26 ms·

Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

316 points by SwimSwimHungry 4y ago

colesantiago 4y ago
This is great news, it is pretty pointless to use cryptocurrencies at all anyway since for Wikipedia: > Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels. Remember that Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites on the planet, I'm also assuming that other websites trying to accept crypto have even smaller percentages rendering cryptocurrencies as payment useless, not to mention damaging to the environment. What is really happening is that nobody is using it for payments at all, rather just holding crypto coins and hoping they'll go up and speculating on the price.
- quartesixte 4y ago
  But what if Wikpedia donor pool also is made up mostly of those who do not wish to use cryptos to donate?
- garbagetime 4y ago
  There just isn't the incentive to use cryptocurrency to donate to Wikipedia. For some other kinds of payments, such as gambling payments, cryptocurrency is a popular option.
  - devoutsalsa 4y ago
    > There just isn't the incentive to use cryptocurrency to donate to Wikipedia. Sure there is. A lot of people have lots of value tied up in crypto, a very liquid asset. It’s also easy to send. I know nothing about wiring money to Ukraine, but I know how to donate to Ukraine organizations that accept crypto. If crypto is a small part of your revenue stream, maybe it’s because you haven’t nurtured it as a donation channel.
    - unicornmama 4y ago
      > I know nothing about wiring money to Ukraine You go to your bank and ask them to start a wire transfer. The recipient’s bank will provide the instructions. You can even do this entirely online.
      - devoutsalsa 4y ago
        My physical bank is in a different country. As a crypto enthusiast, I’m obligated to migrate to a remote tax haven full of like minded nut jobs.
        unicornmama 4y ago
        So you chose to unbank yourself :) I have transacted millions in crypto and wire transfers. Banking with crypto is like the 1970s - exorbitant fees. To do anything useful with it I have to offramp to fiat which drum rolls ends with a wire transfer.
        devoutsalsa 4y ago
        You said "go to your bank". I was thinking "walk into a bank branch" XD I don't think I've ever wired money in my life. I guess I never needed to. And the few occasions I needed to send some money internationally, I've simply sent crypto, used Western Union, or something like PayPal or Revolut.
        unicornmama 4y ago
        Wiring isn’t that bad, you need to fill in some fields about the recipient account details and receiving bank. The annoying bit is that banks have inconsistent web portals with mediocre UX. So sometimes it can be frustrating to figure out how to enter the information. I’ll admit that the crypto UX is faster with just entering a destination wallet address. It would be good if banks could adopt QR codes to provide similar experienfe. Sometimes you get charged a fee, but many institutions will waive that (e.g. Schwab) if your balance is high enough.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    If the speculation in crypto is being fueled by crypto chasing non-fiat exits (as you imply wrt gambling payments), then isn't it silly to cut off that tap? Value is fungible, it shouldn't matter whether it's a Wikipedia donation or a "gambling payment".
  - jeltz 4y ago
    Only where gambling is illegal and to illegal casinos. Legal casinos do not want the hassle with KYC, market volatility and the often slow transactions. And neither does the customers.
    - garbagetime 4y ago
      My understanding is that in the USA there are a lot of cases where gambling online is legal, but where it is illegal for banks to process transactions relating to those services. In such cases cryptocurrency is helpful, even though the wagering is not illegal, and the casino itself is not illegal. There are also cases in my own country where cryptocurrency is very useful for gambling, with nothing illegal taking place.
- vmception 4y ago
  Charitable giving with crypto is just getting off the ground As tax considerations with crypto are just getting off the ground So you basically have this wide polar extreme of: A) People using crypto and thinking there are no taxes B) And entrepreneurs moving their premines to their own non-profits for massive tax breaks and exemption leaving existing non-profits just waiting People in A) move slightly towards the center year over year as reality catches up to them and more become loaded with appreciated assets or just have an inventory of crypto at all times People close to B) are also loaded with assets and more likely to contribute to other non profits Its better for a non profit to keep the door open and have the payment rails available. Large contributions could happen at any time. At the end of the day, money talks, pretty much all non profits figure it out when a donor wants to donate any large asset, including in crypto
  - timerol 4y ago
    > As tax considerations with crypto are just getting off the ground This is very not true. Buying and selling anything has very clear tax implications. It's more that enforcement is slow, and people are willingly breaking the law because of it. Here's a good Twitter conversation explaining the situation: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1501707876888240131 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1501707876888240131 > I think the issue is mostly that the industry’s core request is “Can we have an outright exemption from securities regulation?”, the regulators say “Absolutely not you must follow the law.”, industry follows with “How high is this on your enforcement priority list?”, “Not very.” > And so industry complains “My my this all seems so ambiguous and look at all these similar projects which never get enforcement actions. I wish we had Regulatory Clarity (TM).”
    - vmception 4y ago
      > This is very not true. Buying and selling anything has very clear tax implications. I was saying that crypto users willing to consider tax and more complex tax is just getting off the ground, not that the law itself ever ignored them I think the rest of my post makes that clear > People in A) move slightly towards the center year over year as reality catches up to them (the reality that tax always applied) but I can see how it doesn't, especially if you are expecting a crypto tax / regulation protestor
- jdrc 4y ago
  So this is not great news at all, a totally inconsequential and pointless move for signaling virtue (look at the arguments given), which is contrary to wikipedia's aim to be neutral
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Removing the payment method simplifies the donations system. And since it’s not generating any value, it’s not worth keeping.
    - jdrc 4y ago
      that was not one of the arguments made in the RFC > Common arguments in support include: issues of environmental sustainability, that accepting cryptocurrencies constitutes implicit endorsement of the issues surrounding cryptocurrencies, and community issues with the risk to the movement’s reputation for accepting cryptocurrencies. it looks 100% ideological
      - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
        Accepting cryptocurrencies is equally ideological
        CryptoPunk 4y ago
        The ideology of people not needing a central government's permission to privately interact? What I would concede is that it does challenge the dominant ideology of the establishment. As this former Federal Reserve economist describes, the Federal Reserve system is extremely centralized: https://twitter.com/gordonliao/status/1484605701435523072?s=20&t=NpU-wAnoZ5736jOsrE_v6A https://twitter.com/gordonliao/status/1484605701435523072?s=... This is just one aspect of centralized economic control cryptocurrency threatens to upend. Centralization will inevitably engender rent-seeking, so the dominant ideological framework being one that glorifies that centralized gatekeeping, and villifies a free market, is entirely predictable.
        4y ago
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Just for context, that's still 140 00$
  - jdrc 4y ago
    > In the last financial year we received $130,100.94 worth of donations in cryptocurrencies.
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      At that take, I'm not sure if it covers the engineering effort to maintain it, accounting and legal work to handle it, and opportunity cost of whatever else they could be doing.
      - jdrc 4y ago
        that was nowhere near the justification given
        ben_w 4y ago
        Doesn’t need to be. At most it’s a reason for Wikimedia to not care enough to say ‘no’ to the RfC.
      - gjs278 4y ago
- flotzam 4y ago
  Wikipedia used BitPay, the most widely loathed of all cryptocurrency payment processors - https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/ https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/ - and required prospective donors to provide an obscene amount of personal data: https://bitpay.com/464448/donate https://bitpay.com/464448/donate It's a high friction, culture-clashing payment flow. I certainly noped out of that form real fast. For comparison: https://www.givedirectly.org/crypto/ https://www.givedirectly.org/crypto/ And another campaign on The Giving Block, an anonymity friendly donation payment processor: https://thegivingblock.com/campaigns/ukraine-emergency-response-fund/ https://thegivingblock.com/campaigns/ukraine-emergency-respo...
  - numeri 4y ago
    This is the real reason they received so few donations. I've only ever donated to them through Brave's Attention Tokens [1], so I never realized they use BitPay, but it really is intrusive. 1. I wonder if they'll keep this enabled or not?
    - gwd 4y ago
      > 1. I wonder if they'll keep this enabled or not? I was wondering the same thing -- hopefully they will, as I'd like to see that model succeed.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - kuschku 4y ago
    > required prospective donors to provide an obscene amount of personal data Yes, that’s known as KYC laws, which are required if you’re a payment processor of any kind.
    - flotzam 4y ago
      Seems more like preemptive overcompliance. Plenty of reputable charities accept anonymous donations just fine, whether it's cryptocurrency or cash by mail.
- once_inc 4y ago
  If they run a lightning wallet and open it for donations, they'd see that percentage rise dramatically at virtually no cost.
  - Aachen 4y ago
    How does that make a difference? As I understood it, every individual would still have to do a regular on-chain transaction, it's only if you later realize you actually wanted to donate more than you did that this could be useful because then you avoid the full transaction fee. Or if you let it run over years without settling and do a yearly donation, though I'm not clear on the implications there. Or, if the on-chain parties are just Wikipedia and a few big payment service providers to avoid that everyone has to do the setup individually, you've basically reinvented paypal credits or, less evil-ly, liberapay.
    - sparkie 4y ago
      I think you misunderstand the Network part of the Lightning Network. It is not necessary for users to have a direct payment channel to Wikimedia in order to donate to them. They just need to have an active channel to anybody in the network who is capable of routing a payment request to Wikimedia's node. The assumption is that Lightning users already have active open channels to other nodes in the network, and so making a new donation to Wikimedia would not require any additional channel opening, and no on-chain activity.
      - Aachen 4y ago
        Thanks for clarifying that! Now that you mention it, I remember reading that but forgot it again somehow. That does (positively) change how well this can work without compromising the whole idea behind bitcoin.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  > nobody is using it for payments at all, rather just holding crypto coins and hoping they'll go up The above statement is false. I prefer to use cash and crypto to prevent my expenses from being tracked (although I absolutely am not avoiding any taxes). I pay cash, not crypto when I want weed (sadly it's still illegal in most of the places). I rarely hold more than $100 worth so don't care about where is the rate going. I presume I'm not unique.
- koonsolo 4y ago
  Ukraine received millions of dollars of donations in cryptocurrency. So your last statement is not really correct.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    As of March 11, close to $100 million. According to a deputy minister in Ukraine: > “In a situation like this, where the national bank is not fully operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately.” NYTimes: https://archive.ph/3HVqU# https://archive.ph/3HVqU#
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    This is crypto’s second largest use case, behind as a means for illegal activities. Crypto is easier to send in extreme situations than fiat currencies.
    - ea550ff70a 4y ago
      > behind as a means for illegal activities which are less than 1% of the yearly transaction volume according to Chainalysis lol
      - rvz 4y ago
        On top of that you can trace all the transactions on the chain and see where everything is going publicly. Useful to catch criminals attempting to liquidate on to an exchange. Good luck cashing out and not getting caught.
        koonsolo 4y ago
        Monero fixed that a long time ago already.
        rvz 4y ago
        That's right. Perhaps that's why proposed regulations are cracking down on banning and delisting Monero (and other privacy coins) on exchanges. [0] [1] [0] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/31/eu-parliament-votes-on-privacy-busting-crypto-rules-industry-rails-against-proposals/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/31/eu-parliament-vot... [1] https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/kraken-to-delist-monero-for-uk-customers-by-the-end-of-november-2685869 https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/kraken-to...
- AlexAltea 4y ago
  > What is really happening is that nobody is using it for payments at all [Citation needed] Over the past years I've been able to book flights, shop hardware, get hotels and rental cars, renew my domain, pay for my server with cryptocurrencies.
  - missingdays 4y ago
    So, you are 0.08%
    - logicchains 4y ago
      The rights of minorities don't matter?
      - raziel2p 4y ago
        paying in a currency/asset of your choice is no one's right. I have a bunch of foreign currency in cash lying around which I cannot use where I live without exchanging it, I guess that makes me a minority as well - should I make a fuss about my european country of residence not accepting a central american currency?
      - cuteboy19 4y ago
        Paying with x thing was never a right to begin with
    - ea550ff70a 4y ago
      No problem. Don't cry later with annoying banners crying for donations in order to keep the site's operations running.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    book flights with crypto? which airline or travel agency accepts crypto? I don't see how it could work with so much volatility. You could buy fully modifiable/refundable first class tickets and use them as free options to bet on the crypto in question
- superkuh 4y ago
  Oh. Hi. I guess I'm named nobody. I've just been nobodying for many years. But nobody pays attention to me because they're all fascinated/horrified with what the finance bros are doing off chain. No one likes to read about some dude quietly using bitcoin to pay for things like VPSes, computer hardware (newegg), etc, the last 7 years. It's not as exciting so I don't exist.
  - xadhominemx 4y ago
    Newegg does not accept Bitcoin for payment. They will allow you to pay via an intermediary who liquidates your Bitcoin and pays Newegg in dollars
charcircuit 4y ago
It's Wikipedia's loss. If they had actually took bitcoin donations since they added it in 2014 they would have appreciated quite a bit.
- eganist 4y ago
  appreciation would've be meaningless if they'd been spending it for operations (as is their wont).
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    A nonprofit doesn't need to liquidate and spend all of its assets by the end of the year. Since bitcoin was only a small percentage of donations it's likely they wouldn't have needed to liquidate any. They may have wanted to liquidate some of it to realize some gains as cryptocurrencies' value can be volatile.
- rehitman 4y ago
  I don’t know about Wikipedia, but many none for profit organization have strict guidelines about investment.they usually can either spend the money on operation, capex, or if they have to keep some reserve they need to use very safe investment like government bonds. Saying that most likely Wikipedia has to convert the bitcoin to cash before the end of the year. They cannot keep crypto as reserve or investment
  - vmception 4y ago
    The law is alot more flexible. I’m in the non profit space. There isnt a single thing they would have had to do with crypto donated to them. So yeah they could have ridden it up. Even investing rules and guidelines from the state and fed exempt donated assets from them completely. Non profits just lack an incentive to learn how to do anything well, and are often staffed by people that have never had to consider market forces.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Am I reading correctly that this is all cryptocurrencies, not just PoW? That's slightly surprising, although it probably simplifies things.
- TheDudeMan 4y ago
  Does it simplify things? That's kinda hard to imagine. I find it annoying that all cryptocurrencies would found guilty-by-association when it is well known that not all cryptocurrencies damage to the environment.
  - rvz 4y ago
    > I find it annoying that all cryptocurrencies would found guilty-by-association when it is well known that not all cryptocurrencies damage to the environment. If you read the responses in support of the proposal, you can clearly see that the majority of them are citing 'Environmental reasons and concerns' which that even has already been refuted to death. Mozilla seems to have made the sensible decision to not allow PoW cryptocurrencies and to allow only eco-friendly cryptocurrencies. It is the mining that is doing the damage to the environment which that is the problem. Guilt-by-association works all the time on people who want a blanket ban on anything they don't like, especially when there are bad eggs spoiling the bunch.
- agilob 4y ago
  Mozilla is rejecting only PoW cryptos https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/reporting-back-on-mozillas-cryptocurrency-donation-policy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/reporting-back-on-moz...
- e-dt 4y ago
  They were only accepting PoW cryptocurrencies anyway. In future, if PoS crypto gains wide currency (ha), I assume the matter can be reopened.
vmception 4y ago
So they excluded all the new accounts and unregistered voters, and only got 70% of the vote for reasons that are all solved with education. Thats… medieval.
- Macha 4y ago
  It turns out when you do allow anyone on the internet to sign up to your community to vote on what it does, you get the FCC net neutrality ballot stuffing, so I can't blame them
  - vmception 4y ago
    Why was that an option? What was the voting results otherwise? So many questions
    - Macha 4y ago
      You can count it up yourself without the exclusions, voting on wikimedia is just editing the talk page to include your comment with the word Oppose/Support and a signature. The raw counts are: Strongly support: 35 (+1 with no icon, not sure if this got counted) Support: 192 (+1 with no icon) Weakly support: 4 Weakly oppose: 5 Oppose: 86 Strongly oppose: 20 So the "raw" figures are 233 to 111 or 68%, still a clear majority and not that different from the 72% "anti-astroturfing" figure. I'd also point out that voting on wikipedia is also non-binding.
      - vmception 4y ago
        Thanks! That makes me more comfortable with how they normalized the data. It wasnt like a “FCC Net Neutrality” result at all
- TheDong 4y ago
  > reasons that are all solved with education Reasons like "risk to the movement’s reputation for accepting cryptocurrencies", solvable with education, sure. People who use cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other related stuff all have a vested interest in it succeeding. That has led to a lot of people who have annoyingly strong opinions about it. Things like "educating others" by cryptobro-splaining all over things is not going to solve the reputation of the movement. What's happening here is that you're seeing a peek into a different bubble. In your bubble, only a lack of education would be a valid reason to avoid bitcoin. In the bubble of wikipedia users who care enough to touch this poll, it is far less one-sided. I assure you all of those users who voted for or against have more than an average amount of education on the issues too, it's not like you can be the sort of person who votes on a wikipedia RFC without _also_ being a very online person.
amatecha 4y ago
haha, from the headline I thought this meant they would stop accepting new wiki pages about cryptocurrencies, and thought "huh, I guess it makes sense" :'D
aaron695 4y ago
Wikipedia is on a knife edge. It can flip quickly. I'm not sure what they are doing to keep it stable, but this is a bad sign. This should not be up to a vote. Wikipedia is there to be an encyclopedia, not have opinions on currency. People should be prepared for when Wikipedia becomes the enemy. F-Droid, DDG, Cloudflare all flipped at points. The problem is if Wikipedia treats themselves like a democracy with no strong constitution and legal system once these decisions on morals start, we all know where they end up, the same as Twitter.
- oska 4y ago
  I just vouched your comment. In return (not really), wondering if you could give me a little more detail on F-Droid 'flipping'. Because this is news to me.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    F-Droid rejected Gab. A lot of nazi sympathizers and free speech absolutists disagreed with that move. That’s all there is to it.
  - aaron695 4y ago
    By their own words they are political - "F-Droid is taking a political stance here." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20466730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20466730 They should get points for admitting they are political I guess? Not sure. Obviously it started something, there have been a few small issues since. But I'd like to see how much time is wasted on talking compared to coding since. The lowbrow who can't code will say words like Nazi which holds back the people who contribute to society by construction. Gay marriage was because of coders not activists. This is what Wiki should fear.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  Wikipedia flipped a long time ago. My local language's wikipedia is horrifically run by people deleting virtually any new content based on their own interpretation of rules, effectively turning away newcomers, and the English-language Wikipedia has a lot of articles with anything but NPOV content (and edit wars looming the moment you add other, non-popular information of a subject, even if sourced). Wikipedia still is a good source for general-purpose information on unpolitical topics, but the moment even the slightest amount of controversy exists around a lemma, it's unreliable and unusable.
lhl 4y ago
For those interested in charitable giving with crypto, I set up a decent-sized on-chain Donor Advised Fund with https://endaoment.org/ https://endaoment.org/ the end of last year. There are rough corners and it's still early days, but I'm able to give to basically any arbitrary 501c3 in the same way using a dapp interface now, which is pretty sweet. You can setup a DAF via crypto w/ either Schwab or Fidelity as well (and others I'm sure). I also did a bunch of year end donations through https://thegivingblock.com/ https://thegivingblock.com/ which allows non-profits to easily receive donations via hundreds of different crypto assets and is pretty seamless for both parties (you fill in your tax info once, get an automated tax receipt letter, the receiving party gets automatic cash auto-conversion (if they want) and donor info). Also, generally not tax deductible, but I'm a big fan of what https://gitcoin.co/ https://gitcoin.co/ is doing with sybil resistant quadratic fund matching. Generally, not tax deductible, so I keep my donations small (using either zkSync or Polygon to save on fees) but for the latest GR13 funding round, top grants were getting up to 10:1 matching (mostly Ukraine crisis response campaigns - UNICEF got a whopping 37X match btw!) https://gitcoin.co/blog/grants-round-13-round-results-recap/ https://gitcoin.co/blog/grants-round-13-round-results-recap/
- dogman144 4y ago
  Cool product, hope you get those smart contracts audited!
  - lhl 4y ago
    I agree it's pretty cool project. I don't have any relation to the team (except as an end-user) but of course the contracts have been audited: https://blog.openzeppelin.com/endaoment-audit/ https://blog.openzeppelin.com/endaoment-audit/
- kingcharles 4y ago
  Thanks for these leads. I'm setting up a nonprofit at the moment and I'm definitely interested in receiving crypto donations. The question is whether to keep crypto accounts or always convert immediately to fiat like Wikimedia?
zeepzeep 4y ago
wikipedia doesn't need the money anyways (any more money)
Proven 4y ago
mardifoufs 4y ago
Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anything related to crypto on some parts of twitter. Now I have been active in crypto mocking groups for years , but this feels more like some people have incorporated "anticrypto" to their daily culture war routine. So it must be purged from everywhere. Also, I'm semi active in the wiki community and I have never heard anyone talk about the climate impact of their wiki mania meetups and the hundreds of flights that it requires. Or jimbo going to davos in private planes... etc. Well maybe this is signaling that climate change will actually be taken in consideration by the foundation and the wiki editors for their future policy decisions and RFCs , but I somehow doubt it. The other reasons are even less relevant to wikimedia's mission.
- qeternity 4y ago
  > when you are a charity They are a non-profit only in the most technical sense these days, but have never been a charity.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Yes you are right! I always mix charity and non profit. But yeah, Wikimedia became a huge organization with an annual budget of 150M$ (of which a lot goes to completely unrelated pet projects), so it is a non profit only in a technical sense as you said. But it still feels the need to plead (or almost beg) for 3-5$ donations yearly with huge call to action banners on every wiki page. Which is okay, I get that they need funds. But to then throw away 140 000$ worth of donations on a whim completely contradicts the "every dollar counts, please help" message of their fundraising banners.
    - jackvalentine 4y ago
      Where is the line for what they should accept as payment?
deleted 4y ago
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Mindwipe 4y ago
Ah, another Wikipedia policy designed to exclude sex workers from financial services. I notice this wasn't even raised in the RFC.
- ben_w 4y ago
  I don’t see how this would do that. Nor how it is Wikimedia’s gift to give, it isn’t a financial corporation last I checked.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  The way to include them is to make it legal and forbid the banks to not accept money from them, not to create alternative lawless universe.
  - pennaMan 4y ago
    > make it legal and forbid the banks to not accept money from them Just like the cannabis industry! Oh wait...
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Yeah, the same is for cannabis industry.
  - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    Lacking petulant restrictions isn't equivalent to lawlessness.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  What? Cryptocurrencies are somehow the saviour of sex workers? Can you expand?
  - cdiddy2 4y ago
    This expands a bit. Banks don't like to bank sex workers. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/05/bitcoin-a-lifeline-for-sex-workers-like-ex-nurse-making-1point3-million.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/05/bitcoin-a-lifeline-for-sex-w...
derevaunseraun 4y ago
I'm not a cryptobro, but this annoying ass attitude is gonna turn me into one I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change
- ketzu 4y ago
  > I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change My personal guess is that we would recreate most of the infrastructure on top, but with monetary policy now in the hand of a select few individuals instead of governments. The consequences for the world at large would be interesting to explore.
  - sparkie 4y ago
    > but with monetary policy now in the hand of a select few individuals instead of governments Bitcoin's monetary policy is fixed. It is in nobody's hand, but everybody who decides to run a validating node. Monetary policy is controlled by central banks, which are privately owned. On paper, they're regulated by government, but in practice, politicians are easily bought, bribed or have their hands tied. The monetary policy is not decided by the people you elect into government.
    - grumple 4y ago
      > It is in nobody's hand, but everybody who decides to run a validating node. Those nodes are literally owned by people. The wealthier the person, the more nodes they can run. Which is exactly how crypto took off; drug cartels mined it, dealt with it, making money both on selling the coins to buyers for cash and on selling the product to the buyers. Large organizations and wealthy people, criminal or not, can and do control all proof of work (by controlling more workers) and proof of stake (by mining, purchasing, and holding more crypto). And because of the secrecy, we don't know who in many cases (ok... the various intelligence agencies might), and they aren't effectively regulated in any way. All crypto has done is make it so the only requirement to gain wealth is to already be wealthy. This is far more direct of a relationship with crypto than with real currency, where you at least have to do actual work of some sort to make money.
deleted 4y ago
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02020202 4y ago
pennaMan 4y ago
- thenoblesunfish 4y ago
  It's an organization that receives donations based on people's perception of them as ethical. This move is intended to communicate the values of the organization, as (at least according to this RFC), their community considers accepting cryptocurrency to give the wrong message. An interesting tangent here is whether the fundamentally relevant thing about cryptocurrency is technology or ideology/politics. I'd probably argue the latter - the tech is cool, but I don't think it's cool enough to fully explain the appeal of the idea.
fergie 4y ago
"cryptocurrencies provide safer ways to donate and engage in finance for people in oppressive countries" Yet a bigger problem is that too much money is moved out of these countries by those in power and hamstered away in various global tax havens. I recommend "Moneyland" for anybody wanting to learn more.
- rsolva 4y ago
  I am in the middle of Moneyland now after seeing it recommended here on HN. A fascinating and horrifying read that also provides some context to what is happening in Ukraine.
koonsolo 4y ago
I'm very happy to see we are now in the "then they fight you" stage :). Let's see who wins.
- lxgr 4y ago
  Sometimes an idea opposed by many is really just a bad idea.
  - koonsolo 4y ago
    It's definitely an idea that caught some traction, else you're in the "first they ignore you" stage. The "fight you" stage is when people perceive it as a threat. And it already needs to be big enough to be considered a threat. Can still be a bad idea of course. We'll see.
vdddv 4y ago
"the tally is 232 to 94, or 71.17% in support of the proposal" So this decision is the result of a mere 326 Wikipedia users (contributors?)taking a vote.
cycomanic 4y ago
I find many of the replies here fascinating. On one hand whenever there is talk about government regulating some industry or actor a large portion of commenter here reply that if you don't agree with the practice don't use them, no regulation needed. Now an organisation does exactly that, they decide that they don't want to use a "service" that they ethically disagree with, and lots of replies call it pointless virtue signalling. So how should people/organisations act when they disagree with certain practices/actors?
- JulianMorrison 4y ago
  It's disingenuous arguing. Free association for me, no cancelling for you, amounts to a plea for a get-out-of-Coventry-free card.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- AxeVice 4y ago
  People like to be contrarian, or at least the replies a thread receives will mostly be from people who disagree with the thread's premise.
- sparkie 4y ago
  It is pointless virtue signalling because the primary argument for ending bitcoin donations is about energy usage, but the effect of ending bitcoin donations will have precisely zero impact on the amount of electricity used by the bitcoin network. This isn't the same as when you boycott a company's products and it causes a loss of sales.
  - lxgr 4y ago
    Accepting or spending Bitcoin increases its utility quadratically per participant (via the network effect). Utility increases utilization, which increases fees, which incentivize mining. It really is exactly the same thing as boycotting a company.
    - 4y ago
teekert 4y ago
The environment? Then run a lightning node, or use Cardano, problem solved. Why are we trowing the baby out with the bathwater?
- lxgr 4y ago
  Can Lightning exist without the Bitcoin blockchain?
  - teekert 4y ago
    When will technical solutions reduce blockchain energy usage enough for the anti-blockhain people to find it acceptable?
    - lxgr 4y ago
      I don‘t think "the anti-blockchain people" is as homogenous a front as you might imagine it. Some object on the grounds of PoW mining and its incentive structure; others due to their tendencies to disproportionately accumulate wealth to early adopters; yet others due to widespread predatory and/or misleading marketing. I‘m probably forgetting several other reasons here. Personally, anything based on proof-of-scarce-resource is pretty much a no-go (unless it would suddenly provide benefits more than outweighing the damage it does), but definitely not only that.
      - teekert 4y ago
        What is the alternative to proof-of-scare-resource? I only trust money or gold because you cant pick it from the trees with almost 0 effort.
constantlm 4y ago
In the context of their yearly guilt tripping banners asking for money in a manner that sounds like Wikipedia is on the brink of death, this virtue signaling is disappointing.
- Cynddl 4y ago
  Two very different things. The banner is set by the Wikimedia Foundation, while this is a vote by the community.
distrohopper 4y ago
Wikipedia will no longer receive any donations from me. Works for me. It has become pretty left leaning anyways.
ancymon 4y ago
They also oppose having ads on Wikipedia. Personally I don't see much difference between banners asking for donations and ads. I understand there are "bad" ads (privacy violating or ones causing conflict of interest), but not all of them are like this. Same with cryptocurrencies - some of them are "scam", but not all of them. It's strange that Wikipedia sees world as black and white.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  If you make ads a meaningful revenue stream, you will sooner or later optimize your content so that people spend more time viewing ads. Money will find a way.
  - ancymon 4y ago
    In this case you mean Wikipedia editors will start making their content more attractive to advertisers?
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      That or making articles purposefully structured so that the user has to jump around a few links and earn more ad views.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  I'd much rather them having an old-style Google Adsense-type ad somewhere than their annual, 50%-of-the-screen guilt-tripping donations ad.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    I couldn't disagree more. Those guilt-tripping donation ads are obnoxious, but I would much rather Wikipedia be an obnoxious beggar than sink so low as to be make themselves into corporate propagandists for hire. That would be much worse.
CTDOCodebases 4y ago
If environmental sustainability is an issue why don’t they shut down their servers? Think of all the electricity they could save. An online encyclopaedia is not essential for human survival.
baobabKoodaa 4y ago
I always find it weird when a charity or non-profit publically announces that they stop accepting certain forms of donations due to ideological reasons. It's a signal that the organization isn't particularly starving for donations. If you were planning to donate to Wikipedia any sum less than $130,100.94, remember that 70% of Wikipedians consider such donations to have no impact at all. So if you were about to donate $100k, for example, nobody at Wikipedia cares about such a tiny donation. So maybe donate that $100k to an organization that actually needs it instead?
- miracle2k 4y ago
  Exactly right. And note that this is done purely and openly for ideological reasons - there is no maintenance cost argument being made.
- eynsham 4y ago
  > publically announces That’s how RfCs work—they’re public by nature, so that people can comment. It’s hardly feasible not to then promulgate the outcome. > they stop accepting certain forms of donations They haven’t. This is a proposal through an RfC. The foundation may or may not accept it. > organization isn't particularly starving for donations Well it isn’t, so that’s a good thing. People should stop donating to the foundation for a while. Hopefully the bureaucracy will be slashed.
  - baobabKoodaa 4y ago
    Thanks for the clarifications. I misread the title and assumed that the RFC had been passed.
    - eynsham 4y ago
      The RfC is passed but the effect of that is to make a request. Imagine you and I were to form a committee to discuss, e.g., landscaping in municipal gardens: we might pass a motion to suggest planting different flowers, but that would amount only to a request to the gardeners/the competent authority.
MavropaliasG 4y ago
Wikipedia has gone down the toilet. Too much political correctness, leftists, and sensitive snowflakes.
plebianRube 4y ago
Their existing model of soliciting donations via “DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS,” got them over 150MM without crypto. Their stance on banning crypto changes nothing on this front, and only serves to make themselves seem 'green'
theknocker 4y ago
ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
Beggars can't be choosers. Lame virtue signalling from a worn out platform with its best days long behind it. The energy argument against crypto is total BS and just an attack from the legacy banking industry and their cronies.
jaza 4y ago
This is consistent with their negative attitude towards crypto-related Wikipedia content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Blockchain_and_cryptocurrencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Bl... > A community discussion at the administrators' noticeboard has placed all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, under indefinite general sanctions, effective 14:43, 22 May 2018 (UTC).
bannedbybros 4y ago
robonerd 4y ago
In response to these kind of stories, the comment sections online are always filled with crypto advocates upset about the organization not taking their money. This really makes clear who needs who. Crypto needs wikipedia much more than wikipedia needs crypto. Wikipedia is not hard up for cash (if you earnestly believe their begging ads, you must be naive. Give me a break.) But crypto is hard up for legitimacy.
- jdrc 4y ago
  its not just the crypto-buffs. This is a purely ideological decision that actually goes against the original libertarian ideas behind wikipedia. Keeping BTC payments costs nothing to wikipedia, and it actually meshes with the original idea of BTC as "native internet money" which has not yet been refuted. Wikipedia and BTC are a good match because of their nonaligned, distributed web 1.0 nature . Wiki&banks are not, wiki&paypal is not. The reasoning behind this decision is purely ideological, and rightfully people should be worried. This will open the floodgates that will eventually lead to the destruction of npov. We have seen this happening so many times with social media and payment platforms that it is laughable to suggest it won't happen this time. Occam's razor would suggest to do nothing, but ideological axes are being wielded. This will turn a lot of people off.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    The 'original founding ideas' of wikipedia, whatever they may be, aren't relevant if they aren't actually encoded in the organizations rules. And since nobody can come up with a persuasive argument that wikipedia must accept crypto by wikipedia's own rules, this clearly isn't the case. Without that, the 'founding ideas' are just ideas wikipedians used to have, and are far less relevant than the ideas wikipedians presently have. Their present views are evidenced by this vote, which crypto advocates are clearly upset about.
    - jdrc 4y ago
      > Wikipedia has no firm rules > Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone; their content and interpretation can evolve over time. The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording, and sometimes improving Wikipedia requires making exceptions. Be bold, but not reckless, in updating articles. And do not agonize over making mistakes: (almost) every past version of a page is saved, so mistakes can be easily corrected https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars people who are looking for rules to manipulate perhaps should build their own projects
dogman144 4y ago
Ideological payment censorship is a known issue with digital payments, and the core so-what of BTC that has been lost in the cryptocurrency sales pitch somewhat. The first block has an anti-'08 bailout message in it for a reason. These censorship use cases are slowly moving towards more possible mainstream familiarity and empathy, and in my opinion also moving towards impacting progressive activist groups with axes to grind and payment rails dependent on the targets of those activism. When that eventually comes to a head, as it seems likely, then the real decision point on cryptocurrencies will occur. Assange gets payments/donations cut off from all the major providers - ok, he's possibly a Russian asset, not a great personality fit for whistleblower empathy, did some shady/bad things, ok who cares. OnlyFans almost gets its payment rails cut off by investors due to its core content - ok, I may not know camgirls/boys, but I can empathize with them a bit more and certainly don't like Investment Banks and Visa telling folks how to spend their evenings. Now, taking a look at climate action groups, and wikis that try to leverage free and fair information for a public good. Also, not much has changed since 2008. The predatory financial behaviors still occur, maybe just called something differently - see Canada banning foreign purchases of homes. Depending on which side of the abortion debate you are on, large chunks of the country are moving in divergent directions on it. Unions in tech-y warehouse jobs have serious OPSEC concerns and are shifting over to Signal for coordination. All of these causes and related groups rely on digital rails for payments, information sharing, and organization (Slack groups, Paypal accounts, GSuite free-ish emails, Signal groups etc). There is already a trend of building OPSEC programs for activist-y groups, and leveraging data science/FOIA for activist research. The McDonald's CEO was nabbed for this via a ~FOIA against the Chicago mayor. All of these causes' desired outcomes fundamentally oppose core tenants of corporate infrastructure, pending some major change. Climate activism especially comes to mind. When the real conversations and possible anger actually start occurring in these groups, andthe real reactions from their counter-parties start occurring in public, and the fights over what gets into a wikipedia article occur in conjunction more so than already, a censorship-free payment rail comes into play. That means paper cash, cryptocurrency, or maybe some new tech. But I doubt Zelle or Venmo are safe at that point. I think the real so-what debate about crypto starts at that point.
thepasswordis 4y ago
It sounds like Wikipedia isn’t really wanting for money. Meh. I’ve donated in the past, but will just look for different charities in the future. Non news article imo.
quiet_cool 4y ago
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I've been ignoring crypto for the most post but this is just dumb, they are turning away free money. It's not up to wikipedia to fix the problems of the world (take a hint mozilla). This is a pretty big red flag about flaws in Wikipedia's governance.
- ea550ff70a 4y ago
  Even if it is 0.8% of their donations, it is still a lot. They are pretty direct with how drastic is for them to receive donations in order to survive. This decision is just dumb.
PufPufPuf 4y ago
I'm surprised how many pro-cryptocurrency comments I see here on HN. I would expect people here to see through the hype and technobabble.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  ? Perform a really quick binomial test on pro-cryptocurrency comments and anti-cryptocurrency comments and you'll find that sentiment here is overwhelmingly anti. If you can't see that, then you just aren't looking. So what percentage of pro-cryptocurrency comments would make _you_ happy?
lsanger 4y ago
So Wikipedia doesn't accept crypto anymore. Who cares? They don't need it! The Knowledge Standards Foundation does. We're making an open network of all the encyclopedias (http://encyclosphere.org http://encyclosphere.org). Contact us: info@encyclosphere.org Disclosure: I was co-founder of Wikipedia, once upon a time, and the KSF is my project.
vinnie-io 4y ago
were they intimidated to accept crypto donations in the first place? have seen stories where companies are intimidated and threatened into accepting crypto as a payment option by groups
qgin 4y ago
If you’re a charity in 1999 and people want to donate their Beanie Babies to you, accept them and sell them asap.

This is great news, it is pretty pointless to use cryptocurrencies at all anyway since for Wikipedia: > Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels. Remember that Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites on the planet, I'm also assuming that other websites trying to accept crypto have even smaller percentages rendering cryptocurrencies as payment useless, not to mention damaging to the environment. What is really happening is that nobody is using it for payments at all, rather just holding crypto coins and hoping they'll go up and speculating on the price.

quartesixte 4y ago
But what if Wikpedia donor pool also is made up mostly of those who do not wish to use cryptos to donate?
garbagetime 4y ago
There just isn't the incentive to use cryptocurrency to donate to Wikipedia. For some other kinds of payments, such as gambling payments, cryptocurrency is a popular option.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  > There just isn't the incentive to use cryptocurrency to donate to Wikipedia. Sure there is. A lot of people have lots of value tied up in crypto, a very liquid asset. It’s also easy to send. I know nothing about wiring money to Ukraine, but I know how to donate to Ukraine organizations that accept crypto. If crypto is a small part of your revenue stream, maybe it’s because you haven’t nurtured it as a donation channel.
  - unicornmama 4y ago
    > I know nothing about wiring money to Ukraine You go to your bank and ask them to start a wire transfer. The recipient’s bank will provide the instructions. You can even do this entirely online.
    - devoutsalsa 4y ago
      My physical bank is in a different country. As a crypto enthusiast, I’m obligated to migrate to a remote tax haven full of like minded nut jobs.
      - unicornmama 4y ago
        So you chose to unbank yourself :) I have transacted millions in crypto and wire transfers. Banking with crypto is like the 1970s - exorbitant fees. To do anything useful with it I have to offramp to fiat which drum rolls ends with a wire transfer.
        devoutsalsa 4y ago
        You said "go to your bank". I was thinking "walk into a bank branch" XD I don't think I've ever wired money in my life. I guess I never needed to. And the few occasions I needed to send some money internationally, I've simply sent crypto, used Western Union, or something like PayPal or Revolut.
        unicornmama 4y ago
        Wiring isn’t that bad, you need to fill in some fields about the recipient account details and receiving bank. The annoying bit is that banks have inconsistent web portals with mediocre UX. So sometimes it can be frustrating to figure out how to enter the information. I’ll admit that the crypto UX is faster with just entering a destination wallet address. It would be good if banks could adopt QR codes to provide similar experienfe. Sometimes you get charged a fee, but many institutions will waive that (e.g. Schwab) if your balance is high enough.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  If the speculation in crypto is being fueled by crypto chasing non-fiat exits (as you imply wrt gambling payments), then isn't it silly to cut off that tap? Value is fungible, it shouldn't matter whether it's a Wikipedia donation or a "gambling payment".
- jeltz 4y ago
  Only where gambling is illegal and to illegal casinos. Legal casinos do not want the hassle with KYC, market volatility and the often slow transactions. And neither does the customers.
  - garbagetime 4y ago
    My understanding is that in the USA there are a lot of cases where gambling online is legal, but where it is illegal for banks to process transactions relating to those services. In such cases cryptocurrency is helpful, even though the wagering is not illegal, and the casino itself is not illegal. There are also cases in my own country where cryptocurrency is very useful for gambling, with nothing illegal taking place.
vmception 4y ago
Charitable giving with crypto is just getting off the ground As tax considerations with crypto are just getting off the ground So you basically have this wide polar extreme of: A) People using crypto and thinking there are no taxes B) And entrepreneurs moving their premines to their own non-profits for massive tax breaks and exemption leaving existing non-profits just waiting People in A) move slightly towards the center year over year as reality catches up to them and more become loaded with appreciated assets or just have an inventory of crypto at all times People close to B) are also loaded with assets and more likely to contribute to other non profits Its better for a non profit to keep the door open and have the payment rails available. Large contributions could happen at any time. At the end of the day, money talks, pretty much all non profits figure it out when a donor wants to donate any large asset, including in crypto
- timerol 4y ago
  > As tax considerations with crypto are just getting off the ground This is very not true. Buying and selling anything has very clear tax implications. It's more that enforcement is slow, and people are willingly breaking the law because of it. Here's a good Twitter conversation explaining the situation: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1501707876888240131 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1501707876888240131 > I think the issue is mostly that the industry’s core request is “Can we have an outright exemption from securities regulation?”, the regulators say “Absolutely not you must follow the law.”, industry follows with “How high is this on your enforcement priority list?”, “Not very.” > And so industry complains “My my this all seems so ambiguous and look at all these similar projects which never get enforcement actions. I wish we had Regulatory Clarity (TM).”
  - vmception 4y ago
    > This is very not true. Buying and selling anything has very clear tax implications. I was saying that crypto users willing to consider tax and more complex tax is just getting off the ground, not that the law itself ever ignored them I think the rest of my post makes that clear > People in A) move slightly towards the center year over year as reality catches up to them (the reality that tax always applied) but I can see how it doesn't, especially if you are expecting a crypto tax / regulation protestor
jdrc 4y ago
So this is not great news at all, a totally inconsequential and pointless move for signaling virtue (look at the arguments given), which is contrary to wikipedia's aim to be neutral
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Removing the payment method simplifies the donations system. And since it’s not generating any value, it’s not worth keeping.
  - jdrc 4y ago
    that was not one of the arguments made in the RFC > Common arguments in support include: issues of environmental sustainability, that accepting cryptocurrencies constitutes implicit endorsement of the issues surrounding cryptocurrencies, and community issues with the risk to the movement’s reputation for accepting cryptocurrencies. it looks 100% ideological
    - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
      Accepting cryptocurrencies is equally ideological
      - CryptoPunk 4y ago
        The ideology of people not needing a central government's permission to privately interact? What I would concede is that it does challenge the dominant ideology of the establishment. As this former Federal Reserve economist describes, the Federal Reserve system is extremely centralized: https://twitter.com/gordonliao/status/1484605701435523072?s=20&t=NpU-wAnoZ5736jOsrE_v6A https://twitter.com/gordonliao/status/1484605701435523072?s=... This is just one aspect of centralized economic control cryptocurrency threatens to upend. Centralization will inevitably engender rent-seeking, so the dominant ideological framework being one that glorifies that centralized gatekeeping, and villifies a free market, is entirely predictable.
      - 4y ago
mardifoufs 4y ago
Just for context, that's still 140 00$
- jdrc 4y ago
  > In the last financial year we received $130,100.94 worth of donations in cryptocurrencies.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    At that take, I'm not sure if it covers the engineering effort to maintain it, accounting and legal work to handle it, and opportunity cost of whatever else they could be doing.
    - jdrc 4y ago
      that was nowhere near the justification given
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Doesn’t need to be. At most it’s a reason for Wikimedia to not care enough to say ‘no’ to the RfC.
    - gjs278 4y ago
flotzam 4y ago
Wikipedia used BitPay, the most widely loathed of all cryptocurrency payment processors - https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/ https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/ - and required prospective donors to provide an obscene amount of personal data: https://bitpay.com/464448/donate https://bitpay.com/464448/donate It's a high friction, culture-clashing payment flow. I certainly noped out of that form real fast. For comparison: https://www.givedirectly.org/crypto/ https://www.givedirectly.org/crypto/ And another campaign on The Giving Block, an anonymity friendly donation payment processor: https://thegivingblock.com/campaigns/ukraine-emergency-response-fund/ https://thegivingblock.com/campaigns/ukraine-emergency-respo...
- numeri 4y ago
  This is the real reason they received so few donations. I've only ever donated to them through Brave's Attention Tokens [1], so I never realized they use BitPay, but it really is intrusive. 1. I wonder if they'll keep this enabled or not?
  - gwd 4y ago
    > 1. I wonder if they'll keep this enabled or not? I was wondering the same thing -- hopefully they will, as I'd like to see that model succeed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- kuschku 4y ago
  > required prospective donors to provide an obscene amount of personal data Yes, that’s known as KYC laws, which are required if you’re a payment processor of any kind.
  - flotzam 4y ago
    Seems more like preemptive overcompliance. Plenty of reputable charities accept anonymous donations just fine, whether it's cryptocurrency or cash by mail.
once_inc 4y ago
If they run a lightning wallet and open it for donations, they'd see that percentage rise dramatically at virtually no cost.
- Aachen 4y ago
  How does that make a difference? As I understood it, every individual would still have to do a regular on-chain transaction, it's only if you later realize you actually wanted to donate more than you did that this could be useful because then you avoid the full transaction fee. Or if you let it run over years without settling and do a yearly donation, though I'm not clear on the implications there. Or, if the on-chain parties are just Wikipedia and a few big payment service providers to avoid that everyone has to do the setup individually, you've basically reinvented paypal credits or, less evil-ly, liberapay.
  - sparkie 4y ago
    I think you misunderstand the Network part of the Lightning Network. It is not necessary for users to have a direct payment channel to Wikimedia in order to donate to them. They just need to have an active channel to anybody in the network who is capable of routing a payment request to Wikimedia's node. The assumption is that Lightning users already have active open channels to other nodes in the network, and so making a new donation to Wikimedia would not require any additional channel opening, and no on-chain activity.
    - Aachen 4y ago
      Thanks for clarifying that! Now that you mention it, I remember reading that but forgot it again somehow. That does (positively) change how well this can work without compromising the whole idea behind bitcoin.
qwerty456127 4y ago
> nobody is using it for payments at all, rather just holding crypto coins and hoping they'll go up The above statement is false. I prefer to use cash and crypto to prevent my expenses from being tracked (although I absolutely am not avoiding any taxes). I pay cash, not crypto when I want weed (sadly it's still illegal in most of the places). I rarely hold more than $100 worth so don't care about where is the rate going. I presume I'm not unique.
koonsolo 4y ago
Ukraine received millions of dollars of donations in cryptocurrency. So your last statement is not really correct.
- DennisP 4y ago
  As of March 11, close to $100 million. According to a deputy minister in Ukraine: > “In a situation like this, where the national bank is not fully operating, crypto is helping to perform fast transfers, to make it very quick and get results almost immediately.” NYTimes: https://archive.ph/3HVqU# https://archive.ph/3HVqU#
- thehappypm 4y ago
  This is crypto’s second largest use case, behind as a means for illegal activities. Crypto is easier to send in extreme situations than fiat currencies.
  - ea550ff70a 4y ago
    > behind as a means for illegal activities which are less than 1% of the yearly transaction volume according to Chainalysis lol
    - rvz 4y ago
      On top of that you can trace all the transactions on the chain and see where everything is going publicly. Useful to catch criminals attempting to liquidate on to an exchange. Good luck cashing out and not getting caught.
      - koonsolo 4y ago
        Monero fixed that a long time ago already.
        rvz 4y ago
        That's right. Perhaps that's why proposed regulations are cracking down on banning and delisting Monero (and other privacy coins) on exchanges. [0] [1] [0] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/31/eu-parliament-votes-on-privacy-busting-crypto-rules-industry-rails-against-proposals/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/31/eu-parliament-vot... [1] https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/kraken-to-delist-monero-for-uk-customers-by-the-end-of-november-2685869 https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/kraken-to...
AlexAltea 4y ago
> What is really happening is that nobody is using it for payments at all [Citation needed] Over the past years I've been able to book flights, shop hardware, get hotels and rental cars, renew my domain, pay for my server with cryptocurrencies.
- missingdays 4y ago
  So, you are 0.08%
  - logicchains 4y ago
    The rights of minorities don't matter?
    - raziel2p 4y ago
      paying in a currency/asset of your choice is no one's right. I have a bunch of foreign currency in cash lying around which I cannot use where I live without exchanging it, I guess that makes me a minority as well - should I make a fuss about my european country of residence not accepting a central american currency?
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      Paying with x thing was never a right to begin with
  - ea550ff70a 4y ago
    No problem. Don't cry later with annoying banners crying for donations in order to keep the site's operations running.
- namdnay 4y ago
  book flights with crypto? which airline or travel agency accepts crypto? I don't see how it could work with so much volatility. You could buy fully modifiable/refundable first class tickets and use them as free options to bet on the crypto in question
superkuh 4y ago
Oh. Hi. I guess I'm named nobody. I've just been nobodying for many years. But nobody pays attention to me because they're all fascinated/horrified with what the finance bros are doing off chain. No one likes to read about some dude quietly using bitcoin to pay for things like VPSes, computer hardware (newegg), etc, the last 7 years. It's not as exciting so I don't exist.
- xadhominemx 4y ago
  Newegg does not accept Bitcoin for payment. They will allow you to pay via an intermediary who liquidates your Bitcoin and pays Newegg in dollars

charcircuit 4y ago

It's Wikipedia's loss. If they had actually took bitcoin donations since they added it in 2014 they would have appreciated quite a bit.

eganist 4y ago
appreciation would've be meaningless if they'd been spending it for operations (as is their wont).
- charcircuit 4y ago
  A nonprofit doesn't need to liquidate and spend all of its assets by the end of the year. Since bitcoin was only a small percentage of donations it's likely they wouldn't have needed to liquidate any. They may have wanted to liquidate some of it to realize some gains as cryptocurrencies' value can be volatile.
rehitman 4y ago
I don’t know about Wikipedia, but many none for profit organization have strict guidelines about investment.they usually can either spend the money on operation, capex, or if they have to keep some reserve they need to use very safe investment like government bonds. Saying that most likely Wikipedia has to convert the bitcoin to cash before the end of the year. They cannot keep crypto as reserve or investment
- vmception 4y ago
  The law is alot more flexible. I’m in the non profit space. There isnt a single thing they would have had to do with crypto donated to them. So yeah they could have ridden it up. Even investing rules and guidelines from the state and fed exempt donated assets from them completely. Non profits just lack an incentive to learn how to do anything well, and are often staffed by people that have never had to consider market forces.
  - mschuster91 4y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

Am I reading correctly that this is all cryptocurrencies, not just PoW? That's slightly surprising, although it probably simplifies things.

TheDudeMan 4y ago
Does it simplify things? That's kinda hard to imagine. I find it annoying that all cryptocurrencies would found guilty-by-association when it is well known that not all cryptocurrencies damage to the environment.
- rvz 4y ago
  > I find it annoying that all cryptocurrencies would found guilty-by-association when it is well known that not all cryptocurrencies damage to the environment. If you read the responses in support of the proposal, you can clearly see that the majority of them are citing 'Environmental reasons and concerns' which that even has already been refuted to death. Mozilla seems to have made the sensible decision to not allow PoW cryptocurrencies and to allow only eco-friendly cryptocurrencies. It is the mining that is doing the damage to the environment which that is the problem. Guilt-by-association works all the time on people who want a blanket ban on anything they don't like, especially when there are bad eggs spoiling the bunch.
agilob 4y ago
Mozilla is rejecting only PoW cryptos https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/reporting-back-on-mozillas-cryptocurrency-donation-policy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/reporting-back-on-moz...
e-dt 4y ago
They were only accepting PoW cryptocurrencies anyway. In future, if PoS crypto gains wide currency (ha), I assume the matter can be reopened.

vmception 4y ago

So they excluded all the new accounts and unregistered voters, and only got 70% of the vote for reasons that are all solved with education. Thats… medieval.

Macha 4y ago
It turns out when you do allow anyone on the internet to sign up to your community to vote on what it does, you get the FCC net neutrality ballot stuffing, so I can't blame them
- vmception 4y ago
  Why was that an option? What was the voting results otherwise? So many questions
  - Macha 4y ago
    You can count it up yourself without the exclusions, voting on wikimedia is just editing the talk page to include your comment with the word Oppose/Support and a signature. The raw counts are: Strongly support: 35 (+1 with no icon, not sure if this got counted) Support: 192 (+1 with no icon) Weakly support: 4 Weakly oppose: 5 Oppose: 86 Strongly oppose: 20 So the "raw" figures are 233 to 111 or 68%, still a clear majority and not that different from the 72% "anti-astroturfing" figure. I'd also point out that voting on wikipedia is also non-binding.
    - vmception 4y ago
      Thanks! That makes me more comfortable with how they normalized the data. It wasnt like a “FCC Net Neutrality” result at all
TheDong 4y ago
> reasons that are all solved with education Reasons like "risk to the movement’s reputation for accepting cryptocurrencies", solvable with education, sure. People who use cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other related stuff all have a vested interest in it succeeding. That has led to a lot of people who have annoyingly strong opinions about it. Things like "educating others" by cryptobro-splaining all over things is not going to solve the reputation of the movement. What's happening here is that you're seeing a peek into a different bubble. In your bubble, only a lack of education would be a valid reason to avoid bitcoin. In the bubble of wikipedia users who care enough to touch this poll, it is far less one-sided. I assure you all of those users who voted for or against have more than an average amount of education on the issues too, it's not like you can be the sort of person who votes on a wikipedia RFC without _also_ being a very online person.

amatecha 4y ago

haha, from the headline I thought this meant they would stop accepting new wiki pages about cryptocurrencies, and thought "huh, I guess it makes sense" :'D

aaron695 4y ago

Wikipedia is on a knife edge. It can flip quickly. I'm not sure what they are doing to keep it stable, but this is a bad sign. This should not be up to a vote. Wikipedia is there to be an encyclopedia, not have opinions on currency. People should be prepared for when Wikipedia becomes the enemy. F-Droid, DDG, Cloudflare all flipped at points. The problem is if Wikipedia treats themselves like a democracy with no strong constitution and legal system once these decisions on morals start, we all know where they end up, the same as Twitter.

oska 4y ago
I just vouched your comment. In return (not really), wondering if you could give me a little more detail on F-Droid 'flipping'. Because this is news to me.
- kuschku 4y ago
  F-Droid rejected Gab. A lot of nazi sympathizers and free speech absolutists disagreed with that move. That’s all there is to it.
- aaron695 4y ago
  By their own words they are political - "F-Droid is taking a political stance here." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20466730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20466730 They should get points for admitting they are political I guess? Not sure. Obviously it started something, there have been a few small issues since. But I'd like to see how much time is wasted on talking compared to coding since. The lowbrow who can't code will say words like Nazi which holds back the people who contribute to society by construction. Gay marriage was because of coders not activists. This is what Wiki should fear.
DocTomoe 4y ago
Wikipedia flipped a long time ago. My local language's wikipedia is horrifically run by people deleting virtually any new content based on their own interpretation of rules, effectively turning away newcomers, and the English-language Wikipedia has a lot of articles with anything but NPOV content (and edit wars looming the moment you add other, non-popular information of a subject, even if sourced). Wikipedia still is a good source for general-purpose information on unpolitical topics, but the moment even the slightest amount of controversy exists around a lemma, it's unreliable and unusable.

lhl 4y ago

For those interested in charitable giving with crypto, I set up a decent-sized on-chain Donor Advised Fund with https://endaoment.org/ https://endaoment.org/ the end of last year. There are rough corners and it's still early days, but I'm able to give to basically any arbitrary 501c3 in the same way using a dapp interface now, which is pretty sweet. You can setup a DAF via crypto w/ either Schwab or Fidelity as well (and others I'm sure). I also did a bunch of year end donations through https://thegivingblock.com/ https://thegivingblock.com/ which allows non-profits to easily receive donations via hundreds of different crypto assets and is pretty seamless for both parties (you fill in your tax info once, get an automated tax receipt letter, the receiving party gets automatic cash auto-conversion (if they want) and donor info). Also, generally not tax deductible, but I'm a big fan of what https://gitcoin.co/ https://gitcoin.co/ is doing with sybil resistant quadratic fund matching. Generally, not tax deductible, so I keep my donations small (using either zkSync or Polygon to save on fees) but for the latest GR13 funding round, top grants were getting up to 10:1 matching (mostly Ukraine crisis response campaigns - UNICEF got a whopping 37X match btw!) https://gitcoin.co/blog/grants-round-13-round-results-recap/ https://gitcoin.co/blog/grants-round-13-round-results-recap/

dogman144 4y ago
Cool product, hope you get those smart contracts audited!
- lhl 4y ago
  I agree it's pretty cool project. I don't have any relation to the team (except as an end-user) but of course the contracts have been audited: https://blog.openzeppelin.com/endaoment-audit/ https://blog.openzeppelin.com/endaoment-audit/
kingcharles 4y ago
Thanks for these leads. I'm setting up a nonprofit at the moment and I'm definitely interested in receiving crypto donations. The question is whether to keep crypto accounts or always convert immediately to fiat like Wikimedia?

zeepzeep 4y ago

wikipedia doesn't need the money anyways (any more money)

Proven 4y ago

mardifoufs 4y ago

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anything related to crypto on some parts of twitter. Now I have been active in crypto mocking groups for years , but this feels more like some people have incorporated "anticrypto" to their daily culture war routine. So it must be purged from everywhere. Also, I'm semi active in the wiki community and I have never heard anyone talk about the climate impact of their wiki mania meetups and the hundreds of flights that it requires. Or jimbo going to davos in private planes... etc. Well maybe this is signaling that climate change will actually be taken in consideration by the foundation and the wiki editors for their future policy decisions and RFCs , but I somehow doubt it. The other reasons are even less relevant to wikimedia's mission.

qeternity 4y ago
> when you are a charity They are a non-profit only in the most technical sense these days, but have never been a charity.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Yes you are right! I always mix charity and non profit. But yeah, Wikimedia became a huge organization with an annual budget of 150M$ (of which a lot goes to completely unrelated pet projects), so it is a non profit only in a technical sense as you said. But it still feels the need to plead (or almost beg) for 3-5$ donations yearly with huge call to action banners on every wiki page. Which is okay, I get that they need funds. But to then throw away 140 000$ worth of donations on a whim completely contradicts the "every dollar counts, please help" message of their fundraising banners.
  - jackvalentine 4y ago
    Where is the line for what they should accept as payment?

deleted 4y ago

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Mindwipe 4y ago

Ah, another Wikipedia policy designed to exclude sex workers from financial services. I notice this wasn't even raised in the RFC.

ben_w 4y ago
I don’t see how this would do that. Nor how it is Wikimedia’s gift to give, it isn’t a financial corporation last I checked.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
The way to include them is to make it legal and forbid the banks to not accept money from them, not to create alternative lawless universe.
- pennaMan 4y ago
  > make it legal and forbid the banks to not accept money from them Just like the cannabis industry! Oh wait...
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Yeah, the same is for cannabis industry.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  Lacking petulant restrictions isn't equivalent to lawlessness.
EdwardDiego 4y ago
What? Cryptocurrencies are somehow the saviour of sex workers? Can you expand?
- cdiddy2 4y ago
  This expands a bit. Banks don't like to bank sex workers. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/05/bitcoin-a-lifeline-for-sex-workers-like-ex-nurse-making-1point3-million.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/05/bitcoin-a-lifeline-for-sex-w...

derevaunseraun 4y ago

I'm not a cryptobro, but this annoying ass attitude is gonna turn me into one I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change

ketzu 4y ago
> I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change My personal guess is that we would recreate most of the infrastructure on top, but with monetary policy now in the hand of a select few individuals instead of governments. The consequences for the world at large would be interesting to explore.
- sparkie 4y ago
  > but with monetary policy now in the hand of a select few individuals instead of governments Bitcoin's monetary policy is fixed. It is in nobody's hand, but everybody who decides to run a validating node. Monetary policy is controlled by central banks, which are privately owned. On paper, they're regulated by government, but in practice, politicians are easily bought, bribed or have their hands tied. The monetary policy is not decided by the people you elect into government.
  - grumple 4y ago
    > It is in nobody's hand, but everybody who decides to run a validating node. Those nodes are literally owned by people. The wealthier the person, the more nodes they can run. Which is exactly how crypto took off; drug cartels mined it, dealt with it, making money both on selling the coins to buyers for cash and on selling the product to the buyers. Large organizations and wealthy people, criminal or not, can and do control all proof of work (by controlling more workers) and proof of stake (by mining, purchasing, and holding more crypto). And because of the secrecy, we don't know who in many cases (ok... the various intelligence agencies might), and they aren't effectively regulated in any way. All crypto has done is make it so the only requirement to gain wealth is to already be wealthy. This is far more direct of a relationship with crypto than with real currency, where you at least have to do actual work of some sort to make money.

deleted 4y ago

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02020202 4y ago

pennaMan 4y ago

thenoblesunfish 4y ago
It's an organization that receives donations based on people's perception of them as ethical. This move is intended to communicate the values of the organization, as (at least according to this RFC), their community considers accepting cryptocurrency to give the wrong message. An interesting tangent here is whether the fundamentally relevant thing about cryptocurrency is technology or ideology/politics. I'd probably argue the latter - the tech is cool, but I don't think it's cool enough to fully explain the appeal of the idea.

fergie 4y ago

"cryptocurrencies provide safer ways to donate and engage in finance for people in oppressive countries" Yet a bigger problem is that too much money is moved out of these countries by those in power and hamstered away in various global tax havens. I recommend "Moneyland" for anybody wanting to learn more.

rsolva 4y ago
I am in the middle of Moneyland now after seeing it recommended here on HN. A fascinating and horrifying read that also provides some context to what is happening in Ukraine.

koonsolo 4y ago

I'm very happy to see we are now in the "then they fight you" stage :). Let's see who wins.

lxgr 4y ago
Sometimes an idea opposed by many is really just a bad idea.
- koonsolo 4y ago
  It's definitely an idea that caught some traction, else you're in the "first they ignore you" stage. The "fight you" stage is when people perceive it as a threat. And it already needs to be big enough to be considered a threat. Can still be a bad idea of course. We'll see.

vdddv 4y ago

"the tally is 232 to 94, or 71.17% in support of the proposal" So this decision is the result of a mere 326 Wikipedia users (contributors?)taking a vote.

cycomanic 4y ago

I find many of the replies here fascinating. On one hand whenever there is talk about government regulating some industry or actor a large portion of commenter here reply that if you don't agree with the practice don't use them, no regulation needed. Now an organisation does exactly that, they decide that they don't want to use a "service" that they ethically disagree with, and lots of replies call it pointless virtue signalling. So how should people/organisations act when they disagree with certain practices/actors?

JulianMorrison 4y ago
It's disingenuous arguing. Free association for me, no cancelling for you, amounts to a plea for a get-out-of-Coventry-free card.
deleted 4y ago
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AxeVice 4y ago
People like to be contrarian, or at least the replies a thread receives will mostly be from people who disagree with the thread's premise.
sparkie 4y ago
It is pointless virtue signalling because the primary argument for ending bitcoin donations is about energy usage, but the effect of ending bitcoin donations will have precisely zero impact on the amount of electricity used by the bitcoin network. This isn't the same as when you boycott a company's products and it causes a loss of sales.
- lxgr 4y ago
  Accepting or spending Bitcoin increases its utility quadratically per participant (via the network effect). Utility increases utilization, which increases fees, which incentivize mining. It really is exactly the same thing as boycotting a company.
  - 4y ago

teekert 4y ago

The environment? Then run a lightning node, or use Cardano, problem solved. Why are we trowing the baby out with the bathwater?

lxgr 4y ago
Can Lightning exist without the Bitcoin blockchain?
- teekert 4y ago
  When will technical solutions reduce blockchain energy usage enough for the anti-blockhain people to find it acceptable?
  - lxgr 4y ago
    I don‘t think "the anti-blockchain people" is as homogenous a front as you might imagine it. Some object on the grounds of PoW mining and its incentive structure; others due to their tendencies to disproportionately accumulate wealth to early adopters; yet others due to widespread predatory and/or misleading marketing. I‘m probably forgetting several other reasons here. Personally, anything based on proof-of-scarce-resource is pretty much a no-go (unless it would suddenly provide benefits more than outweighing the damage it does), but definitely not only that.
    - teekert 4y ago
      What is the alternative to proof-of-scare-resource? I only trust money or gold because you cant pick it from the trees with almost 0 effort.

constantlm 4y ago

In the context of their yearly guilt tripping banners asking for money in a manner that sounds like Wikipedia is on the brink of death, this virtue signaling is disappointing.

Cynddl 4y ago
Two very different things. The banner is set by the Wikimedia Foundation, while this is a vote by the community.

distrohopper 4y ago

Wikipedia will no longer receive any donations from me. Works for me. It has become pretty left leaning anyways.

ancymon 4y ago

They also oppose having ads on Wikipedia. Personally I don't see much difference between banners asking for donations and ads. I understand there are "bad" ads (privacy violating or ones causing conflict of interest), but not all of them are like this. Same with cryptocurrencies - some of them are "scam", but not all of them. It's strange that Wikipedia sees world as black and white.

throwaway290 4y ago
If you make ads a meaningful revenue stream, you will sooner or later optimize your content so that people spend more time viewing ads. Money will find a way.
- ancymon 4y ago
  In this case you mean Wikipedia editors will start making their content more attractive to advertisers?
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    That or making articles purposefully structured so that the user has to jump around a few links and earn more ad views.
DocTomoe 4y ago
I'd much rather them having an old-style Google Adsense-type ad somewhere than their annual, 50%-of-the-screen guilt-tripping donations ad.
- robonerd 4y ago
  I couldn't disagree more. Those guilt-tripping donation ads are obnoxious, but I would much rather Wikipedia be an obnoxious beggar than sink so low as to be make themselves into corporate propagandists for hire. That would be much worse.

CTDOCodebases 4y ago

If environmental sustainability is an issue why don’t they shut down their servers? Think of all the electricity they could save. An online encyclopaedia is not essential for human survival.

baobabKoodaa 4y ago

I always find it weird when a charity or non-profit publically announces that they stop accepting certain forms of donations due to ideological reasons. It's a signal that the organization isn't particularly starving for donations. If you were planning to donate to Wikipedia any sum less than $130,100.94, remember that 70% of Wikipedians consider such donations to have no impact at all. So if you were about to donate $100k, for example, nobody at Wikipedia cares about such a tiny donation. So maybe donate that $100k to an organization that actually needs it instead?

miracle2k 4y ago
Exactly right. And note that this is done purely and openly for ideological reasons - there is no maintenance cost argument being made.
eynsham 4y ago
> publically announces That’s how RfCs work—they’re public by nature, so that people can comment. It’s hardly feasible not to then promulgate the outcome. > they stop accepting certain forms of donations They haven’t. This is a proposal through an RfC. The foundation may or may not accept it. > organization isn't particularly starving for donations Well it isn’t, so that’s a good thing. People should stop donating to the foundation for a while. Hopefully the bureaucracy will be slashed.
- baobabKoodaa 4y ago
  Thanks for the clarifications. I misread the title and assumed that the RFC had been passed.
  - eynsham 4y ago
    The RfC is passed but the effect of that is to make a request. Imagine you and I were to form a committee to discuss, e.g., landscaping in municipal gardens: we might pass a motion to suggest planting different flowers, but that would amount only to a request to the gardeners/the competent authority.

MavropaliasG 4y ago

Wikipedia has gone down the toilet. Too much political correctness, leftists, and sensitive snowflakes.

plebianRube 4y ago

Their existing model of soliciting donations via “DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS,” got them over 150MM without crypto. Their stance on banning crypto changes nothing on this front, and only serves to make themselves seem 'green'

theknocker 4y ago

ospzfmbbzr 4y ago

Beggars can't be choosers. Lame virtue signalling from a worn out platform with its best days long behind it. The energy argument against crypto is total BS and just an attack from the legacy banking industry and their cronies.

jaza 4y ago

This is consistent with their negative attitude towards crypto-related Wikipedia content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Blockchain_and_cryptocurrencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Bl... > A community discussion at the administrators' noticeboard has placed all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, under indefinite general sanctions, effective 14:43, 22 May 2018 (UTC).

bannedbybros 4y ago

robonerd 4y ago

In response to these kind of stories, the comment sections online are always filled with crypto advocates upset about the organization not taking their money. This really makes clear who needs who. Crypto needs wikipedia much more than wikipedia needs crypto. Wikipedia is not hard up for cash (if you earnestly believe their begging ads, you must be naive. Give me a break.) But crypto is hard up for legitimacy.

jdrc 4y ago
its not just the crypto-buffs. This is a purely ideological decision that actually goes against the original libertarian ideas behind wikipedia. Keeping BTC payments costs nothing to wikipedia, and it actually meshes with the original idea of BTC as "native internet money" which has not yet been refuted. Wikipedia and BTC are a good match because of their nonaligned, distributed web 1.0 nature . Wiki&banks are not, wiki&paypal is not. The reasoning behind this decision is purely ideological, and rightfully people should be worried. This will open the floodgates that will eventually lead to the destruction of npov. We have seen this happening so many times with social media and payment platforms that it is laughable to suggest it won't happen this time. Occam's razor would suggest to do nothing, but ideological axes are being wielded. This will turn a lot of people off.
- robonerd 4y ago
  The 'original founding ideas' of wikipedia, whatever they may be, aren't relevant if they aren't actually encoded in the organizations rules. And since nobody can come up with a persuasive argument that wikipedia must accept crypto by wikipedia's own rules, this clearly isn't the case. Without that, the 'founding ideas' are just ideas wikipedians used to have, and are far less relevant than the ideas wikipedians presently have. Their present views are evidenced by this vote, which crypto advocates are clearly upset about.
  - jdrc 4y ago
    > Wikipedia has no firm rules > Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone; their content and interpretation can evolve over time. The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording, and sometimes improving Wikipedia requires making exceptions. Be bold, but not reckless, in updating articles. And do not agonize over making mistakes: (almost) every past version of a page is saved, so mistakes can be easily corrected https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars people who are looking for rules to manipulate perhaps should build their own projects

dogman144 4y ago

Ideological payment censorship is a known issue with digital payments, and the core so-what of BTC that has been lost in the cryptocurrency sales pitch somewhat. The first block has an anti-'08 bailout message in it for a reason. These censorship use cases are slowly moving towards more possible mainstream familiarity and empathy, and in my opinion also moving towards impacting progressive activist groups with axes to grind and payment rails dependent on the targets of those activism. When that eventually comes to a head, as it seems likely, then the real decision point on cryptocurrencies will occur. Assange gets payments/donations cut off from all the major providers - ok, he's possibly a Russian asset, not a great personality fit for whistleblower empathy, did some shady/bad things, ok who cares. OnlyFans almost gets its payment rails cut off by investors due to its core content - ok, I may not know camgirls/boys, but I can empathize with them a bit more and certainly don't like Investment Banks and Visa telling folks how to spend their evenings. Now, taking a look at climate action groups, and wikis that try to leverage free and fair information for a public good. Also, not much has changed since 2008. The predatory financial behaviors still occur, maybe just called something differently - see Canada banning foreign purchases of homes. Depending on which side of the abortion debate you are on, large chunks of the country are moving in divergent directions on it. Unions in tech-y warehouse jobs have serious OPSEC concerns and are shifting over to Signal for coordination. All of these causes and related groups rely on digital rails for payments, information sharing, and organization (Slack groups, Paypal accounts, GSuite free-ish emails, Signal groups etc). There is already a trend of building OPSEC programs for activist-y groups, and leveraging data science/FOIA for activist research. The McDonald's CEO was nabbed for this via a ~FOIA against the Chicago mayor. All of these causes' desired outcomes fundamentally oppose core tenants of corporate infrastructure, pending some major change. Climate activism especially comes to mind. When the real conversations and possible anger actually start occurring in these groups, andthe real reactions from their counter-parties start occurring in public, and the fights over what gets into a wikipedia article occur in conjunction more so than already, a censorship-free payment rail comes into play. That means paper cash, cryptocurrency, or maybe some new tech. But I doubt Zelle or Venmo are safe at that point. I think the real so-what debate about crypto starts at that point.

thepasswordis 4y ago

It sounds like Wikipedia isn’t really wanting for money. Meh. I’ve donated in the past, but will just look for different charities in the future. Non news article imo.

quiet_cool 4y ago

stjohnswarts 4y ago

I've been ignoring crypto for the most post but this is just dumb, they are turning away free money. It's not up to wikipedia to fix the problems of the world (take a hint mozilla). This is a pretty big red flag about flaws in Wikipedia's governance.

ea550ff70a 4y ago
Even if it is 0.8% of their donations, it is still a lot. They are pretty direct with how drastic is for them to receive donations in order to survive. This decision is just dumb.

PufPufPuf 4y ago

I'm surprised how many pro-cryptocurrency comments I see here on HN. I would expect people here to see through the hype and technobabble.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
? Perform a really quick binomial test on pro-cryptocurrency comments and anti-cryptocurrency comments and you'll find that sentiment here is overwhelmingly anti. If you can't see that, then you just aren't looking. So what percentage of pro-cryptocurrency comments would make _you_ happy?

lsanger 4y ago

So Wikipedia doesn't accept crypto anymore. Who cares? They don't need it! The Knowledge Standards Foundation does. We're making an open network of all the encyclopedias (http://encyclosphere.org http://encyclosphere.org). Contact us: info@encyclosphere.org Disclosure: I was co-founder of Wikipedia, once upon a time, and the KSF is my project.

vinnie-io 4y ago

were they intimidated to accept crypto donations in the first place? have seen stories where companies are intimidated and threatened into accepting crypto as a payment option by groups

qgin 4y ago

If you’re a charity in 1999 and people want to donate their Beanie Babies to you, accept them and sell them asap.