Wikimedia Foundation no longer accept cryptocurrency donations

Earlier Mozilla’s announcement of accepting cryptocurrency donations caused controversy, among early employees of Mozilla who came out to criticize this form of donation. In the end, Mozilla announced that it would suspend accepting cryptocurrency donations because the foundation needed to conduct a more in-depth assessment of the impact of cryptocurrencies on the environment.

Slightly better than Mozilla is the Wikimedia, which actually accepted cryptocurrency donations as early as 2014. As the operator of Wikipedia, the potential influence of the Wikimedia Foundation is naturally huge, including its attitude towards accepting cryptocurrency donations. The Wikimedia Foundation has also decided to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations after being criticized for accepting cryptocurrencies. The specific time has not yet been determined.

The data shows that the Wikimedia Foundation has received cryptocurrency donations worth $130,000 in the past year, involving 347 sponsors, accounting for 0.08% of the funds. Accepting cryptocurrency donations or not has little impact on the Wikimedia Foundation, but the community still wants the foundation to make its stance clear. For this reason, more than 200 community editors voted and finally decided not to accept cryptocurrency donations, and the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation has confirmed that the vote is valid.

Community editors believe that the Wikimedia Foundation’s acceptance of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum is an inherently predatory investment and does not meet the foundation’s commitment. The Wikimedia Foundation is also a supporter of natural environment protection, and a lot of energy, especially fossil energy, is wasted in the process of cryptocurrency mining.

It’s worth noting that the early Wikimedia Foundation’s acceptance of cryptocurrency donations was based on community editors’ suggestions, and now the Foundation follows editorial recommendations. So the end result is that the Wikimedia Foundation will close accounts related to cryptocurrency donations, and will completely remove functional support for cryptocurrency donations.