After Eight Years, Wikipedia Stops Accepting Bitcoin and Ethereum Donations
The announcement comes after the charity conducted a poll in which more than 70% of respondents said they wanted to stop accepting bitcoin donations altogether.
“The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to discontinue direct acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of donating ... we are making this decision based on recent feedback from [volunteers and donor] communities,” the foundation said in a statement.
The nonprofit first accepted Bitcoin donations through Coinbase before switching to BitPay to accept donations in other cryptocurrencies.
However, prior to the prohibition, Wikipedia's exposure to cryptocurrency was minimal. Only 347 distinct donors sent crypto to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2021. Crypto donations accounted for only 0.08 percent of the Wikimedia Organization's revenue last year, according to Community Relations Specialist Julia Brungs, and the foundation has never "held cryptocurrencies."
“In the last financial year the most used cryptocurrency was Bitcoin. We have never held cryptocurrency, and spot-convert donations daily into fiat currency (USD), which doesn’t have a significant environmental impact,” Brungs wrote back in January.
When the argument about crypto donations first erupted in January, software engineer and Wikipedia editor Molly White remarked that only 400 people were involved.
However, many of the accounts appeared to be "single-purpose accounts made solely for the conversation" in order to persuade the foundation against crypto, according to White.
Those in favor of crypto donations pointed to the necessity for anonymous payments in countries where Wikipedia is prohibited or censored. It was also suggested that because Bitcoin is legal cash in El Salvador and the Central African Republic, the foundation should allow donors to donate in their respective countries' official currencies.