Wikipedia Stops Accepting Cryptocurrency Donations Citing Community’s Environmental Concerns – Featured Bitcoin News

Wikipedia has determined to cease accepting cryptocurrency donations after eight years of doing so. The choice relies on the request by the Wikimedia group citing “problems with environmental sustainability” as a key motive.

Wikipedia Discontinues Accepting Bitcoin, Crypto Donations

Wikimedia Basis has introduced its determination to “discontinue direct acceptance of cryptocurrency as a method of donating.” The muse started accepting bitcoin in July 2014.

“The Wikimedia Basis is the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and our different free data tasks,” its web site particulars. Wikipedia is a free on-line encyclopedia with over 200K volunteer contributors, in keeping with the muse.

The group posted an replace on its Wikipedia web page on Might 1, stating:

We started our direct acceptance of cryptocurrency in 2014 primarily based on requests from our volunteers and donor communities. We’re making this determination primarily based on current suggestions from those self same communities.

“Particularly, we can be closing our Bitpay account, which is able to take away our capability to straight settle for cryptocurrency as a technique of donating,” the replace continues.

Molly White, a Wikipedia editor, defined Sunday that the choice got here out of a three-month-long dialogue which she began on Jan. 10. The dialogue wrapped up on April 12. “400 customers participated in whole, although some have been single-purpose accounts created only for the dialogue (principally to attempt to sway the RfC [Request for Comments] towards making this request),” she famous.

The Wikimedia group’s request for feedback web page explains that frequent arguments in assist of stopping accepting crypto donations embrace “problems with environmental sustainability, that accepting cryptocurrencies constitutes implicit endorsement of the problems surrounding cryptocurrencies, and group points with the chance to the motion’s status for accepting cryptocurrencies.”

Alternatively, frequent arguments in opposition of stopping accepting crypto donations embrace ”the existence of much less energy-intensive cryptocurrencies (proof-of-stake), that cryptocurrencies present safer methods to donate and interact in finance for folks in oppressive international locations, and that fiat currencies even have points with environmental sustainability.”

In accordance with the outcomes:

Excluding new accounts and unregistered customers, the tally is 232 to 94, or 71.17% in assist of the proposal … Thus, the Wikimedia group requests that the Wikimedia Basis cease accepting cryptocurrency donations.

What do you consider Wikipedia discontinuing accepting crypto donations? Tell us within the feedback part beneath.

Kevin Helms

A scholar of Austrian Economics, Kevin discovered Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His pursuits lie in Bitcoin safety, open-source methods, community results and the intersection between economics and cryptography.