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Mozilla Foundation pausing cryptocurrency donations

459 points by cpeterso 5y ago

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Meh, yet another PR-laden series of tweets. Gotta love that "we were mocked and insults were hurled at us" in PR-English is "this led to an important discussion", and "we wanted to jump on the bandwagon and thought no one would criticize us" turns to "a lot has changed since we started accepting crypto donations"...
taxyz23 5y ago
Seems one more reason why Mozilla is failing? hard to get anything done without someone internally raising political.concerns. Imagine the meeting time wasted on this. Better ways to spend ccrporate time.
trizuz 5y ago
rvz 5y ago
> So, starting today we are reviewing if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals. And as we conduct our review, we will pause the ability to donate cryptocurrency You mean Bitcoin, Ethereum? Since they are the biggest ones currently 'destroying' the planet? I'm sure there exist eco-friendly cryptocurrencies that are suitable for donations? But never-mind though, Bitcoin and Ethereum = ALL cryptocurrencies somehow. So back to receiving Google's money.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kunagi7 5y ago
  Just a friendly remainder that donations to the Foundation don't pay for Firefox development. Google's money pays for Corporation stuff (Firefox), donations pay for other things they do around the world [1]. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/
  - throw10920 5y ago
    Wow, I didn't know that. This is perverse in several ways: Funding for Firefox development comes from Google, which is pushing Chrome in such a way that is destroying the web. Funding for Mozilla's non-Firefox projects probably comes mostly from Firefox users. I want to donate to Mozilla exclusively for Firefox development - yet the only thing that my money will not be used for is Firefox, and I strongly disapprove of many of their other projects that my money would actually go to. This is just a mess.
    - anonymousab 5y ago
      IIRC their mullvad resell vpn is run through the corp, so if you want to donate just to the product side of things, buying that service may be the clearest way. But even then, there's no guarantees on how the money gets shuffled around.
    - fabrice_d 5y ago
      If you want to support Firefox development financially, you can subscribe to Mozilla's commercial services: their VPN, and Pocket.
      - solarkraft 5y ago
        But the VPN is worse than the service it rebrands. And I don't want to support the way they integrate or run Pocket (even though I mostly like Pocket).
      - mort96 5y ago
        Am I literally the only person on earth who remembers that Mozilla promised to open-source Pocket when they acquired it? Why is nobody talking about that? Why aren't the usually-angry mob of mozilla haters up in arms about it?
        Arnavion 5y ago
        I assume anyone who hasn't already disabled Pocket doesn't care about it being open-sourced.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  The current crypto donation policy is not "we accept any crypto directly including eco friendly ones" it is "we do crypto donations via BitPay" which doesn't support said eco-friendly crypto options so it has been paused. The announcement also does not say no better crypto policy could be put in place it just says they are reviewing the policy. In all likelyhood though yes, they aren't going to accept crypto as hardly anyone uses eco-friendly forms of crypto to the point it's worthwhile to try to push for donations via that means.
nathias 5y ago
I'm sure now everyone that was so ethically repulsed by the crimes of crypto will donate twice as much.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  That’s implying that half of Mozilla’s donations were via crypto which I doubt.
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    Reading it literally no I don't think it implies that. GP may just be suggesting (sarcastically) that people will be so appreciative that they will donate twice as much in appreciation.
    - uncomputation 5y ago
      Maybe I misread the tone of GP but I interpreted it as a sarcastic defense of crypto (“ethically repulsed by the crimes of crypto” being the hyperbole here that mocks the repulsed (similar to how “in his infinite wisdom” is a sarcastic criticism)) which basically argues that the crypto critics need to put their money where their mouth is and “make up” for the lost crypto donations if they are so insistent Mozilla doesn’t accept them. But this doesn’t make sense if the crypto donations are small.
      - nathias 5y ago
        I meant that critics will give twice as much as they first intended before they were prevented by this apalling breach of Ethics. Technically correct because that's almost certainly zero. It's never a smart move to cave in to twitter mobs.
        emerged 5y ago
        The grifters pushing to pay in units of planetary damage mob on Twitter too.
uncomputation 5y ago
IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” and it’s only Baby Boomers that don’t - views climate change as a more significant issue than centralized financial institutions. (Please don’t respond talking about some “$ECO coin” or such business.)
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” and it’s only Baby Boomers that don’t - views climate change as a more significant issue than centralized financial institutions. That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. It's not consistent with what Web3-invested VCs want people to take from that, though.
  - pxc 5y ago
    > That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. In an ironic sense, definitely. It shows that they have better sense of the real value of web3 than the people pushing it
  - uncomputation 5y ago
    Gen Z hates crypto and web3[1]. They are also partaking in the backlash. [1]: From my experience a lot of the crypto “community” online is Gen Z, but most of Gen Z is not pro-crypto. All thumbs are fingers sort of logic.
    - raunak 5y ago
      You are very right. Tiktok loves NFTs, but only NFTTok, which is a very tiny subsection of Gen Z. On the other hand, the other 99% of gen z regularly comments about how they’ve “stolen” your NFT after screenshotting it.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  and in so far as gen-z is 'pro-crypto' at least from my experience it's large nihilistic attitude towards economic progress and having adopted a casino-capitalism style mentality where gambling on the newest crypto-asset is just a means to get rich quick. Which to be fair isn't much different from the general attitude towards it in any other generation.
ethanhunt_ 5y ago
Anything to avoid working on the browser itself. Very sad to see the decline of Mozilla and Firefox. I wonder if someone could fork it and take all the people from Mozilla who are actually contributing to the technical mission (a small group these days!). Brendan Eich would've been perfect for this, but he's got his own browser now and wisely chose to use chromium as the base.
- daenney 5y ago
  Donations to the foundation don’t pay for Fx development. That’s under the Mozilla Corporation.
  - lnxg33k1 5y ago
    I was completely not aware of this didn't even imagine something like that, but apparently it's so https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/fellowships-and-awards-partners/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/fellowships-a...
    - emerged 5y ago
      You and probably the majority of donators. You’d think at some point that might be considered fraudulent on the part of Mozilla.
      - lnxg33k1 5y ago
        Yeah but who would have the guts the sue a company that has worked so much to improve the world? You should be one of those people who hoarded toilet paper to resell it overpriced during the start of the pandemic to do something like that
        emerged 5y ago
        The ends justify the means? If they hold me up at gunpoint for donations should I just not complain because they do other things that inxg33k1 believes improve the world? I stopped using Firefox years ago because of such “improvements” they obsess over instead of stewarding one of the very few web browsers which could have helped keep the web open but is instead borderline controlled opposition.
RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
- koof 5y ago
  As opposed to you, who is definitely not virtue signaling.
  - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
    Nope definitely not.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  > more ecological damage and pollution Source please?
  - lnxg33k1 5y ago
    His bank account
  - dnautics 5y ago
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Actually, doesn't the US government tax “gains” from Bitcoin “appreciation”?
      - dnautics 5y ago
        fine. Marginally paid for by bitcoin.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - 5y ago
ca98am79 5y ago
- gexla 5y ago
  I assume they would be converting the crypto to USD.
mrfinn 5y ago
Just accept Nano, guys. You are welcome.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
minimaxir 5y ago
For context, here's the original tweet (still up): https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1476951030638260225 https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1476951030638260225 > Dabble in @dogecoin? HODLing some #Bitcoin & #Ethereum? > We’re using @BitPay to accept donations in #cryptocurrency The tweet prompted a strong reaction from Mozilla founder jwz: https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1478022085737803776 https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1478022085737803776 > Hi, I'm sure that whoever runs this account has no idea who I am, but I founded @mozilla and I'm here to say fuck you and fuck this. Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.
- xvector 5y ago
  Yikes, well that eliminates any respect I had for the "founder of Mozilla."
  - gspr 5y ago
    It elevates mine.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- donkarma 5y ago
  Dude must have an ego the size of a planet to say something like that
  - iqanq 5y ago
    One of the most histrionic characters in the tech scene, and that's a lot to say.
  - waffle_maniac 5y ago
    Brave is on track to destroy his legacy. https://brave.com/transparency/ https://brave.com/transparency/
solarkraft 5y ago
I don't even care about the crypto currencies that much. Please just stop ruining everything.
- masegod 5y ago
  Ruining... nothing?
halpert 5y ago
I feel like you shouldn't complain about bitcoin if you drive a car or have been on an airplane in the last year. Or if you have received goods manufactured overseas. Or live / work in a building that uses concrete. Or consume beef. Or consume factory farmed food. Or eat fish. Or... Just to add some numbers: bitcoin is responsible for 0.1% of global carbon emissions, and will decrease (as a %) as CO2 emissions of other sectors grow: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/bitcoin-mining-09-total-global-emissions-2030-bullish-price-nydig-2021-9 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/bitcoin-...
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  My house protects me. Food feeds me. My iPhone from China does many many things that I find useful. Bitcoin hopefully allows me to accumulate wealth but otherwise adds no value to my life. Doesn’t seem like an appropriate comparison.
  - masegod 5y ago
    Permission-less transactions and wealth storage are an unprecedented technology, people living outside of authoritarian regimes struggle with this concept.
  - halpert 5y ago
    Food feeds you, but many people choose to eat food that is wasteful. Your home protects you, but many people live in large homes in climates that require heating and cooling. Your iPhone from China does things you like, which really is what this comes down to. You like iPhones. You don't like Bitcoin. There is nothing more to this argument other than preferences.
    - detritus 5y ago
      Seems more like your initial point slipped quite a bit into farce since you made it.
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
kingcharles 5y ago
There is a lot of cryptocurrency out there to be spent, and Mozilla needs it. The pragmatic solution would be to take the money and use X% to offset the environmental damage the donation created.
almost 5y ago
Good! Nice to see they’ve done the right thing even if it was a little late. I’m sure they got a lot of pressure both from users and from their own employees.
practice9 5y ago
Dumb PR move from dying company
mjr00 5y ago
Between this and Tesla citing climate change as a reason for dropping crypto, this is actually a very interesting shift, and one that might be very bad for crypto. The amount of money people actually donated or spent with crypto has always been minimal. (Wish I had harder numbers to back this up, but you can see second-order effects from e.g. Steam adding Bitcoin support but then taking it away. Or how Bitpay has stagnated heavily, while a purely investment/speculation platform like Coinbase is worth billions.) However, for a long time, the benefit of accepting Bitcoin as payment was the marketing. Accepting crypto signaled that you were a cool company, you could put out a press release and the news media would run articles about how X service is now accepting cryptocurrency for payments. The same thing happened again years later with "blockchain." Remember Kodakcoin? Remember Long Island Blockchain? Nothing ever really surfaced from these initiatives, but again, it was all about that big marketing hype that came from saying your company was going to use blockchain for... something. Where it gets interesting is... what if crypto becomes anathema? What if accepting crypto or holding crypto starts become so closely associated with directly causing climate change, that no company is going to want to be openly associated with crypto, NFTs, etc due to the negative association? You have one side hyping up Web3 as the next evolution as the web, but if the perception of crypto continues to be that it's a significant contributor to climate change -- regardless of how true that may be -- we could see a major decline in mainstream support.
- TimJRobinson 5y ago
  It's crazy that it's 2022 and so many people on HN still think crypto is majority Proof of Work... Ethereum is transitioning to Proof of Stake this year and after that Bitcoin will be the ONLY major cryptocurrency still on PoW.
- nikanj 5y ago
  You can still use cryptos to pay for unmentionables on the web, extract anonymous payments from crime victims, and most importantly gamble in a wholly unregulated casino.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    I'd also note that the unregulated casinos can be (but aren't always) verifiable in how they function, so if you want high assurance that the odds and such are as stated, you can (in some cases) obtain such assurance, despite the lack of regulation. (but, you'd have to be careful to check the claims and such, and, if you can't or don't have time to check the software yourself, you might have to trust a 3rd party evaluating the system, and possibly there wouldn't be any such organization that you would trust who has done such a check.)
skarz 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mwattsun 5y ago
Digital money is still a good idea. I don't want to throw it out because current implementations are bad. No doubt, someone will invent a way to make it work. edit: in a sustainable way.
- Hendrikto 5y ago
  Alternate consensus algorithms have been invented, implemented, and proven in practice for almost a decade. Proof of Stake (PoS) is the most popular, but there are others.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    All that's left to do then is ruin Bitcoin with a 51% attack by the combined forces of nation states who are working on climate change
jwblackwell 5y ago
At this point, Mozilla is basically irrelevant anyway
idkyall 5y ago
Personally, I believe in Crypto, but I'm entirely against Bitcoin. I think Proof of Work is a massive waste of energy, and I would be happy if Bitcoin went to 0, quite frankly. But nowadays, not all cryptos are proof of work based. Plenty of major crypto projects are based on proof of stake and offer fully fledged smart contract features to support Web 3 apps. I don't think proof of stake crypto is more energy intensive than the hundreds of thousands of servers and data centers needed for the traditional financial system. I think a smarter move would be to only accept crypto currency donations from these greener chains.
- oraphalous 5y ago
  There are significant political and economic tradeoffs between POW and POS... I highly recommend this article for an analysis of these. https://www.lynalden.com/proof-of-stake/ https://www.lynalden.com/proof-of-stake/ I suggest this analysis because folks tend to state their preference for POS while only mentioning the energy costs as the only factor in their calculation. I do think it worth considering these other tradeoffs as well.
  - doom2 5y ago
    Besides the energy costs, what's the answer to PoW miners' effects on the GPU market? Especially as the supply chain is already strained by COVID-related increases in consumer demand. While I'm still concerned by mining energy costs, the optimal equipment needed should be separate from consumer-grade, e.g., how datacenters won't be hoarding Core i9 processors or RTX 3080s.
- kkielhofner 5y ago
  Any decentralized distributed ledger is by definition more energy intensive and wasteful. All of the financial systems today may keep a dozen or so copies of a financial transaction for a limited time span. They do so using as cost-effective means as possible (they’re a for-profit business). They also do it under extremely well coordinated economies of scale. From the get-go any reasonable distributed ledger application (regardless of PoW, PoS, etc) keeps many thousands of copies of that consensus ledger. In the case of Bitcoin it’s roughly 13,000 nodes so at least 1000x as many resources as the centralized financial systems we have today. Oh yeah - and it grows forever. As I’ve noted before if you buy a beer for $3 with Bitcoin there will end up being 13,000 or more records of that transaction FOREVER. With 10 years since inception and an absolutely tiny transaction volume (compared to say, Visa) a full Ethereum node requires at least 6TB of storage space. Bitcoin is the big one and it has roughly 500K transactions/day. Visa alone has a billion. With any real traction these ledgers will end up at petabyte and exabyte size very quickly. Oh yeah - and you’ll still need tens of thousands of copies. Each of these nodes still needs gigabytes of RAM, fast CPUs, bandwidth, etc in addition to the insane storage requirements. Note that I’m talking about the distribution and storage of the ledger itself. Mining and PoS have nothing to do with that - these 1000x inefficiencies persist even with PoS. The nodes themselves are the massive resource and energy issue that are just hiding behind PoW right now.
mrdoops 5y ago
In a backwards way this validates the general decentralization movement crypto is a part of even more in that a mob attack on social media can get an organization like Mozilla to limit their own capacity to accept donations.
boringg 5y ago
Hot take: rise of crypto not too dissimilar from the rise of Trump in that there's clearly something there but it isn't what everyone thinks and it also will have more staying power than expected (already showing this). I recognize that use Trump is risky as he is very polarizing - however there is something uncannily similar on the rise of both of these events. Both in that neither had an agenda but caught on like wildfire - I hope that crypto somehow ends up benefiting the world. I don't see it at this point but remain open to seeing successful projects.
theK 5y ago
I have the Mozilla foundation in high regard but this decision is nowhere near the quality standards I’d expect from a technology foundation/company. Saying Crypto has a bad eco footprint is outright wrong, sure Bitcoin and ETH and a number of other cryptocurrencies are PoW and therefore energy intensive, but on the other side you have platforms like Cardano and Algorand showing how you can do it much much better! That Mozilla statement is unjustly labelling a whole sector, they should know better than doing that!
- tombert 5y ago
  I was about to post a similar sentiment but I figured I'd see if someone else is posting about Cardano first. If I understand correctly, the Proof of Stake that Cardano (ADA) uses roughly 1% of the energy that a Proof of Work system does, and can still be secure and cool. IIRC, didn't Ethereum say about a year ago that they're planning on moving to a Proof of Stake at some point?
  - Hendrikto 5y ago
    The Ethereum PoS beacon chain is already active, and you can participate in staking. The full transition will happen soon™.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      Can they actually do it ? I would like to buy a new GPU at a decent price before I die.
      - Hendrikto 5y ago
        The transition has been successfully tested on the testnet, afaik. It should be said though, that while crypto mining surely contributes to the GPU shortage, it is only one of many factors.
- pavlov 5y ago
  Somehow Facebook and Twitter never get a pass on HN using similar reasoning: "Sure social media can be harmful, but on the other hand there's Mastodon and Jane's Wholesome Baking Forum showing you can do better, so there's nothing to worry about." Scale matters. Probably 99% of crypto trading takes place on destructive PoW platforms.
wanderingmind 5y ago
Governments across the world have debased the currency over the past decade which has especially accelerated since Covid. The inflation has finally started to take off. Most people in HN who are among the wealthy end of spectrum have no idea how inflation is affecting most people lives. Most are desperately looking for opportunities to make enough returns. They don't give much thought about climate change when they can't pay for education or medical bills. While most shitcoins and NFTs will tumble, the topcoin rallies are not going to stop until the economy gets roaring back and inflation is controlled.
- xunn0026 5y ago
  People on HN probably understand inflation very well but have portfolios that are not impacted by it. If anything, the past 2 years have shown great stock gains. It's hard for a person to understand a solution when its fortune depends on not understanding it. The Fed just mentioned they might raise rates for a blip on the stock market. Imagine what they do if they actually raise them. Oh, noes, the USD might actually hold some value! How will the economy recover if people's savings aren't stolen?!
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Most people in HN who are among the wealthy end of spectrum have no idea how inflation is affecting most people lives. There are numerous articles every week about the “great resignation” and staffing shortages in foodservice and other industries as everyone leaves for higher paying jobs. Wages are going up. It’s not the end of the world. > Most are desperately looking for opportunities to make enough returns. Stock market has been outpacing inflation just fine. Classic investment advice still holds. Those “returns” in crypto can only come from selling coins to someone else in the future. It relies on a constant stream of convincing new people to turn over their real money in exchange for virtual money. > While most shitcoins and NFTs will tumble, the topcoin rallies are not going to stop until the economy gets roaring back What a weird thing to say when the economy is roaring, unemployment is low, and top cryptos are steadily declining.
- immibis 5y ago
  Non-inflationary currencies cannot work as currencies. Period. People will buy them and hold them just because of their non-inflationary nature, distorting and destabilizing their value, making them useless for short-term holding and payments which are the point of a currency.
rvba 5y ago
I think the Mozilla Foundation people just want to kill Firefox. One bad decision, after another.
bbqmaster999 5y ago
Wow! Mozilla just jumped the shark.
csbartus 5y ago
Finally an impartial institution goes after the crypto/climate question and will disclose the results in an open source fashion. That will be a milestone. Perhaps the question is: do banks / fiat money institutions cause more damage to climate, or crypto mines. My gut feeling is a close tie.
- masegod 5y ago
  Regardless of the crypto/fiat question, gold consumes incredibly more energy, which is what bitcoin stands to replace
- koonsolo 5y ago
  And when you talk about PoS, it's not even a contest.
shon 5y ago
1. The crypto market is moving to Poof of Stake, rather than Proof of Work. It is already rapidly getting more energy efficient because of this. Most new solutions like Polkadot and Ada are PoS, ETH will be there soon. BTC is energy inefficient because it’s old. 2. Retail payments are an abstraction above currency. When I pay with a Visa card, I may be spending cash, “credit”, crypto, etc… Visa/MC is probably the most pervasive non-Fiat/cash retail payment method in the world and it currently works with crypto thanks to Coinbase and others. Then you have Venmo, PayPal and the many others that work well in retail. There are / will be lots of great retail solutions that are abstracted from the base value store. 3. Crypto is very useful for P2P and B2B payments without approval from gov, banks, etc. 4. I lived in Argentina for a while and it’s true about the taxes and corruption. When I lived there I had to pay rent in cash but often the banks would just close or stop withdrawals. Crypto is better for this application (P2P payment, not super time sensitive).
gojomo 5y ago
It's OK - tech nonprofits that rely more heavily on individual donations, like the EFF, Internet Archive, or Wikipedia, will still take your dirty crypto. Less than 2% of Mozilla's revenues are from contributions, so it's cheap for them to symbolically thumb-their-noses at something.
dikaio 5y ago
I think you’ll start seeing more and more mining operations move over into renewable energy, similar to what Tera Wulf (WULF) has done.
achalkley 5y ago
The USD derives it's value from the US's military's ability to exercise force over oil. If Mozilla was concerned with energy consumption they'd stop USD donations.
pc86 5y ago
Does anyone else practically get RSI from rolling their eyes so hard when they see a corporate account tweet something like "We're listening, and taking action." Human beings don't speak like that. Just say what you're doing. It will be enough for people, and not enough for others. But for the love of god knock it off with the super-polished robotic corporate PR nonsense.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I’ve heard a couple people speak like this, face to face, to me. When they get utterly disconnected from reality they start behaving like the robotic PR they output at work.
MrPatan 5y ago
Just buy some. I know you don't really think climate change is a problem. You drive a car, fly, the whole thing. So just buy crypto and be done with it, please. We're early, but it's getting kinda late, just do it.
tradertef 5y ago
It is a shame Mozilla is bullied to back off. They should accept donation is Bitcoin.
kccqzy 5y ago
And the response from jwz: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/mozilla-blinked/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/mozilla-blinked/
- cheshire137 5y ago
  Lol, folks will want to copy-paste this link themselves into their browser, I get a certain image when clicking it directly, compared to the blog post.
romille 5y ago
The climate change argument will hopefully be moot within a couple years as we trend towards proof of stake based networks.
anselm 5y ago
There are a lot of people around the world who cannot buy and sell from each other; either they are in different regulatory regimes, or they are completely unbanked. There's also a lot of concentration of wealth to publishing houses - who aggregate the work of many artists and then simplify billing. Because money is so hard to deal with it tends to make it hard for artists to have creative sovereignty. They're always beholden to somebody else. We all suffer for this. Effectively money is a form of communication; and when Mozilla bows to social pressure and social anti-crypto hysteria - they're continuing what they've always done - which is focus on insulating users, protecting users from risks, while also failing to foster a healthy ecosystem. Why do we have an arms race between people who want to violate privacy and people who want privacy? Why do we have so much sound bite media, with hugely emotional banner headlines and warped narratives? Why are the walled gardens so much more successful than the web (in the sense of much of the creative work and creative community moving to native apps?). We have these phenomena because there is no legitimate way for people to have direct transactional and healthy relationships on the web with respect to money. Mozilla is not "helping the web" they are hurting the web. Their fixation on the wrong things injures the ecosystem. They shouldn't waste their time begging for crypto, but what they should do is enable people to pay each other.
hvis 5y ago
It's a good political move. And Mozilla doesn't live on donations anyway (they are used to finance "initiatives" of various sorts).
rentiem 5y ago
We live in a world that is transitioning from harmful CO2 producing, carbon-based energy sources to one using carbon-free energy. At this point in time we all use some amount of "dirty" energy. All our energy consuming activities are "guilty" in proportion to their share of the total CO2 production. Air conditioning, aluminum smelting, gold mining,and holiday lights included. And at some point the future when energy sources are carbon-free this will not be true. We will be able to consume energy without blame. The question is, in this future, will Bitcoin be celebrated or hated by those who hate it now? I think the later. Because ultimately all hate for it is politically driven by those who fear a loss of power that it could cause for them(or their political leaders, or thought leaders, or shepherds).
int_19h 5y ago
By the same logic, doesn't accepting USD amount to supporting the US government and its actions around the world?
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I wish they would have kept taking crypto. I personally dislike the concept of crypto and hope that it ultimately falls flat on its face, however money is money and mozilla does good things. All those snowflakes trying to end everything they don't like. Just don't send them donations in crypto and move on with your life.
daqhris 5y ago
Sad to hear this. I hope that decision gets reversed. Reason that I give donations in BTC is that it's impossible to do so in regular ways, like with bank transfers. In the european country where I live, I'm excluded from banking services all over the country. Why isn't that a common life feature for other humans here? Well, a majority of the country chose to implement laws that restrict my access to everyday needs. In short, I'm categorized by law as an african immigrant without residency status. It's been like this for 5 years since I landed in Europe. So, I have capital in the form of cash (earned by doing menial jobs and developing my own software projects) but I can't spend it online because I don't have the allowed ID !? I clean and do gardening in the homes of people who later choose to implement laws that forbids me to have a have my own home, my car, medical treatment... Then after those daytime gigs that pay shit money, I go back to my "home office" then open my laptop to start coding or learning. The next day: rinse and repeat. A donation is like a financial thank-you note! Accept it or not, it's your choice. As, a user of various Mozilla products, I'm grateful of their work and all that they build and make freely accessible. Thanks to them, I'm able to earn a living (food, transport and housing), to gain capital that is 10x of what I'd bring in without Internet-related work. Crypto is a tool that's beneficial to whomever can make use of it. BTC is not under control of a single human or a small team. Its decentralized nature makes me a truckload of hope to live day after day in a racist country. Those priviledged citizens complaining about crypto's climate impact are similar to those who want to ban nuclear reactors. They have fantasies in their mind larger than their collective egos and technological ignorance. They have houses full of household robots (which I compete with nowadays while cleaning houses) where they daydream about some naive version of the future. Instead of screaming illogical facts in public discourse, why don't you pick up all your belongings and go live in civilizations with much less basic infrastructure and tech prowess? What's stopping you? When will you give up your comfort? Let's stop with the hypocrisy. As a donor, I will give in BTC to others. The habit is in my DNA. In the real world, I'm an undocumented immigrant. In the online world, I'm myself and free to make use of my full potential. Mozilla's browser is one of the gateway to the worldwide web. Firefox doesn't ask me my ID to start having fun or working online. Firefox and Bitcoin are tools that I enjoy and will always cherish for their great utility in my digital projects. I will not trust the opinion of anticrypto people because they have countless choices in their lifespan and mine are limited by default.

459 points by cpeterso 5y ago

Meh, yet another PR-laden series of tweets. Gotta love that "we were mocked and insults were hurled at us" in PR-English is "this led to an important discussion", and "we wanted to jump on the bandwagon and thought no one would criticize us" turns to "a lot has changed since we started accepting crypto donations"...

taxyz23 5y ago

Seems one more reason why Mozilla is failing? hard to get anything done without someone internally raising political.concerns. Imagine the meeting time wasted on this. Better ways to spend ccrporate time.

trizuz 5y ago

rvz 5y ago

> So, starting today we are reviewing if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals. And as we conduct our review, we will pause the ability to donate cryptocurrency You mean Bitcoin, Ethereum? Since they are the biggest ones currently 'destroying' the planet? I'm sure there exist eco-friendly cryptocurrencies that are suitable for donations? But never-mind though, Bitcoin and Ethereum = ALL cryptocurrencies somehow. So back to receiving Google's money.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kunagi7 5y ago
Just a friendly remainder that donations to the Foundation don't pay for Firefox development. Google's money pays for Corporation stuff (Firefox), donations pay for other things they do around the world [1]. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/
- throw10920 5y ago
  Wow, I didn't know that. This is perverse in several ways: Funding for Firefox development comes from Google, which is pushing Chrome in such a way that is destroying the web. Funding for Mozilla's non-Firefox projects probably comes mostly from Firefox users. I want to donate to Mozilla exclusively for Firefox development - yet the only thing that my money will not be used for is Firefox, and I strongly disapprove of many of their other projects that my money would actually go to. This is just a mess.
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    IIRC their mullvad resell vpn is run through the corp, so if you want to donate just to the product side of things, buying that service may be the clearest way. But even then, there's no guarantees on how the money gets shuffled around.
  - fabrice_d 5y ago
    If you want to support Firefox development financially, you can subscribe to Mozilla's commercial services: their VPN, and Pocket.
    - solarkraft 5y ago
      But the VPN is worse than the service it rebrands. And I don't want to support the way they integrate or run Pocket (even though I mostly like Pocket).
    - mort96 5y ago
      Am I literally the only person on earth who remembers that Mozilla promised to open-source Pocket when they acquired it? Why is nobody talking about that? Why aren't the usually-angry mob of mozilla haters up in arms about it?
      - Arnavion 5y ago
        I assume anyone who hasn't already disabled Pocket doesn't care about it being open-sourced.
zamadatix 5y ago
The current crypto donation policy is not "we accept any crypto directly including eco friendly ones" it is "we do crypto donations via BitPay" which doesn't support said eco-friendly crypto options so it has been paused. The announcement also does not say no better crypto policy could be put in place it just says they are reviewing the policy. In all likelyhood though yes, they aren't going to accept crypto as hardly anyone uses eco-friendly forms of crypto to the point it's worthwhile to try to push for donations via that means.

nathias 5y ago

I'm sure now everyone that was so ethically repulsed by the crimes of crypto will donate twice as much.

uncomputation 5y ago
That’s implying that half of Mozilla’s donations were via crypto which I doubt.
- eatonphil 5y ago
  Reading it literally no I don't think it implies that. GP may just be suggesting (sarcastically) that people will be so appreciative that they will donate twice as much in appreciation.
  - uncomputation 5y ago
    Maybe I misread the tone of GP but I interpreted it as a sarcastic defense of crypto (“ethically repulsed by the crimes of crypto” being the hyperbole here that mocks the repulsed (similar to how “in his infinite wisdom” is a sarcastic criticism)) which basically argues that the crypto critics need to put their money where their mouth is and “make up” for the lost crypto donations if they are so insistent Mozilla doesn’t accept them. But this doesn’t make sense if the crypto donations are small.
    - nathias 5y ago
      I meant that critics will give twice as much as they first intended before they were prevented by this apalling breach of Ethics. Technically correct because that's almost certainly zero. It's never a smart move to cave in to twitter mobs.
      - emerged 5y ago
        The grifters pushing to pay in units of planetary damage mob on Twitter too.

uncomputation 5y ago

IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” and it’s only Baby Boomers that don’t - views climate change as a more significant issue than centralized financial institutions. (Please don’t respond talking about some “$ECO coin” or such business.)

dragonwriter 5y ago
> IMO the public backlash against anyone accepting cryptocurrency donations speaks to the fact that people today - despite VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3” and it’s only Baby Boomers that don’t - views climate change as a more significant issue than centralized financial institutions. That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. It's not consistent with what Web3-invested VCs want people to take from that, though.
- pxc 5y ago
  > That seems...consistent with VC insistence that “Gen Z gets Web3”. In an ironic sense, definitely. It shows that they have better sense of the real value of web3 than the people pushing it
- uncomputation 5y ago
  Gen Z hates crypto and web3[1]. They are also partaking in the backlash. [1]: From my experience a lot of the crypto “community” online is Gen Z, but most of Gen Z is not pro-crypto. All thumbs are fingers sort of logic.
  - raunak 5y ago
    You are very right. Tiktok loves NFTs, but only NFTTok, which is a very tiny subsection of Gen Z. On the other hand, the other 99% of gen z regularly comments about how they’ve “stolen” your NFT after screenshotting it.
Barrin92 5y ago
and in so far as gen-z is 'pro-crypto' at least from my experience it's large nihilistic attitude towards economic progress and having adopted a casino-capitalism style mentality where gambling on the newest crypto-asset is just a means to get rich quick. Which to be fair isn't much different from the general attitude towards it in any other generation.

ethanhunt_ 5y ago

Anything to avoid working on the browser itself. Very sad to see the decline of Mozilla and Firefox. I wonder if someone could fork it and take all the people from Mozilla who are actually contributing to the technical mission (a small group these days!). Brendan Eich would've been perfect for this, but he's got his own browser now and wisely chose to use chromium as the base.

daenney 5y ago
Donations to the foundation don’t pay for Fx development. That’s under the Mozilla Corporation.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  I was completely not aware of this didn't even imagine something like that, but apparently it's so https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/fellowships-and-awards-partners/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/fellowships-a...
  - emerged 5y ago
    You and probably the majority of donators. You’d think at some point that might be considered fraudulent on the part of Mozilla.
    - lnxg33k1 5y ago
      Yeah but who would have the guts the sue a company that has worked so much to improve the world? You should be one of those people who hoarded toilet paper to resell it overpriced during the start of the pandemic to do something like that
      - emerged 5y ago
        The ends justify the means? If they hold me up at gunpoint for donations should I just not complain because they do other things that inxg33k1 believes improve the world? I stopped using Firefox years ago because of such “improvements” they obsess over instead of stewarding one of the very few web browsers which could have helped keep the web open but is instead borderline controlled opposition.

RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago

koof 5y ago
As opposed to you, who is definitely not virtue signaling.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  Nope definitely not.
uncomputation 5y ago
> more ecological damage and pollution Source please?
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  His bank account
- dnautics 5y ago
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Actually, doesn't the US government tax “gains” from Bitcoin “appreciation”?
    - dnautics 5y ago
      fine. Marginally paid for by bitcoin.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- 5y ago

ca98am79 5y ago

gexla 5y ago
I assume they would be converting the crypto to USD.

mrfinn 5y ago

Just accept Nano, guys. You are welcome.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

minimaxir 5y ago

For context, here's the original tweet (still up): https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1476951030638260225 https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1476951030638260225 > Dabble in @dogecoin? HODLing some #Bitcoin & #Ethereum? > We’re using @BitPay to accept donations in #cryptocurrency The tweet prompted a strong reaction from Mozilla founder jwz: https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1478022085737803776 https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1478022085737803776 > Hi, I'm sure that whoever runs this account has no idea who I am, but I founded @mozilla and I'm here to say fuck you and fuck this. Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.

xvector 5y ago
Yikes, well that eliminates any respect I had for the "founder of Mozilla."
- gspr 5y ago
  It elevates mine.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
donkarma 5y ago
Dude must have an ego the size of a planet to say something like that
- iqanq 5y ago
  One of the most histrionic characters in the tech scene, and that's a lot to say.
- waffle_maniac 5y ago
  Brave is on track to destroy his legacy. https://brave.com/transparency/ https://brave.com/transparency/

solarkraft 5y ago

I don't even care about the crypto currencies that much. Please just stop ruining everything.

masegod 5y ago
Ruining... nothing?

halpert 5y ago

I feel like you shouldn't complain about bitcoin if you drive a car or have been on an airplane in the last year. Or if you have received goods manufactured overseas. Or live / work in a building that uses concrete. Or consume beef. Or consume factory farmed food. Or eat fish. Or... Just to add some numbers: bitcoin is responsible for 0.1% of global carbon emissions, and will decrease (as a %) as CO2 emissions of other sectors grow: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/bitcoin-mining-09-total-global-emissions-2030-bullish-price-nydig-2021-9 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/bitcoin-...

alphabettsy 5y ago
My house protects me. Food feeds me. My iPhone from China does many many things that I find useful. Bitcoin hopefully allows me to accumulate wealth but otherwise adds no value to my life. Doesn’t seem like an appropriate comparison.
- masegod 5y ago
  Permission-less transactions and wealth storage are an unprecedented technology, people living outside of authoritarian regimes struggle with this concept.
- halpert 5y ago
  Food feeds you, but many people choose to eat food that is wasteful. Your home protects you, but many people live in large homes in climates that require heating and cooling. Your iPhone from China does things you like, which really is what this comes down to. You like iPhones. You don't like Bitcoin. There is nothing more to this argument other than preferences.
  - detritus 5y ago
    Seems more like your initial point slipped quite a bit into farce since you made it.
  - alphabettsy 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago

There is a lot of cryptocurrency out there to be spent, and Mozilla needs it. The pragmatic solution would be to take the money and use X% to offset the environmental damage the donation created.

almost 5y ago

Good! Nice to see they’ve done the right thing even if it was a little late. I’m sure they got a lot of pressure both from users and from their own employees.

practice9 5y ago

Dumb PR move from dying company

mjr00 5y ago

Between this and Tesla citing climate change as a reason for dropping crypto, this is actually a very interesting shift, and one that might be very bad for crypto. The amount of money people actually donated or spent with crypto has always been minimal. (Wish I had harder numbers to back this up, but you can see second-order effects from e.g. Steam adding Bitcoin support but then taking it away. Or how Bitpay has stagnated heavily, while a purely investment/speculation platform like Coinbase is worth billions.) However, for a long time, the benefit of accepting Bitcoin as payment was the marketing. Accepting crypto signaled that you were a cool company, you could put out a press release and the news media would run articles about how X service is now accepting cryptocurrency for payments. The same thing happened again years later with "blockchain." Remember Kodakcoin? Remember Long Island Blockchain? Nothing ever really surfaced from these initiatives, but again, it was all about that big marketing hype that came from saying your company was going to use blockchain for... something. Where it gets interesting is... what if crypto becomes anathema? What if accepting crypto or holding crypto starts become so closely associated with directly causing climate change, that no company is going to want to be openly associated with crypto, NFTs, etc due to the negative association? You have one side hyping up Web3 as the next evolution as the web, but if the perception of crypto continues to be that it's a significant contributor to climate change -- regardless of how true that may be -- we could see a major decline in mainstream support.

TimJRobinson 5y ago
It's crazy that it's 2022 and so many people on HN still think crypto is majority Proof of Work... Ethereum is transitioning to Proof of Stake this year and after that Bitcoin will be the ONLY major cryptocurrency still on PoW.
nikanj 5y ago
You can still use cryptos to pay for unmentionables on the web, extract anonymous payments from crime victims, and most importantly gamble in a wholly unregulated casino.
- drdeca 5y ago
  I'd also note that the unregulated casinos can be (but aren't always) verifiable in how they function, so if you want high assurance that the odds and such are as stated, you can (in some cases) obtain such assurance, despite the lack of regulation. (but, you'd have to be careful to check the claims and such, and, if you can't or don't have time to check the software yourself, you might have to trust a 3rd party evaluating the system, and possibly there wouldn't be any such organization that you would trust who has done such a check.)

skarz 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mwattsun 5y ago

Digital money is still a good idea. I don't want to throw it out because current implementations are bad. No doubt, someone will invent a way to make it work. edit: in a sustainable way.

Hendrikto 5y ago
Alternate consensus algorithms have been invented, implemented, and proven in practice for almost a decade. Proof of Stake (PoS) is the most popular, but there are others.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  All that's left to do then is ruin Bitcoin with a 51% attack by the combined forces of nation states who are working on climate change

jwblackwell 5y ago

At this point, Mozilla is basically irrelevant anyway

idkyall 5y ago

Personally, I believe in Crypto, but I'm entirely against Bitcoin. I think Proof of Work is a massive waste of energy, and I would be happy if Bitcoin went to 0, quite frankly. But nowadays, not all cryptos are proof of work based. Plenty of major crypto projects are based on proof of stake and offer fully fledged smart contract features to support Web 3 apps. I don't think proof of stake crypto is more energy intensive than the hundreds of thousands of servers and data centers needed for the traditional financial system. I think a smarter move would be to only accept crypto currency donations from these greener chains.

oraphalous 5y ago
There are significant political and economic tradeoffs between POW and POS... I highly recommend this article for an analysis of these. https://www.lynalden.com/proof-of-stake/ https://www.lynalden.com/proof-of-stake/ I suggest this analysis because folks tend to state their preference for POS while only mentioning the energy costs as the only factor in their calculation. I do think it worth considering these other tradeoffs as well.
- doom2 5y ago
  Besides the energy costs, what's the answer to PoW miners' effects on the GPU market? Especially as the supply chain is already strained by COVID-related increases in consumer demand. While I'm still concerned by mining energy costs, the optimal equipment needed should be separate from consumer-grade, e.g., how datacenters won't be hoarding Core i9 processors or RTX 3080s.
kkielhofner 5y ago
Any decentralized distributed ledger is by definition more energy intensive and wasteful. All of the financial systems today may keep a dozen or so copies of a financial transaction for a limited time span. They do so using as cost-effective means as possible (they’re a for-profit business). They also do it under extremely well coordinated economies of scale. From the get-go any reasonable distributed ledger application (regardless of PoW, PoS, etc) keeps many thousands of copies of that consensus ledger. In the case of Bitcoin it’s roughly 13,000 nodes so at least 1000x as many resources as the centralized financial systems we have today. Oh yeah - and it grows forever. As I’ve noted before if you buy a beer for $3 with Bitcoin there will end up being 13,000 or more records of that transaction FOREVER. With 10 years since inception and an absolutely tiny transaction volume (compared to say, Visa) a full Ethereum node requires at least 6TB of storage space. Bitcoin is the big one and it has roughly 500K transactions/day. Visa alone has a billion. With any real traction these ledgers will end up at petabyte and exabyte size very quickly. Oh yeah - and you’ll still need tens of thousands of copies. Each of these nodes still needs gigabytes of RAM, fast CPUs, bandwidth, etc in addition to the insane storage requirements. Note that I’m talking about the distribution and storage of the ledger itself. Mining and PoS have nothing to do with that - these 1000x inefficiencies persist even with PoS. The nodes themselves are the massive resource and energy issue that are just hiding behind PoW right now.

mrdoops 5y ago

In a backwards way this validates the general decentralization movement crypto is a part of even more in that a mob attack on social media can get an organization like Mozilla to limit their own capacity to accept donations.

boringg 5y ago

Hot take: rise of crypto not too dissimilar from the rise of Trump in that there's clearly something there but it isn't what everyone thinks and it also will have more staying power than expected (already showing this). I recognize that use Trump is risky as he is very polarizing - however there is something uncannily similar on the rise of both of these events. Both in that neither had an agenda but caught on like wildfire - I hope that crypto somehow ends up benefiting the world. I don't see it at this point but remain open to seeing successful projects.

theK 5y ago

I have the Mozilla foundation in high regard but this decision is nowhere near the quality standards I’d expect from a technology foundation/company. Saying Crypto has a bad eco footprint is outright wrong, sure Bitcoin and ETH and a number of other cryptocurrencies are PoW and therefore energy intensive, but on the other side you have platforms like Cardano and Algorand showing how you can do it much much better! That Mozilla statement is unjustly labelling a whole sector, they should know better than doing that!

tombert 5y ago
I was about to post a similar sentiment but I figured I'd see if someone else is posting about Cardano first. If I understand correctly, the Proof of Stake that Cardano (ADA) uses roughly 1% of the energy that a Proof of Work system does, and can still be secure and cool. IIRC, didn't Ethereum say about a year ago that they're planning on moving to a Proof of Stake at some point?
- Hendrikto 5y ago
  The Ethereum PoS beacon chain is already active, and you can participate in staking. The full transition will happen soon™.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Can they actually do it ? I would like to buy a new GPU at a decent price before I die.
    - Hendrikto 5y ago
      The transition has been successfully tested on the testnet, afaik. It should be said though, that while crypto mining surely contributes to the GPU shortage, it is only one of many factors.
pavlov 5y ago
Somehow Facebook and Twitter never get a pass on HN using similar reasoning: "Sure social media can be harmful, but on the other hand there's Mastodon and Jane's Wholesome Baking Forum showing you can do better, so there's nothing to worry about." Scale matters. Probably 99% of crypto trading takes place on destructive PoW platforms.

wanderingmind 5y ago

Governments across the world have debased the currency over the past decade which has especially accelerated since Covid. The inflation has finally started to take off. Most people in HN who are among the wealthy end of spectrum have no idea how inflation is affecting most people lives. Most are desperately looking for opportunities to make enough returns. They don't give much thought about climate change when they can't pay for education or medical bills. While most shitcoins and NFTs will tumble, the topcoin rallies are not going to stop until the economy gets roaring back and inflation is controlled.

xunn0026 5y ago
People on HN probably understand inflation very well but have portfolios that are not impacted by it. If anything, the past 2 years have shown great stock gains. It's hard for a person to understand a solution when its fortune depends on not understanding it. The Fed just mentioned they might raise rates for a blip on the stock market. Imagine what they do if they actually raise them. Oh, noes, the USD might actually hold some value! How will the economy recover if people's savings aren't stolen?!
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Most people in HN who are among the wealthy end of spectrum have no idea how inflation is affecting most people lives. There are numerous articles every week about the “great resignation” and staffing shortages in foodservice and other industries as everyone leaves for higher paying jobs. Wages are going up. It’s not the end of the world. > Most are desperately looking for opportunities to make enough returns. Stock market has been outpacing inflation just fine. Classic investment advice still holds. Those “returns” in crypto can only come from selling coins to someone else in the future. It relies on a constant stream of convincing new people to turn over their real money in exchange for virtual money. > While most shitcoins and NFTs will tumble, the topcoin rallies are not going to stop until the economy gets roaring back What a weird thing to say when the economy is roaring, unemployment is low, and top cryptos are steadily declining.
immibis 5y ago
Non-inflationary currencies cannot work as currencies. Period. People will buy them and hold them just because of their non-inflationary nature, distorting and destabilizing their value, making them useless for short-term holding and payments which are the point of a currency.

rvba 5y ago

I think the Mozilla Foundation people just want to kill Firefox. One bad decision, after another.

bbqmaster999 5y ago

Wow! Mozilla just jumped the shark.

csbartus 5y ago

Finally an impartial institution goes after the crypto/climate question and will disclose the results in an open source fashion. That will be a milestone. Perhaps the question is: do banks / fiat money institutions cause more damage to climate, or crypto mines. My gut feeling is a close tie.

masegod 5y ago
Regardless of the crypto/fiat question, gold consumes incredibly more energy, which is what bitcoin stands to replace
koonsolo 5y ago
And when you talk about PoS, it's not even a contest.

shon 5y ago

1. The crypto market is moving to Poof of Stake, rather than Proof of Work. It is already rapidly getting more energy efficient because of this. Most new solutions like Polkadot and Ada are PoS, ETH will be there soon. BTC is energy inefficient because it’s old. 2. Retail payments are an abstraction above currency. When I pay with a Visa card, I may be spending cash, “credit”, crypto, etc… Visa/MC is probably the most pervasive non-Fiat/cash retail payment method in the world and it currently works with crypto thanks to Coinbase and others. Then you have Venmo, PayPal and the many others that work well in retail. There are / will be lots of great retail solutions that are abstracted from the base value store. 3. Crypto is very useful for P2P and B2B payments without approval from gov, banks, etc. 4. I lived in Argentina for a while and it’s true about the taxes and corruption. When I lived there I had to pay rent in cash but often the banks would just close or stop withdrawals. Crypto is better for this application (P2P payment, not super time sensitive).

gojomo 5y ago

It's OK - tech nonprofits that rely more heavily on individual donations, like the EFF, Internet Archive, or Wikipedia, will still take your dirty crypto. Less than 2% of Mozilla's revenues are from contributions, so it's cheap for them to symbolically thumb-their-noses at something.

dikaio 5y ago

I think you’ll start seeing more and more mining operations move over into renewable energy, similar to what Tera Wulf (WULF) has done.

achalkley 5y ago

The USD derives it's value from the US's military's ability to exercise force over oil. If Mozilla was concerned with energy consumption they'd stop USD donations.

pc86 5y ago

Does anyone else practically get RSI from rolling their eyes so hard when they see a corporate account tweet something like "We're listening, and taking action." Human beings don't speak like that. Just say what you're doing. It will be enough for people, and not enough for others. But for the love of god knock it off with the super-polished robotic corporate PR nonsense.

scrollaway 5y ago
I’ve heard a couple people speak like this, face to face, to me. When they get utterly disconnected from reality they start behaving like the robotic PR they output at work.

MrPatan 5y ago

Just buy some. I know you don't really think climate change is a problem. You drive a car, fly, the whole thing. So just buy crypto and be done with it, please. We're early, but it's getting kinda late, just do it.

tradertef 5y ago

It is a shame Mozilla is bullied to back off. They should accept donation is Bitcoin.

kccqzy 5y ago

And the response from jwz: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/mozilla-blinked/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/mozilla-blinked/

cheshire137 5y ago
Lol, folks will want to copy-paste this link themselves into their browser, I get a certain image when clicking it directly, compared to the blog post.

romille 5y ago

The climate change argument will hopefully be moot within a couple years as we trend towards proof of stake based networks.

anselm 5y ago

There are a lot of people around the world who cannot buy and sell from each other; either they are in different regulatory regimes, or they are completely unbanked. There's also a lot of concentration of wealth to publishing houses - who aggregate the work of many artists and then simplify billing. Because money is so hard to deal with it tends to make it hard for artists to have creative sovereignty. They're always beholden to somebody else. We all suffer for this. Effectively money is a form of communication; and when Mozilla bows to social pressure and social anti-crypto hysteria - they're continuing what they've always done - which is focus on insulating users, protecting users from risks, while also failing to foster a healthy ecosystem. Why do we have an arms race between people who want to violate privacy and people who want privacy? Why do we have so much sound bite media, with hugely emotional banner headlines and warped narratives? Why are the walled gardens so much more successful than the web (in the sense of much of the creative work and creative community moving to native apps?). We have these phenomena because there is no legitimate way for people to have direct transactional and healthy relationships on the web with respect to money. Mozilla is not "helping the web" they are hurting the web. Their fixation on the wrong things injures the ecosystem. They shouldn't waste their time begging for crypto, but what they should do is enable people to pay each other.

hvis 5y ago

It's a good political move. And Mozilla doesn't live on donations anyway (they are used to finance "initiatives" of various sorts).

rentiem 5y ago

We live in a world that is transitioning from harmful CO2 producing, carbon-based energy sources to one using carbon-free energy. At this point in time we all use some amount of "dirty" energy. All our energy consuming activities are "guilty" in proportion to their share of the total CO2 production. Air conditioning, aluminum smelting, gold mining,and holiday lights included. And at some point the future when energy sources are carbon-free this will not be true. We will be able to consume energy without blame. The question is, in this future, will Bitcoin be celebrated or hated by those who hate it now? I think the later. Because ultimately all hate for it is politically driven by those who fear a loss of power that it could cause for them(or their political leaders, or thought leaders, or shepherds).

int_19h 5y ago

By the same logic, doesn't accepting USD amount to supporting the US government and its actions around the world?

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I wish they would have kept taking crypto. I personally dislike the concept of crypto and hope that it ultimately falls flat on its face, however money is money and mozilla does good things. All those snowflakes trying to end everything they don't like. Just don't send them donations in crypto and move on with your life.

daqhris 5y ago

Sad to hear this. I hope that decision gets reversed. Reason that I give donations in BTC is that it's impossible to do so in regular ways, like with bank transfers. In the european country where I live, I'm excluded from banking services all over the country. Why isn't that a common life feature for other humans here? Well, a majority of the country chose to implement laws that restrict my access to everyday needs. In short, I'm categorized by law as an african immigrant without residency status. It's been like this for 5 years since I landed in Europe. So, I have capital in the form of cash (earned by doing menial jobs and developing my own software projects) but I can't spend it online because I don't have the allowed ID !? I clean and do gardening in the homes of people who later choose to implement laws that forbids me to have a have my own home, my car, medical treatment... Then after those daytime gigs that pay shit money, I go back to my "home office" then open my laptop to start coding or learning. The next day: rinse and repeat. A donation is like a financial thank-you note! Accept it or not, it's your choice. As, a user of various Mozilla products, I'm grateful of their work and all that they build and make freely accessible. Thanks to them, I'm able to earn a living (food, transport and housing), to gain capital that is 10x of what I'd bring in without Internet-related work. Crypto is a tool that's beneficial to whomever can make use of it. BTC is not under control of a single human or a small team. Its decentralized nature makes me a truckload of hope to live day after day in a racist country. Those priviledged citizens complaining about crypto's climate impact are similar to those who want to ban nuclear reactors. They have fantasies in their mind larger than their collective egos and technological ignorance. They have houses full of household robots (which I compete with nowadays while cleaning houses) where they daydream about some naive version of the future. Instead of screaming illogical facts in public discourse, why don't you pick up all your belongings and go live in civilizations with much less basic infrastructure and tech prowess? What's stopping you? When will you give up your comfort? Let's stop with the hypocrisy. As a donor, I will give in BTC to others. The habit is in my DNA. In the real world, I'm an undocumented immigrant. In the online world, I'm myself and free to make use of my full potential. Mozilla's browser is one of the gateway to the worldwide web. Firefox doesn't ask me my ID to start having fun or working online. Firefox and Bitcoin are tools that I enjoy and will always cherish for their great utility in my digital projects. I will not trust the opinion of anticrypto people because they have countless choices in their lifespan and mine are limited by default.