After a 3-month lengthy debate amongst its neighborhood members, Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the no-profit group behind the web encyclopedia Wikipedia, has determined to cease accepting cryptocurrency donations. Before this choice, WMF used to simply accept contributions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash.
A Wikimedia editor, Molly White, started a dialogue within the Wikimedia neighborhood to rethink its choice to simply accept cryptocurrency as a way of donation. This led to a web-based dialogue amongst members from 10 January 2022 to 12 April 2022. Finally, voting was performed the place a majority of the neighborhood individuals favored White’s proposal.
The arguments put forth towards crypto donations included environmental unsustainability and harm to Wikimedia’s popularity as accepting the donations meant endorsing no matter digital property stand for.
About 400 neighborhood members participated within the debate, and new and unregistered ones had been excluded from the voting. The Wikimedia neighborhood voted for the discontinuation of crypto donations by 232 to 94, or 71.17%. Subsequently, they requested Wikipedia’s guardian group to discontinue cryptocurrency donations.
Wikimedia Discontinues Crypto Donations
On May 1, Molly White broke the information on Twitter that Wikimedia has accepted the neighborhood’s request and stopped accepting crypto donations.
“The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations. The decision was made based on a community request that the WMF no longer accepts crypto donations, which came out of a three-month-long discussion that wrapped up earlier this month,” she tweeted, together with a Wikipedia assertion purportedly to the neighborhood members.
The doc added that the Wikimedia Foundation had begun accepting cryptocurrency in 2014 in step with requests from “volunteers and donor communities.” Wikimedia Foundation will shut its Bitpay account, which is able to take away its means to immediately settle for cryptocurrency as a technique of donating, the assertion defined. However, the group additionally stated it’s an “evolving matter.”
WMF Received $130,000 in Crypto Donations in 2021
The debate started with Molly White asking how a lot cash Wikimedia has acquired in crypto donations. WMF replied that the donations it acquired final yr in digital property amounted to a little bit over $130,000, or 0.08% of its income. The most used cryptocurrency was bitcoin, and all donations had been spot transformed into fiat USD.
It additionally noticed some members discussing the advantages of “Proof of Stake” compared to “Proof of Work,” the previous being thought-about to be much less energy-intensive. The debate that exceeded 60,000 phrases mentioned many different points similar to cash laundering, use of cryptocurrency in crime and scams, pseudonym donation, mining ban in Russia, central banks’ fiat foreign money system, and its flaws.
Crypto Donations: A Topic of Growing Importance
Wikimedia’s newest choice has as soon as once more introduced a highlight on the rising significance of crypto donations.
In the continuing Russia-Ukraine struggle, the latter has acquired over $100 million in crypto donations, to date. And, fearing Russian interference, Ireland has lately banned crypto donations for political events.
Last month, a Republican member of Louisiana, Mark Right, launched a invoice within the state legislature that sought to put down guidelines for crypto donations for political campaigns.
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