imho they'd raise a hell of a lot more by sticking with a payment method that doesn't require the permission/consent of their enemies and showing that they can actually do real work with funds from that source.
Really?
Bitcoin also need the consent from its enemies to keep money flowing into the system until we get big enough.
Meh, it helps for sure, but I don't use it. I don't mean I don't use 'the system' at all, but they can't tell that I use bitcoin without considerable digging. And if they did cut me off it would cost maybe 5% and some headache at most to manage. Especially an org like wikileaks could pay some expenses in coin and could OTC for the rest.
I run a site, admittedly not a huge site, with all income earned and expenses paid in coin. We could scale up a lot without that changing.
I'm not saying wikileaks could do that, but they don't seem to even be interested in being financially independent. Regardless of their funding method 20 anonymous phones for $5000 sounds like something government would do. Is it so hard to have 50 volunteers mail multiple burners to multiple places, use some and randomly give some away? I'm obviously judging from way outside so I could be way off base. But I think they have big serious organization syndrome. I mean they stopped doing the one thing that they are about to focus on getting funds and they're just burning up funds during that time.
They want to have a fight about being included in the old system. It's way stronger to say "Ok, have your shit system we can manage without you". That's what will bring down the corrupt system, not finding a loophole that you can use for 3 months or something. Also, can they even keep the funds safe?