Topic: Wikipedia stops accepting btc donations - “inherently predatory” - page 2. (Read 402 times)

Yes. Bitcoin, just like any other useful innovation, uses energy. But, why now, Wikipedia?

Agreed, but there's no point to compare bitcoin or gold mining with healthcare, the building sector and land, air & sea transport; this is clearly a mixed bag. One might say reckless whataboutism.

Perhaps a tidy email can work? It's ironic that most of the links in their bitcoin page state the opposite.

Op, thanks a lot for the image of comparison of mining to other industries. I haven't seen it before, and it's certainly more helpful than all those talks of Bitcoin mining energy consumption being compared to energy consumption of certain countries. If the data is accurate, Bitcoin mining is really not taking that much power. It's taking less than gold mining & jewelry which are not getting cancelled for that and which certainly aren't more essential than Bitcoin, and then there's the finance and insurance sector which is significantly bigger as well. It's sad that Wikipedia took this stance.

Our response should just take the same form Wikipedia themselves are notorious for:


[ Citation needed ] .

Followed by "VFD: Unsourced claims".   

According to a news article only 400 Wikipedia editors participated, out of which 232 users - 71.7 per cent were in support of the proposal against crypto donations and 94 editors voted for crypto donations, others (75 users) were excluded from voting. I don't know on what basis this is being done. Another this it has received just $130k donation in the form of cryptocurrencies from 347 donars, which is less than 0.1% of what is being got as revenue. This is the prime reason for stopping bitcoin donations. But Wikipedia have wrapped it with the energy issue and have given different statement that they're the saviours of the planet earth.

Sadly, there are a lot of such people in the world today and Wikipedia may be looking to pander to the general public by this action. I could interpret this action to mean; "we were not getting enough Bitcoin donations for the gamble we took to attract Bitcoin users and have decided to drop it in a way that makes us look good"
Would be nice if they actually returned the little donations received in cryptocurrencies.

If half the energy and awareness put into the perceived danger of PoW mining was directed to actual climate dangers, it would truly benefit the planet.

It's always funny to see companies dropping a channel of donations in the favor of good omens (in this case "environmental" ones). I advise anyone who has the time to read the discussion that ensued over at Wikimedia regarding the banning of cryptocurrencies here[1]. If this was a debate of banning the donation channel due to environmental causes I would assume that the discussion would start by that argument. Yet the first question of the discussion is "How much in crypto has been donated to date?" - this directly applies that probably if the income was higher than it currently is, perhaps the decision would be other. I've searched the all the Fundraiser reports ever since 2014 to see if they gave any insight of the revenue that came from crypto donations and while there wasn't any information regarding that point, in the last discussion[1] we got a glimpse of the last fiscal year (2021):
Considering that they amassed a total sum of $154,763,121 USD in donations, the 0,08 % of income that the crypto donation represents is nothing compared to the other sources - it makes them easier to slash the system. There's really good arguments from users where they try to demonstrate that the system that makes "banking" work and that fuels the Oil Industry (for example) consume much more than the BTC network and yet all the attention is on BTC side. Quoting:
In the end of the section they just argue that those weren't peer reviewed papers and such, and the discussion ensures elsewhere. Still it's good to see that such a discussion ensued and it's great to see the numerous points that were talked and discussed between the voting members. Sadly in the end the majority of votes ended up being 319 Supporters vs 134 (this may not be an exact match since I basically did CTRL+F) which means that the channel is now removed from their website.

I really do wonder what they would do if the % was higher, but I guess we'll never know...

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[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Stop_accepting_cryptocurrency_donations

This might be one of the reasons.  probably some institutions promised a deal that outweighs the income from the crypto donation if they announced something against it.  This move of disabling crypto payment is more likely political to gather sympathizers and gain much from it by taking Bitcoin's critics' good side.

Only dumb people would really believing into this bullshit kind of reasoning for those institution/companies/government who do really take blame or put some emphasis  with
this energy issue against Bitcoin.

Its pretty obvious that they do really just dont like it due to further other reasons or simply they do just get in line on what the majority is being seeing on it.
Wikipedia just really doing the same but i actually agree into those points that they might not able to get on what they are expecting. 

I think that in the end they realized that from this kind of donation they received nothing more then "peanuts" ... that is. we are talking about 0.08 percent, a truly negligible amount.
the real sadly part is the story based on metropolitan legend of "bitcoin pollutes" as the main reason for this story ...

The world are just been hash and most of them that against bitcoin PoW mining are just bitcoin critics, aside that bitcoin do not consume much of electricity if compared to other sectors, bitcoin miners are getting towards making almost all electricity used by bitcoin mining to be clean energy that do not produce greenhouse gasses that can result to global warming. Over 50% of electricity used for bitcoin mining are clean energy which produces no greenhouse gases.

According to the bitcoin mining network CoinShares research, the carbon remission through electricity used to mine bitcoin contributes 0.08% of the global CO2 emissions.

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The bitcoin mining network, energy and carbon impact

The whole global impact of Bitcoin mining on the ecosystem crusade is a scam to me, many institutions are beginning to align to that discussion of the negative impact of Bitcoin mining on the energy and the waste created by miner activities which can not be compared to some of the industries around the world who are constantly realizing toxins into the air and consumption of high electricity. But for an online search engine source as Wikipedia moving against privacy and decentralization that offers total liberty shows how centralized Wikipedia is and how careless it will be on privacy and data protection.

Honestly, this is shocking news for me too, I don't know if this news will affect the price of bitcoin in the market. The FUD about bitcoin, which is one of the biggest causes of environmental damage, seems to have resurfaced and is causing anxiety. the Wikipedia team must do research  first, on whether the accusations given to bitcoin are true or not.

At first glance, this news sounds really sad. But the situation is actually a little different. Wikipedia stopped accepting donations at bitcoin because the share of BTC against the general background of all donations is very small (% of authors on wikipedia who accepted payment for their activities at BTC). Therefore, don't take this topic as a reason to be upset because refuse. If someone is not too lazy, study this issue in more depth. I can't seem to find a link right now to back up what I've said, but I think the problem voiced in this news is exaggerated.

They might've just been looking for a reason to stop accepting it. Maybe they want more donors and have done this in an attempt to get more since not much comes from crypto...

The sustainability argument looks like less of a focus than the predatory high risk investment that bitcoin could be considered to be (a lot of exchanges in the sector seem to exhibit predatory behaviours as well as the large amount of unmoderated phishing sites on quite a few search engines that buy ads).

https://fortune.com/2022/05/02/wikipedia-wikimedia-foundation-no-crypto-donations-environment-climate-bitcoin-ethereum/

Sadly, Wikipedia is now against bitcoin, as bitcoin "may not align" with Wikipedia sustainability...

I was surprised. I always used a lot of Wikipedia in all kinds of researches.  I confess that I am disappointed.

I can see  now that Wikipedia doesn't align to my vision of an open internet, and borderless world.

This environmental discussion simple doesn't make any sense
Bitcoin’s energy use is just a rounding error compared to other industries



https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-energy-use-compare-industry