The Wikipedia community has made it public that will stop accepting donations in cryptocurrencies. The Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that is responsible for managing the online encyclopedia, has announced that this is a decision made after three months of debate within the community of editors and donors.
After a discussion that has lasted three months, the Wikipedia community has decided to stop accepting donations in cryptocurrencies.
The idea came from several members of that community, who proposed that Wikipedia no longer accept donations in any cryptocurrency. The online encyclopedia started supporting cryptocurrencies in the year 2014, “at the request of our volunteer and donor communities.” In these years, the foundation has accepted donations in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin and Litecoin; and also in stablecoins like USDC.
Now, also based on the request of that same community, Wikipedia reverses its decision and vetoes cryptocurrencies among its donors. Thus, Wikipedia will soon close your Bitpay accountthe crypto payment service that the foundation used to raise funds.
Molly White, one of the main editors of Wikipedia, and very critical of cryptocurrencies, has stated that she is “very happy that the Wikimedia Foundation has listened to the wishes of its community”. White is one of the promoters of Web3 is Going Great, a website that collect all the scams and cyber attacks related to the crypto world.
The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations. The decision was made based on a community request that the WMF no longer accept crypto donations, which came out of a three-month-long discussion that wrapped up earlier this month. pic.twitter.com/RHAD0FRA5W
— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) May 1, 2022
According to that same website, only a small percentage of the donations received by Wikipedia are in cryptocurrencies. throughout 2021 just $130,000, 0.08% of foundation incomecame from crypto donors.
Critics of this type of assets have argued the high environmental costs and their high energy consumption. They have also pointed out the speculation and illicit activities surrounding these assets.
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