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Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

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Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#331

Post by BeefWellington »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #166

I always find it weird when a charity or non-profit publically announces that they stop accepting certain forms of donations due to ideological reasons. It's a signal that the organization isn't particularly starving for donations. If you were planning to donate to Wikipedia any sum less than $130,100.94, remember that 70% of Wikipedians consider such donations to have no impact at all. So if you were about to donate…

> I always find it weird when a charity or non-profit publically announces that they stop accepting certain forms of donations due to ideological reasons. It's a signal that the organization isn't particularly starving for donations.

It's as or more likely a signal that the cost of accepting those forms of donations is too high. Cost for non-profits can mean more than just currency, it can be things like ethics, morality, popularity, political stances, etc.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#332

Post by Tijdreiziger »

robonerd wrote: post #276
replygirl wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not in a practical sense for the user. You don't have to wait 20 minutes for your authorization to clear so you can walk out of Dunkin with your iced coffee

Ironically you're more likely to have such an experience paying with cash these days. I tried to buy a pizza from Dominos last week. Order online, pick up in person and pay with cash. Should have been simple, but it devolved into 5 minutes of Domino's employees trying to figure out "who's on cash?" (Had the credentials to open the cash drawer.) That person was apparently taking a smoke break, but when they came back…

I think the reason might be much simpler. For businesses, cash involves the risk of robbery, and in any case someone must drop it off at the bank periodically, or a pick-up must be arranged (adding cost). If your customers have a card anyway, why bother?

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#333

Post by i14 »

dundarious wrote: post #227
danamit wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked and got paid in crypto in the past, which made me able to move out. Also I used crypto to pay for services, I just bought a GPU (for gaming, current one broke, I do not mine crypto) with crypto that's still shipping. I won't call the adoption pathetic, it is just that you are not in the circle of adoption/need. Just like I see people mentioning services here that they say they cannot live without and I do no…

If you use almost any goods or services almost anywhere in the world, you at least indirectly benefit from or use the global banking system, as it is the de facto (and probably quite often de jure) system for payments. There are no alternatives that are as good as it, on pretty much any axis. This includes all crypto. I'm not trying to unfairly critique your personal choices, but that's just the reality. Just like ho…

that’s what crypto is trying to be - the alternative to the global banking system, because the banking system has some issues.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#334

Post by rvz »

ea550ff70a wrote: post #317
thehappypm wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is crypto’s second largest use case, behind as a means for illegal activities. Crypto is easier to send in extreme situations than fiat currencies.

> behind as a means for illegal activities which are less than 1% of the yearly transaction volume according to Chainalysis lol

On top of that you can trace all the transactions on the chain and see where everything is going publicly. Useful to catch criminals attempting to liquidate on to an exchange. Good luck cashing out and not getting caught.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#335

Post by nh23423fefe »

xtracto wrote: post #211
cycomanic wrote: post #98

I find many of the replies here fascinating. On one hand whenever there is talk about government regulating some industry or actor a large portion of commenter here reply that if you don't agree with the practice don't use them, no regulation needed. Now an organisation does exactly that, they decide that they don't want to use a "service" that they ethically disagree with, and lots of replies call it pointless virtu…

I dont think they really care about the environment. If they did, they would accept PoS or similar environmentally friendly cryptos. That way they would be promoting their use instead of the old inefficient PoW ones.

This is wrong. Caring about the environment doesn't require accepting different crypto. And certainly promotion isn't required either.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#336

Post by dogman144 »

lhl wrote: post #24

For those interested in charitable giving with crypto, I set up a decent-sized on-chain Donor Advised Fund with https://endaoment.org/ the end of last year. There are rough corners and it's still early days, but I'm able to give to basically any arbitrary 501c3 in the same way using a dapp interface now, which is pretty sweet. You can setup a DAF via crypto w/ either Schwab or Fidelity as well (and others I'm sure).…

Cool product, hope you get those smart contracts audited!

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#337

Post by robonerd »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #332
robonerd wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically you're more likely to have such an experience paying with cash these days. I tried to buy a pizza from Dominos last week. Order online, pick up in person and pay with cash. Should have been simple, but it devolved into 5 minutes of Domino's employees trying to figure out "who's on cash?" (Had the credentials to open the cash drawer.) That person was apparently taking a smoke break, but when they came back…

I think the reason might be much simpler. For businesses, cash involves the risk of robbery, and in any case someone must drop it off at the bank periodically, or a pick-up must be arranged (adding cost). If your customers have a card anyway, why bother?

Fear of robbery might motivate a locked cash drawer, or no cash accepted at all. But only one person in the store being able to operate the cash drawer? The most generous explanation for this I can think of is the business fears their own employees are thieves, and want to reduce risk by only trusting a small number of them to handle cash.

But this doesn't explain why it's so hard for even the employee with the cash drawer credentials to open the drawer in a timely manner. They go full hackerman on the keyboard, scratching their head and cussing at the computer with utterances about the value of technology that would make the unabomber proud. It seems obvious to me the workflow for opening the cash drawer is inexcusably broken.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#338

Post by Regic »

namdnay wrote: post #224
px43 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expedia has accepted Bitcoin for almost a decade: https://www.expedia.com/Checkout/BitcoinTermsAndConditions

That's not "accepting payment with bitcoin" - it's just a link for coinbase to convert your bitcoin to USD before booking. Look at the T&Cs, it's a USD booking underneath Accepting payment with bitcoin means using bitcoin as the currency in the PNR, just like you can use euros or yen or pounds or whatever

I just want to point out the irony in falling back to good old centralized fintech companies to actually use the supposedly decentralized currency.

Sorry, I know, off-topic.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#339

Post by tablespoon »

jdrc wrote: post #274
tablespoon wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That applies to article content , not stuff like this RFC. Maybe an example would be clearer: OK: The community doesn't like cryptocurrency, so decides not to accept it for donations. NOT OK: The community doesn't like cryptocurrency, so turns the Bitcoin article into a hit-piece that only covers criticisms.

what about the second statement from wikipedia's principles: it is not a soapbox. It would be interesting to put banks to a vote with the same kind of arguments as well

> what about the second statement from wikipedia's principles: it is not a soapbox. It would be interesting to put banks to a vote with the same kind of arguments as well

Let me just put this this way: you are interpreting the text wrong, and repeatedly circling back to your wrong interpretation won't make it right. Pithy texts usually don't impart a full, correct understanding when read in isolation.

It's

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#340

Post by mattdesl »

gibrown wrote: post #283
mattdesl wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting line of thought. Which currency is more democratic: USD, or BTC/ETH? With ETH for example, I can create a new EIP, and if the majority of users agree with it, the currency can evolve. For example see EIP-1559 adoption despite it going against miners best interests, or even EIP-721 which has led to profound changes in the way the network is now used. This is pretty much "majority rule" but obvio…

Agree that this is an interesting line of discussion. I think you missed a few options of why USD are more democratic. You can also: - run for office - organize people politically The open source point is important, but any individual crypto seems very hard to change once it is in place. Feels like it assumes you can predict how it will be used and what the consequences will be. The law isn’t easy to change but there…

> You can also: - run for office - organize people politically

I think parallels to this are also happening in crypto networks, e.g. a user deciding to participate more directly in Eth protocol governance by sitting in on R&D and core dev calls, joining EIP discussions, using merge testnets, and generally just becoming a sort of public figure within the Eth community.

(Also, this may go back to citizenship, I cannot run for US office if I am living in another country, but crypto currencies aim to be effectively borderless internet networks.)

> The open source point is important, but any individual crypto seems very hard to change once it is in place. Feels like it assumes you can predict how it will be used and what the consequences will be. The law isn’t easy to change but there is a clearly defined abs democratic process for doing so (assuming you are in a democracy).

There is also a pretty clear process for changing ETH, and it does change often[1]. Sometimes these changes are at the protocol level, requiring consensus among core developers (different client teams, protocol engineers) and a fork. Other times the changes are at the application level, like the EIP 721 standard that many wallets and smart contracts are now adding compatibility for due to user interest.

[1] https://ethereum.org/en/history/

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