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

Majority of the unaware public will leave with this stereo typed information and false gospel,  bringing about false theory about Bitcoin which is what the anti Bitcoin crusader are all out for, I personally don't border much about this news Wikipedia will and remain benefactor of what Bitcoin stands for transparency, Low fees, no tax and no paper work.

You don't think that we'll see an increase in companies going against Bitcoin because of the recent energy consumption allegations? I think that makes perfect sense to me. If you look at how the world is going, all that's important right now is company image, and therefore looking like your supporting a currency which is alleged to be a big contributor to the environment being polluted, doesn't look good does it? So, going against that currency, therefore makes it look like you actually care, and therefore in the eyes of the public your stock goes up.

I don't see that being implausible at all, and I do think that's the real reason this has come about. Otherwise, there would be no reason to remove it, after all it's free money, and costs nothing to post a Bitcoin address up. You could argue admin costs for withdrawing from time to time, but they wouldn't have to do it that frequently. I didn't look at how they implemented it, but I assume they used a payment gateway so that they had it automatically converted for them, which would take up a little bit of their resources on their server. However, if they cared about maximising their donations, they could opt to just post an address instead.

I saw this on some news outlet a couple of days ago. A lot of people in here seem to have all sorts of theories as to why Wikipedia did this, but none of them really seems to add up to me. However maybe I should be a little more skeptical being that Wikipedia is always asking for donations, and now they stop accepting bitcoin..I’m just not sure the environmental impact deal is what really led to this. Disappointing nonetheless.

That's why, if they couldn't accept fiat then obviously cryptocurrencies will be the highest, since that's their only option. However, whenever fiat is being accepted, it'll likely trump Bitcoin. Most Bitcoin users are currently hoarding Bitcoin, and using it as a reserve currency, due to the prospect of it going up in the future. So, yeah I can understand why they didn't receive much in cryptocurrency. In fact, I'd like to know the proper numbers, as I expect for a long period of time they received none at all through Bitcoin, and only the odd donation will inflate their numbers.

Yeah, very sad too... How does it matter in what kind of currency the donation is made? Wikipedia could use it to make something good

Wikipedia receiving few crypto donations is no surprise at all, the website has become biased a long time ago and the side it's flirting with hates crypto.


He wrote an article on his Website too, it used to have comments on but it was quickly swarmed by the crazy mob.

It is difficult to put Ukraine and Wiki in the same context at all, regardless of the fact that these are crypto donations. Although the Wiki has its unquestioned position in the world of the Internet as a place where many find information, everyone will rather send a donation to Ukraine, which is struggling for bare survival, than fund some kind of public database. You can bet that in addition to sympathizing with the victim, many find the real motive in the fear that in the event of Ukraine's defeat, the same thing may happen to them - so many donations come from neighboring countries.

---

Maybe some donor kindly advised that it would be wise to remove the crypto option, and in return, Wiki received a generous donation? It is amazing how easy it is to sell a lie nowadays, and that lie then serves as a tool to put Bitcoin on the side of those who are to blame for everything that is happening on our planet. I didn't know that the co-founder of Wiki has such a bad opinion of his project...

I am shocked to learn that wikipedia didn't get much donations with crypto. I always assumed it would be one of the highest ones yet again. I am saying again because when wikileaks happened the biggest one was crypto, they couldn't get fiat so they accepted crypto and they were paid a ton of money with it, or places like piratesbay which has been running for so many years purely on donations via crypto as well.

Even just recently we are talking about Ukraine being in the middle of a war and they got hundreds of millions of dollars from crypto donations, literally to buy guns and weapons and armor and even war drones as well with that money. So, a simple information page not getting it? I do not know, maybe people didn't see it worthy of a donation.

I'm not sure if this will be perceived by the public as positive. The public, after all, is divided among pro, anti, and indifferent to Bitcoin. Apparently, to those who don't know about Bitcoin, they couldn't care less. They probably never heard of such news even. To those who are anti, this is definitely positive. And negative to those who wish to see Bitcoin being in use as an acceptable currency. But with how they describe Bitcoin in their justification, I'd rather that they take it down as a donation option.

Anyway, I have never really attached integrity with Wikipedia. While I appreciate them for giving everybody free access to information, I can remember back in the university that if a paper or an article mentions even once that Wikipedia is one of its sources, that paper or article is to be considered a trash. Wikipedia in its design can't be a reliable source of information or knowledge. Well, in all fairness, that seems to have changed now. I'm currently reading a book published by Oxford which has Wikipedia citations.

To be honest, this isn't so much about being a loss to Bitcoin, but the fact that a somewhat respected organisations, obviously doesn't care about integrity at all, which to be honest considering the content they host, should be vying for the upmost integrity. It's just annoying, and an absolute shame to see. I wouldn't have cared if they just dropped Bitcoin donations without this PR statement, in an attempt to look better in the public eye. That's the massively disappointing part about all of this.

I don't know why I expected anything different though. Although, its probably indicative to them not receiving much donations in Bitcoin, so they probably haven't lost anything from this, I mean in the public eye that don't follow Bitcoin, and know much about it this will be seen as a positive thing, which again is the annoying part.

These news aren't irritating because Wikipedia stopped accepting bitcoin donations. I honestly couldn't care less about that; it's the way they, along with any other business these days (see Tesla), justify it to their users. We have so many counter arguments about the climate problem, which makes it a poor choice to explain your suspension of bitcoin.

You've gone far. How about suspending fiat donations? Much more environmentally damaging.

I thought that reason was pretty obvious and not hidden at all, and its the fact they they receive so little donation in cryptocurrencies that they simply decided to ditch them and then make some bullshit reasons about the environment, not endorsing cryptocurrencies etc. I am sure that if large portion of their donations was in crypto they wouldn't even think about it so in the end its just about opportunism.


I am not so sure that they are spending any extra time for this as from what I know they used payment processor (BitPay) that automatically converts donated bitcoin into fiat so its not that bitcoin is going straight into their wallet and then they have to handle all that crypto to fiat conversion.

Another Media Judgement. A website with 6,494,036 articles and an average 583 new articles per day, a total page view of over 5.4 billion (April 2021) and an average daily view of 258 million would be a good avenue to spread propaganda. Wikipedia is bais and is been used by it's major sponsors. They are rejecting Bitcoin not because they care about the environment but because Bitcoin donations is not high. If their major funds is currently from Bitcoin they wouldn't have taken that decision. Someone has promised to donate more so that Wikipedia would be a medium of brainwashing the public. But no matter how far a lie travels, one day truth would catch-up with it and overcome it. We know these anti-bitcoin forces control the media, but Bitcoin's weapons is truth, decentralization and freedom.



https://financesonline.com/wikipedia-statistics/

I think we lost the battle with them, because of the financial incentive to do this.. payments are just not there. Why should they spend extra time and money to add Bitcoin as a payment option, if almost nobody is doing it? I have seen this happening with many merchants in the past.

The energy use for mining is just an added bonus for them to have more excuses to justify their decision.    (It just shows us that the misinformation in the mass media are working) 

Aside from the silly parroting the "energy consumption" thing I find the following contradition pretty funny:
They say they are receiving payments in a currency and then say it is endorsement of an investment. If people invested in bitcoin, they wouldn't have used it as payment
Stocks are also risky investments, they endorse it too. But do they or can they accept donations in stocks? LOL


In any case, as I've said elsewhere I'm sure that there is a lot more going on behind the scene that made them stop accepting bitcoin donations. They are just hiding the real reasons behind something brainwashed masses have bought (the fake energy consumption) because that's way easier to sell and it could make them look good.

It is unfortunate that Wikipedia stops accepting Bitcoin donations, but it is a lot more unfortunate that the reasons provided are either fallacious or simply outright wrong.

But I think this is more of Wikipedia's loss than Bitcoin's. After all, it is Wikipedia and not Bitcoin that will benefit from keeping such donation option.

Well, it is their free decision. Wikipedia remains helpful to the public, but so is Bitcoin. And time will tell whether Wikipedia's false impression on Bitcoin will last longer than its need to put such option back.   

Bitcoin energy use had grown in recent years, and it attracted attention of climate change activists.


In global context, energy consumption of Bitcoin is a very low priority, so climate activists shouldn't spend disproportionately high amount of time on it, but this doesn't cancel the fact that Bitcoin energy consumption is high compared to its utility - our civilization won't notice if Bitcoin disappeared tomorrow, and even Bitcoiners would continue living their lives as normal.

Unfortunately, we are in a day, and age where truth doesn't matter, and not many companies/organisations, have much integrity, and it does seem like Wikipedia might actually be one of them, which to be honest is rather disheartening, and annoying considering the type of content that they provide.

I say the above, and I understand that it might sound a little hostile, however I'm not intentionally being hostile to the companies that do this sort of thing, I'm just annoyed that political pressure, and what we actually think is much more important than the truth these days. Personally, I consider a company or organisation standing up against the status quo, and sticking to the actual facts a little more respectable, than sucking up to the public or their shareholders, just to secure more money.

Does Bitcoin use energy, Yeah. Does it use more than fiat? No. Does that excuse the energy use? Probably not. Should we be looking to improve where ever practical? Yeah, however I think it's being blown way out of proportion, and to me it seems there's a clear bias among the media now, and public perception has definitely changed over the last year or so. I'm not hearing people say Bitcoin is fake money, and you can't use it as much now, I'm seeing them say it's detrimental to the environment.

Honestly, I believe this is the next stumbling block for Bitcoin. We've proven to overcome them in the past, like the previous example of being fake money, and not being able to use it, I think we've largely overcome that public perception, however this might just be the biggest challenge we've faced. Everything these days is being about as green, and socially acceptable as possible, which when the news seems to be against Bitcoin, might just be a hard thing to overcome.

Wikipedia's also has been censoring a lot of content as of the last few years. They seem to taking the woke stance most corporations are, placing sustainability and "green energy" above all else.


Seems to be the root of most virtue signaling. Displaying sanctimony to create a false impression that they're the good guys. Meanwhile, the financial hit they take from eliminating cryptocurrency is <0.10%. Give it some time and I'm sure they will reverse their position as crypto becomes more mainstream and acceptable as a payment method.

Wikipedia still accepts paypal, by the way. Talk about "inherently predatory."

But whatabout the....

Does it feel like a good comparison of the energy used by 8 billion people to cook, heat, watch tv, listen to music while having sex,watching tv while having sex, use air conditioning (after sex), keep food cold, wash clothes with the 45 million addresses with a  balance and 300k transaction a day? Does it feel right to compare it with the freight industry that took just one hiccup during covid and nearly grdined the entire world economy to a halt?
Let's assume tomorrow everyone uses bitcoin, prices jump to 100x and since the rewards will also follow the same path as well as energy consumption what will we compare it by then? Why have we jumped from comparing it with Visa and the bank system to things that would destroy the economy is stopped?


Why so? Everyone is free to make their own choice and be wrong or right about it.
This thing might come back and bite them in the ass or not, what's next are we going to make people who don't like bitcoin wear some armbands with the $ symbol, but green not yellow like in the 30's.

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...

---

[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.

---

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