friend, instantly they’re on GoFundMe and they can raise 30,000 dollars in a day.”
Instead, Darden did what came naturally. She organised an art exhibition featuring plaster casts of women’s breasts painted by artists from the skateboarding and street art world. The exhibition raised a few thousand dollars. Tragically, it was not enough to save her friend.
From single fundraiser to foundation
The fundraiser was intended to be a one-off event. Instead, it became the foundation of what would grow into an international organisation focused on breast cancer prevention, education and early detection. Today, Keep A Breast Foundation operates globally, with programmes in Europe, Africa and North America, and more than 70,000 users of its breast self-check app.
What brought us together was not the history of the charity, however, but one of its newest and most unexpected supporters: a Solana memecoin called Boobillions.
“She passed away only two weeks after her baby was born,” Darden recalled.
On the surface, the partnership appears improbable. One side is a long-established breast cancer charity rooted in youth culture, art and education. The other is a cryptocurrency community built around a token with the ticker symbol $boob.
Yet Darden sees a connection immediately.
“We’ve always been community based,” she said. “People have done every type of fundraiser you could possibly do. We’ve had chilli cook-offs, we’ve had donut nights, car races, beer festivals. Yes, we need to raise money, but those little things build community. There’s real magic when people come together for a reason.”
That observation may explain why she appears interested both in the mechanics of the token as well as in the people behind it.
The original project, she admits, did not begin smoothly. After an initial launch, members of the crypto community approached her directly, concerned that the project was losing momentum and eager to rescue it.
“They said, ‘We know who you are, we know your organisation, we’re seeing what’s going on and we want to take over this project and do it properly.’ We got on Zoom calls, they showed me who they were, explained their backgrounds and I thought, okay, let’s go for it. What do I have to lose?”
Since then, the community has generated almost $100,000 for Keep A Breast Foundation through fees generated by activity around the token and associated sponsorships. The money is helping fund prevention and education programmes while also contributing to The Keep A Breast Valley, a wellness retreat being developed in Southern California for breast cancer survivors, patients and their families.
The community behind the token
“I love going on X every day and engaging with the community,” she said. “It’s my coffee ritual in the morning. I’ve gotten to know so many of the people there and they’re just so sincere and sweet. They’re excited about supporting Keep A Breast Foundation. They’re excited about the narrative this has created.”
Listening to her speak, it becomes clear that she does not see the Boobillions community as radically different from the skateboarding community that helped launch Keep A Breast Foundation all those years ago. The technology may have changed but the behaviour has not.
Both groups formed around shared interests. Both organised themselves voluntarily. Both discovered that lots of small contributions can create meaningful outcomes. Most importantly, both cared enough to show up.
At a time when much of the conversation around cryptocurrency focuses on speculation, volatility and regulation, the Boobillions story offers a different perspective. It suggests that blockchain technology may be less important than the communities forming around it.
For Darden, that lesson feels familiar. Twenty-six years ago, a group of artists and skateboarders came together to help a friend. Today, people scattered across the world are doing something remarkably similar through a digital token.
“The tools are different, but the instinct is exactly the same,” she says.
