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Wikipedia Drops BTC Donations

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The Wikipedia Foundation recently decided that they were going to stop taking in btc and other crypto donations. The risk proved to be too much for the WMF and they opted to stop taking in cryptocurrency altogether now.

It looks like they never received much in donations from bitcoin though, with reports suggesting that crypto donations were somewhere around 0.08% of their donations that they received last year.

They announced that they would be closing their Bitpay account and removing the ability now to donate this way with crypto. They did suggest that they would be monitoring the issue going forward so who knows if that leaves it open for changes and crypto donations coming back at any point if popularity and prevalence of its use grows.

Some critics pointed out that perhaps if they had held their donations they received of bitcoin up until now that they wouldn't need as much fundraising efforts going forward because of the gains that they might have made over the years.

Recent reports suggest that the editor had urged the organization to stop accepting crypto allegedly over concerns of environmental risks and social concerns related to cryptocurrency like bitcoin.

The Mozilla Foundation has also halted their crypto donations as well. They received backlash over the move with crypto and again it seems the environmental impact is what many are concerned about with this industry. This isn't new for crypto but there are many who might not be aware that there is a growing prevalence of 'green' or 'clean mining' crypto operations around the world today because of this very concern.

We just recently saw how cryptocurrency was effectively used for donations when tens of millions had been raised quickly for the Ukrainian government in their ongoing conflict with Russia. On the other side, there are others who are instead dropping the ability for crypto donations to be made due to their 'ethical' reasoning.

There are many who have found cryptocurrency to be a lifeline and to be the only way for them to make a living and survive. There might be two well-known groups now, like those mentioned above, that don't want to deal with cryptocurrency donations any longer but there are still thousands more who have yet to discover how they might benefit from accepting an alternative form of payment for donations or goods and services.

There are many within the crypto community itself who are concerned about clean mining endeavors, it isn't only the critics, and the effort spent to grow clean bitcoin mining operations is expected to continue to grow in the years to come as a result of that interest.

pics: pixabay

this is not financial advice

Source: https://fortune.com/2022/05/02/wikipedia-wikimedia-foundation-no-crypto-donations-environment-climate-bitcoin-ethereum/ https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/1/23052309/wikimedia-foundation-stops-cryptocurrency-donations-wikipedia https://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-editor-argues-against-crypto-bitcoin-environment-scams-2022-2 https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/06/mozilla-foundation-crypto/