Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, announces that it will stop accepting donations in virtual currency

After three months of debate, the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that runs the online encyclopedia site Wikipedia, has announced that it will stop accepting donations in cryptocurrencies.

The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations. The decision was made based on a community request that the WMF no longer accept crypto donations, which came out of a three-month-long discussion that wrapped up

earlier this month. .com / RHAD0FRA5W

— Molly White (@ molly0xFFF) May 1, 2022

Wikimedia Foundation stops accepting cryptocurrency donations
https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=wikimedia-foundation-stops-accepting-cryptocurrency-donations

Wikipedia does not rely on advertising revenue, but covers operating expenses by donations from individuals and groups. In March 2014, when founder Jimmy Wales announced his interest in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, users began sending cryptocurrencies to his wallet, and in August 2014, Wikipedia On the other hand, you can now make donations in virtual currency.

Wikipedia, which is often soliciting donations, supports donations in the virtual currency Bitcoin --GIGAZINE

However, in order to efficiently perform 'mining' to obtain virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, it is necessary to keep running high-performance PCs, and it is known that the environmental load is high. In the opinion solicitation conducted by volunteers from January to April 2022, more than 70% of users were opposed to accepting donations in virtual currency.

This result was non-binding, but the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, respects the opinions of the community. We have decided to close our Bitpay account and stop accepting cryptocurrencies.

In addition, the amount of donations made by virtual currency to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2021 was equivalent to 130,000 dollars (about 17 million yen), which was 0.08% of the total donation amount.