from Hacker News

Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

by SwimSwimHungry on 4/13/22, 3:58 AM with 380 comments

• by mardifoufs on 4/13/22, 6:34 AM

  Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps.

  Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anything related to crypto on some parts of twitter. Now I have been active in crypto mocking groups for years , but this feels more like some people have incorporated "anticrypto" to their daily culture war routine. So it must be purged from everywhere.

  Also, I'm semi active in the wiki community and I have never heard anyone talk about the climate impact of their wiki mania meetups and the hundreds of flights that it requires. Or jimbo going to davos in private planes... etc. Well maybe this is signaling that climate change will actually be taken in consideration by the foundation and the wiki editors for their future policy decisions and RFCs , but I somehow doubt it.

  The other reasons are even less relevant to wikimedia's mission.

• by colesantiago on 4/13/22, 5:08 AM

  This is great news, it is pretty pointless to use cryptocurrencies at all anyway since for Wikipedia:

  > Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels.

  Remember that Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites on the planet, I'm also assuming that other websites trying to accept crypto have even smaller percentages rendering cryptocurrencies as payment useless, not to mention damaging to the environment.

  What is really happening is that nobody is using it for payments at all, rather just holding crypto coins and hoping they'll go up and speculating on the price.

• by cycomanic on 4/13/22, 8:06 AM

  I find many of the replies here fascinating. On one hand whenever there is talk about government regulating some industry or actor a large portion of commenter here reply that if you don't agree with the practice don't use them, no regulation needed. Now an organisation does exactly that, they decide that they don't want to use a "service" that they ethically disagree with, and lots of replies call it pointless virtue signalling. So how should people/organisations act when they disagree with certain practices/actors?

• by lhl on 4/13/22, 6:22 AM

  For those interested in charitable giving with crypto, I set up a decent-sized on-chain Donor Advised Fund with https://endaoment.org/ the end of last year. There are rough corners and it's still early days, but I'm able to give to basically any arbitrary 501c3 in the same way using a dapp interface now, which is pretty sweet. You can setup a DAF via crypto w/ either Schwab or Fidelity as well (and others I'm sure).

  I also did a bunch of year end donations through https://thegivingblock.com/ which allows non-profits to easily receive donations via hundreds of different crypto assets and is pretty seamless for both parties (you fill in your tax info once, get an automated tax receipt letter, the receiving party gets automatic cash auto-conversion (if they want) and donor info).

  Also, generally not tax deductible, but I'm a big fan of what https://gitcoin.co/ is doing with sybil resistant quadratic fund matching. Generally, not tax deductible, so I keep my donations small (using either zkSync or Polygon to save on fees) but for the latest GR13 funding round, top grants were getting up to 10:1 matching (mostly Ukraine crisis response campaigns - UNICEF got a whopping 37X match btw!) https://gitcoin.co/blog/grants-round-13-round-results-recap/

• by baobabKoodaa on 4/13/22, 10:44 AM

  I always find it weird when a charity or non-profit publically announces that they stop accepting certain forms of donations due to ideological reasons. It's a signal that the organization isn't particularly starving for donations. If you were planning to donate to Wikipedia any sum less than $130,100.94, remember that 70% of Wikipedians consider such donations to have no impact at all. So if you were about to donate $100k, for example, nobody at Wikipedia cares about such a tiny donation. So maybe donate that $100k to an organization that actually needs it instead?

• by fergie on 4/13/22, 8:02 AM

  "cryptocurrencies provide safer ways to donate and engage in finance for people in oppressive countries"

  Yet a bigger problem is that too much money is moved out of these countries by those in power and hamstered away in various global tax havens.

  I recommend "Moneyland" for anybody wanting to learn more.

• by lsanger on 4/13/22, 7:29 PM

  So Wikipedia doesn't accept crypto anymore. Who cares? They don't need it!

  The Knowledge Standards Foundation does. We're making an open network of all the encyclopedias (http://encyclosphere.org). Contact us: info@encyclosphere.org

  Disclosure: I was co-founder of Wikipedia, once upon a time, and the KSF is my project.

• by dogman144 on 4/13/22, 3:02 PM

  Ideological payment censorship is a known issue with digital payments, and the core so-what of BTC that has been lost in the cryptocurrency sales pitch somewhat. The first block has an anti-'08 bailout message in it for a reason.

  These censorship use cases are slowly moving towards more possible mainstream familiarity and empathy, and in my opinion also moving towards impacting progressive activist groups with axes to grind and payment rails dependent on the targets of those activism.

  When that eventually comes to a head, as it seems likely, then the real decision point on cryptocurrencies will occur.

  Assange gets payments/donations cut off from all the major providers - ok, he's possibly a Russian asset, not a great personality fit for whistleblower empathy, did some shady/bad things, ok who cares.

  OnlyFans almost gets its payment rails cut off by investors due to its core content - ok, I may not know camgirls/boys, but I can empathize with them a bit more and certainly don't like Investment Banks and Visa telling folks how to spend their evenings.

  Now, taking a look at climate action groups, and wikis that try to leverage free and fair information for a public good. Also, not much has changed since 2008. The predatory financial behaviors still occur, maybe just called something differently - see Canada banning foreign purchases of homes. Depending on which side of the abortion debate you are on, large chunks of the country are moving in divergent directions on it. Unions in tech-y warehouse jobs have serious OPSEC concerns and are shifting over to Signal for coordination.

  All of these causes and related groups rely on digital rails for payments, information sharing, and organization (Slack groups, Paypal accounts, GSuite free-ish emails, Signal groups etc). There is already a trend of building OPSEC programs for activist-y groups, and leveraging data science/FOIA for activist research. The McDonald's CEO was nabbed for this via a ~FOIA against the Chicago mayor. All of these causes' desired outcomes fundamentally oppose core tenants of corporate infrastructure, pending some major change. Climate activism especially comes to mind.

  When the real conversations and possible anger actually start occurring in these groups, andthe real reactions from their counter-parties start occurring in public, and the fights over what gets into a wikipedia article occur in conjunction more so than already, a censorship-free payment rail comes into play. That means paper cash, cryptocurrency, or maybe some new tech. But I doubt Zelle or Venmo are safe at that point. I think the real so-what debate about crypto starts at that point.

• by yjftsjthsd-h on 4/13/22, 5:29 AM

  Am I reading correctly that this is all cryptocurrencies, not just PoW? That's slightly surprising, although it probably simplifies things.

• by robonerd on 4/13/22, 2:11 PM

  In response to these kind of stories, the comment sections online are always filled with crypto advocates upset about the organization not taking their money. This really makes clear who needs who. Crypto needs wikipedia much more than wikipedia needs crypto.

  Wikipedia is not hard up for cash (if you earnestly believe their begging ads, you must be naive. Give me a break.) But crypto is hard up for legitimacy.

• by ancymon on 4/13/22, 9:55 AM

  They also oppose having ads on Wikipedia. Personally I don't see much difference between banners asking for donations and ads. I understand there are "bad" ads (privacy violating or ones causing conflict of interest), but not all of them are like this. Same with cryptocurrencies - some of them are "scam", but not all of them. It's strange that Wikipedia sees world as black and white.

• by jaza on 4/13/22, 1:04 PM

  This is consistent with their negative attitude towards crypto-related Wikipedia content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Bl...

  > A community discussion at the administrators' noticeboard has placed all pages with content related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, broadly construed, under indefinite general sanctions, effective 14:43, 22 May 2018 (UTC).

• by plebianRube on 4/13/22, 11:43 AM

  Their existing model of soliciting donations via

  “DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS,”

  got them over 150MM without crypto.

  Their stance on banning crypto changes nothing on this front, and only serves to make themselves seem 'green'

• by amatecha on 4/13/22, 5:51 AM

  haha, from the headline I thought this meant they would stop accepting new wiki pages about cryptocurrencies, and thought "huh, I guess it makes sense" :'D

• by vdddv on 4/13/22, 7:54 AM

  "the tally is 232 to 94, or 71.17% in support of the proposal" So this decision is the result of a mere 326 Wikipedia users (contributors?)taking a vote.

• by stjohnswarts on 4/13/22, 3:27 PM

  I've been ignoring crypto for the most post but this is just dumb, they are turning away free money. It's not up to wikipedia to fix the problems of the world (take a hint mozilla). This is a pretty big red flag about flaws in Wikipedia's governance.

• by constantlm on 4/13/22, 9:22 AM

  In the context of their yearly guilt tripping banners asking for money in a manner that sounds like Wikipedia is on the brink of death, this virtue signaling is disappointing.

• by PufPufPuf on 4/13/22, 6:28 PM

  I'm surprised how many pro-cryptocurrency comments I see here on HN. I would expect people here to see through the hype and technobabble.

• by qgin on 4/14/22, 12:30 AM

  If you’re a charity in 1999 and people want to donate their Beanie Babies to you, accept them and sell them asap.

• by vinnie-io on 4/13/22, 8:35 PM

  were they intimidated to accept crypto donations in the first place? have seen stories where companies are intimidated and threatened into accepting crypto as a payment option by groups

• by ospzfmbbzr on 4/13/22, 12:58 PM

  Beggars can't be choosers. Lame virtue signalling from a worn out platform with its best days long behind it.

  The energy argument against crypto is total BS and just an attack from the legacy banking industry and their cronies.

• by derevaunseraun on 4/13/22, 7:39 AM

  I'm not a cryptobro, but this annoying ass attitude is gonna turn me into one

  I wonder what would happen if crypto somehow managed to replace central banks and how the world would change

• by zeepzeep on 4/13/22, 6:25 AM

  wikipedia doesn't need the money anyways (any more money)

• by aaron695 on 4/13/22, 6:20 AM

  Wikipedia is on a knife edge. It can flip quickly. I'm not sure what they are doing to keep it stable, but this is a bad sign.

  This should not be up to a vote. Wikipedia is there to be an encyclopedia, not have opinions on currency.

  People should be prepared for when Wikipedia becomes the enemy.

  F-Droid, DDG, Cloudflare all flipped at points.

  The problem is if Wikipedia treats themselves like a democracy with no strong constitution and legal system once these decisions on morals start, we all know where they end up, the same as Twitter.

• by koonsolo on 4/13/22, 8:05 AM

  I'm very happy to see we are now in the "then they fight you" stage :).

  Let's see who wins.

• by thepasswordis on 4/13/22, 3:19 PM

  It sounds like Wikipedia isn’t really wanting for money.

  Meh. I’ve donated in the past, but will just look for different charities in the future.

  Non news article imo.

• by charcircuit on 4/13/22, 5:10 AM

  It's Wikipedia's loss. If they had actually took bitcoin donations since they added it in 2014 they would have appreciated quite a bit.

• by teekert on 4/13/22, 8:23 AM

  The environment? Then run a lightning node, or use Cardano, problem solved. Why are we trowing the baby out with the bathwater?

• by distrohopper on 4/13/22, 9:31 AM

  Wikipedia will no longer receive any donations from me. Works for me. It has become pretty left leaning anyways.

• by CTDOCodebases on 4/13/22, 10:06 AM

  If environmental sustainability is an issue why don’t they shut down their servers? Think of all the electricity they could save. An online encyclopaedia is not essential for human survival.

• by MavropaliasG on 4/13/22, 11:36 AM

  Wikipedia has gone down the toilet. Too much political correctness, leftists, and sensitive snowflakes.

• by Mindwipe on 4/13/22, 7:00 AM

  Ah, another Wikipedia policy designed to exclude sex workers from financial services.

  I notice this wasn't even raised in the RFC.

• by vmception on 4/13/22, 5:37 AM

  So they excluded all the new accounts and unregistered voters, and only got 70% of the vote for reasons that are all solved with education.

  Thats… medieval.