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- It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in. - Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption”. So far it’s been fairly pathetic. Organ

- It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in. - Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption”. So far it’s been fairly pathetic. Organisations who accept it provide a focal point for crypto advocates to point to, legitimising it and luring more retail investors into the Ponzi. - The environmental impact is massive, which makes accepting it ethically dubious and does not align with the Wikimedia Foundation’s values.

londons_explore 5y ago
> - It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in. > Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels. This alone would be a sufficient reason to drop it if it requires extra accounting work, technical maintenance work, staff training, support work, etc.
danamit 5y ago
I worked and got paid in crypto in the past, which made me able to move out. Also I used crypto to pay for services, I just bought a GPU (for gaming, current one broke, I do not mine crypto) with crypto that's still shipping. I won't call the adoption pathetic, it is just that you are not in the circle of adoption/need. Just like I see people mentioning services here that they say they cannot live without and I do not care if they close tomorrow and I have no idea what those services do. Crypto is a needed option, it can be made to be more environmentally friendly. I personally *often* do not (and cannot) benefit from the global banking system despite all the waste it produce from electricity to wasted manpower to the carbon footprint of material for buildings and offices. Crypto as many other technologies have use cases, believe in the use case, don't be dogmatic. This is no different from "we only need Java in the world why other languages exist?".
- dundarious 5y ago
  If you use almost any goods or services almost anywhere in the world, you at least indirectly benefit from or use the global banking system, as it is the de facto (and probably quite often de jure) system for payments. There are no alternatives that are as good as it, on pretty much any axis. This includes all crypto. I'm not trying to unfairly critique your personal choices, but that's just the reality. Just like how you basically can't possibly survive in a city without participating somehow in the global capitalist market economy, you can't claim to personally not partake in the global banking system. It's everywhere, and you might personally take issue with it and of course can critique it, but you can't claim to not partake or even partly benefit.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - i14 5y ago
    that’s what crypto is trying to be - the alternative to the global banking system, because the banking system has some issues.
    - dundarious 5y ago
      My comment is a response to a specific point that was being made, mostly encapsulated by this quotation: > Crypto is a needed option, it can be made to be more environmentally friendly. I personally often do not (and cannot) benefit from the global banking system despite all the waste it produce from electricity to wasted manpower to the carbon footprint of material for buildings and offices. I'm choosing to ignore the parts about buildings because the appropriate comparison is with electronic payments. A transition from in-person banking to Bitcoin is less likely and more costly than a continued transition from in-person banking to purely online electronic banking (not that I think it'll be desirable to anywhere near 100% complete such a transition in my lifetime). So doing an apples-to-apples comparison, even assuming crypto ever actually becomes meaningfully more environmentally friendly, how does crypto replacing the current global banking system lead to a less wasteful system, measured in environmental terms? I see no way it can. I also think: > There are no alternatives that are as good as [the current system], on pretty much any axis. This includes all crypto. Crypto has far more issues beyond environmental ones, and the very real issues with the current system are not meaningfully helped by crypto. The issues are political problems without much in the way of a technological solution, except at the margins. If crypto wants to stay relevant there, at the margins, that's mostly fine by me.
      - danamit 5y ago
        My main issue with banking is that I cannot use it to its full extent, I am not from a Western country. Also because how bad banking is, clients find all excuses to not buy you sometimes. I lost one month of income because a European startup was claiming all kind of problems with wiring me my salary (3 different ones), with waiting weeks between every "try" and gaslighting me into asking my bank to do some paper work that will easify the process, something that simply not in my power to do. With crypto you either have the money and you pay me or you don't.
- topranks 5y ago
  It's reasonable for Wikimedia to adopt a "wait and see" approach. If in a few years the whole world adopts crypto for payments, then perhaps they should review that. Until then I'm not sure it's in Wikimedia's interests to be a pioneering "early adopter/supporter" of crypto payments, given the legitimate ethical concerns.
- vermilingua 5y ago
  > Crypto is a needed option, it can be made to be more environmentally friendly. This argument has never made sense to me. BTC is fundamentally proof-of-work, and attempts to switch it to some other “green” mechanism will almost certainly fail (see Bitcoin Cash). Ethereum has been promising PoS for nearly as long as ETH has existed. Other “green” coins are either tech-demos, ponzi schemes, or some amalgam of the two. The ball is rolling, the train has left the station, BTC and ETH have the momentum. Other than rug-pull incentives like airdrops, why would those in the “circle of adoption/need” choose green crypto over what is established?
- li2uR3ce 5y ago
  > it can be made to be more environmentally friendly You don't get points for what *can be* but *what is*.
danlugo92 5y ago
> Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption” 2018: Only criminals use it 2020: Only fringe websites use it 2022: Only small countries use it 2024: ????
- LosWochosWeek 5y ago
  Must be nice living in a fantasy. First of all, the things you've listed are not building not "one level above the former". The question should be: Are more criminals using crypto now than in 2018? Are more website using using crypo now than in 2020? For the former: I definitely can't the buy the shit that I used to be able to with the mainstream coins. So I'm not sure how that is going to play out. The market definitely changed for criminals using crypto. For the latter: I don't have hard data on this, but I'd bet a good wager that the golden time of "You can also pay in crypto!!" is over. Back then crypto was practically only advertised as a means of exchange, which lead to more services offering it as a means of exchange. Nowadays the vast majority of the mainstream crypto (and where most of the "money" is) is used as a storage of value. You could buy all kinds of crazy shit, even with fairly big companies with mainstream crypto. Nowadays? Not so much. About your 2022 example. I see you've used the plural. Countries. Is that so? Which country, other than El Salvador, is also using crypto as a legal tender? And while you're googling that, please make sure to also google how much the usage for crypto has changed El Salvador since it became legal tender. And how the adoption of it was. I'll give you a little hint: Quite literally not at all.
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    Why are you trying to win an argument against something that was quite literally invented to benefit you, me and everyone else. I'm not trying to win an argument either, I only respond with witty remarks such as grandparent (in the vein of you'll see) to people like you. I'm not going to argue any of your points. Just get on with the times man, this is the future.
Self-Perfection 5y ago
I don't get the environment friendliness argument. It seems to imply that resources consumed by sustaining cryptocurrency transactions are imploding out of control. I am not familiar with coins except for bitcoin, but at least of bitcoin this is not the case. Market mechanisms regulate bitcoin mining. Energy consumed by mining is limited by income that miners can get, and this income is limited by mining_rate + fee_rate. mining_rate gradually diminishes and therefore in the end it would be just fee_rate. Thus, bitcoin users would be paying for processing their transactions. Why do we have a right to forbid them spending their money on this? Why is it OK to let somebody spend his/hers money on gas for travelling by car instead of bus or train, but in the same time it is not OK for them to spend their money on doing their value transactions the way they like? If we as a society assume that we cannot afford to spend so much fossil fuel on energy as today this means we have not set proper high enough price on it. Just rising the energy ( gas / electricity / etc ) price and stopping obsessing about each particular thing if it is environmental friendly or not seems to me a much more cogent, simple and efficient solution.

londons_explore 5y ago

> - It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in. > Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels. This alone would be a sufficient reason to drop it if it requires extra accounting work, technical maintenance work, staff training, support work, etc.

danamit 5y ago

I worked and got paid in crypto in the past, which made me able to move out. Also I used crypto to pay for services, I just bought a GPU (for gaming, current one broke, I do not mine crypto) with crypto that's still shipping. I won't call the adoption pathetic, it is just that you are not in the circle of adoption/need. Just like I see people mentioning services here that they say they cannot live without and I do not care if they close tomorrow and I have no idea what those services do. Crypto is a needed option, it can be made to be more environmentally friendly. I personally *often* do not (and cannot) benefit from the global banking system despite all the waste it produce from electricity to wasted manpower to the carbon footprint of material for buildings and offices. Crypto as many other technologies have use cases, believe in the use case, don't be dogmatic. This is no different from "we only need Java in the world why other languages exist?".

dundarious 5y ago
If you use almost any goods or services almost anywhere in the world, you at least indirectly benefit from or use the global banking system, as it is the de facto (and probably quite often de jure) system for payments. There are no alternatives that are as good as it, on pretty much any axis. This includes all crypto. I'm not trying to unfairly critique your personal choices, but that's just the reality. Just like how you basically can't possibly survive in a city without participating somehow in the global capitalist market economy, you can't claim to personally not partake in the global banking system. It's everywhere, and you might personally take issue with it and of course can critique it, but you can't claim to not partake or even partly benefit.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- i14 5y ago
  that’s what crypto is trying to be - the alternative to the global banking system, because the banking system has some issues.
  - dundarious 5y ago
    My comment is a response to a specific point that was being made, mostly encapsulated by this quotation: > Crypto is a needed option, it can be made to be more environmentally friendly. I personally often do not (and cannot) benefit from the global banking system despite all the waste it produce from electricity to wasted manpower to the carbon footprint of material for buildings and offices. I'm choosing to ignore the parts about buildings because the appropriate comparison is with electronic payments. A transition from in-person banking to Bitcoin is less likely and more costly than a continued transition from in-person banking to purely online electronic banking (not that I think it'll be desirable to anywhere near 100% complete such a transition in my lifetime). So doing an apples-to-apples comparison, even assuming crypto ever actually becomes meaningfully more environmentally friendly, how does crypto replacing the current global banking system lead to a less wasteful system, measured in environmental terms? I see no way it can. I also think: > There are no alternatives that are as good as [the current system], on pretty much any axis. This includes all crypto. Crypto has far more issues beyond environmental ones, and the very real issues with the current system are not meaningfully helped by crypto. The issues are political problems without much in the way of a technological solution, except at the margins. If crypto wants to stay relevant there, at the margins, that's mostly fine by me.
    - danamit 5y ago
      My main issue with banking is that I cannot use it to its full extent, I am not from a Western country. Also because how bad banking is, clients find all excuses to not buy you sometimes. I lost one month of income because a European startup was claiming all kind of problems with wiring me my salary (3 different ones), with waiting weeks between every "try" and gaslighting me into asking my bank to do some paper work that will easify the process, something that simply not in my power to do. With crypto you either have the money and you pay me or you don't.
topranks 5y ago
It's reasonable for Wikimedia to adopt a "wait and see" approach. If in a few years the whole world adopts crypto for payments, then perhaps they should review that. Until then I'm not sure it's in Wikimedia's interests to be a pioneering "early adopter/supporter" of crypto payments, given the legitimate ethical concerns.
vermilingua 5y ago
> Crypto is a needed option, it can be made to be more environmentally friendly. This argument has never made sense to me. BTC is fundamentally proof-of-work, and attempts to switch it to some other “green” mechanism will almost certainly fail (see Bitcoin Cash). Ethereum has been promising PoS for nearly as long as ETH has existed. Other “green” coins are either tech-demos, ponzi schemes, or some amalgam of the two. The ball is rolling, the train has left the station, BTC and ETH have the momentum. Other than rug-pull incentives like airdrops, why would those in the “circle of adoption/need” choose green crypto over what is established?
li2uR3ce 5y ago
> it can be made to be more environmentally friendly You don't get points for what *can be* but *what is*.

danlugo92 5y ago

> Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption” 2018: Only criminals use it 2020: Only fringe websites use it 2022: Only small countries use it 2024: ????

LosWochosWeek 5y ago
Must be nice living in a fantasy. First of all, the things you've listed are not building not "one level above the former". The question should be: Are more criminals using crypto now than in 2018? Are more website using using crypo now than in 2020? For the former: I definitely can't the buy the shit that I used to be able to with the mainstream coins. So I'm not sure how that is going to play out. The market definitely changed for criminals using crypto. For the latter: I don't have hard data on this, but I'd bet a good wager that the golden time of "You can also pay in crypto!!" is over. Back then crypto was practically only advertised as a means of exchange, which lead to more services offering it as a means of exchange. Nowadays the vast majority of the mainstream crypto (and where most of the "money" is) is used as a storage of value. You could buy all kinds of crazy shit, even with fairly big companies with mainstream crypto. Nowadays? Not so much. About your 2022 example. I see you've used the plural. Countries. Is that so? Which country, other than El Salvador, is also using crypto as a legal tender? And while you're googling that, please make sure to also google how much the usage for crypto has changed El Salvador since it became legal tender. And how the adoption of it was. I'll give you a little hint: Quite literally not at all.
- danlugo92 5y ago
  Why are you trying to win an argument against something that was quite literally invented to benefit you, me and everyone else. I'm not trying to win an argument either, I only respond with witty remarks such as grandparent (in the vein of you'll see) to people like you. I'm not going to argue any of your points. Just get on with the times man, this is the future.

Self-Perfection 5y ago

I don't get the environment friendliness argument. It seems to imply that resources consumed by sustaining cryptocurrency transactions are imploding out of control. I am not familiar with coins except for bitcoin, but at least of bitcoin this is not the case. Market mechanisms regulate bitcoin mining. Energy consumed by mining is limited by income that miners can get, and this income is limited by mining_rate + fee_rate. mining_rate gradually diminishes and therefore in the end it would be just fee_rate. Thus, bitcoin users would be paying for processing their transactions. Why do we have a right to forbid them spending their money on this? Why is it OK to let somebody spend his/hers money on gas for travelling by car instead of bus or train, but in the same time it is not OK for them to spend their money on doing their value transactions the way they like? If we as a society assume that we cannot afford to spend so much fossil fuel on energy as today this means we have not set proper high enough price on it. Just rising the energy ( gas / electricity / etc ) price and stopping obsessing about each particular thing if it is environmental friendly or not seems to me a much more cogent, simple and efficient solution.