Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

meta.wikimedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 401 posts

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

#71

Post by qwerty456127 »

colesantiago wrote: post #2

This is great news, it is pretty pointless to use cryptocurrencies at all anyway since for Wikipedia: > Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels. Remember that Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites on the planet, I'm also assuming that other websites trying to accept crypto have even smaller percentages rendering cryptocurrencies as payment useless, not t…

> nobody is using it for payments at all, rather just holding crypto coins and hoping they'll go up

The above statement is false.

I prefer to use cash and crypto to prevent my expenses from being tracked (although I absolutely am not avoiding any taxes). I pay cash, not crypto when I want weed (sadly it's still illegal in most of the places). I rarely hold more than $100 worth so don't care about where is the rate going. I presume I'm not unique.

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

#72

Post by josefx »

0xRolex wrote: post #62
mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

Even though the arguments in support of the ban are to be taken into account it's right that the arguments in opposition make a lot of sense and it doesn't seem like they've been taken into account. When you're begging for money you don't spit on a way to get some more because you disagree with some stuff it's related, you look for solutions to please everyone. As you said a lot of what's actually done with cryptocur…

> When you're begging for money

But that is just it, Wikipedia isn't that desperate for money that it has to do tricks for con artists and scammers. Now if Wikipedia was tethering at the edge of non existence it might be excusable, but it isn't, it is making enough to keep running without pandering to the scum of the earth.

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

#73

Post by mandmandam »

bb88 wrote: post #66
mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

> Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a a platform for pump and dumps. and > Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. It seems like the first paragraph you said would be enough of a reason to n…

Man, there's a baby in that bathwater Wiki RFC are throwing out.

There are projects that are fair, were fairly distributed, that work and are secure, that are feeless and instant, all while being truly decentralized. Everything that Bitcoin promised to be and wasn't.

So, when the scams die out the best projects willl still exist. It doesn't matter how much of their own face Wikipedia cuts off, but it's sad to see them do it.

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

#74

Post by charcircuit »

dehrmann wrote: post #44
charcircuit wrote: post #3

It's Wikipedia's loss. If they had actually took bitcoin donations since they added it in 2014 they would have appreciated quite a bit.

Like, if they continued to hold those bitcoins, speculating in the market, rather than feed those funds into running Wikipedia? You don't usually donate to charities so they can speculate with that money.

From the linked page only 0.08% of revenue came from cryptocurrency. It's likely that without that 0.08% margin Wikipedia could still be kept running (which is part of the reason why taking cryptocurrency donations was removed).

>You don't usually donate to charities so they can speculate with that money.

Similarly one wouldn't want your donation to just sit somewhere reducing in value due to inflation. If you donated $100 and then later when Wikipedia actually needed the money they were able to sell your donation for $1000, your donation was able to do more for them than if they had just immediately sold it.

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

#75

Post by mardifoufs »

secretsatan wrote: post #64
mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

Quoted post unavailable.

Explain? I'm not trying to be offensive or mean, it's just that the reasons given for the RFC had little to do with Wikimedia and reminded me of a typical moral crusade.

For example, when they say that it is a huge stain on wikimedia's reputation when the reality is that they started accepted crypto donations 8 years ago with absolutely no controversy (a part from this one)... that to me reeks of projection when almost no one actually cares a part from themselves. So there's no actual reputational damage, it's just a rhetorical argument to avoid saying "I don't like it so it shouldn't be accepted". Which is usually a pretty frowned upon argument in the wiki community

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

#76

Post by ben_w »

jdrc wrote: post #47
dehrmann wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that take, I'm not sure if it covers the engineering effort to maintain it, accounting and legal work to handle it, and opportunity cost of whatever else they could be doing.

that was nowhere near the justification given

Doesn’t need to be. At most it’s a reason for Wikimedia to not care enough to say ‘no’ to the RfC.

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

#78

Post by unicornmama »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #67
unicornmama wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you chose to unbank yourself :) I have transacted millions in crypto and wire transfers. Banking with crypto is like the 1970s - exorbitant fees. To do anything useful with it I have to offramp to fiat which drum rolls ends with a wire transfer.

You said "go to your bank". I was thinking "walk into a bank branch" XD I don't think I've ever wired money in my life. I guess I never needed to. And the few occasions I needed to send some money internationally, I've simply sent crypto, used Western Union, or something like PayPal or Revolut.

Wiring isn’t that bad, you need to fill in some fields about the recipient account details and receiving bank. The annoying bit is that banks have inconsistent web portals with mediocre UX. So sometimes it can be frustrating to figure out how to enter the information.

I’ll admit that the crypto UX is faster with just entering a destination wallet address. It would be good if banks could adopt QR codes to provide similar experienfe.

Sometimes you get charged a fee, but many institutions will waive that (e.g. Schwab) if your balance is high enough.

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

#79

Post by ben_w »

Mindwipe wrote: post #52

Ah, another Wikipedia policy designed to exclude sex workers from financial services. I notice this wasn't even raised in the RFC.

I don’t see how this would do that. Nor how it is Wikimedia’s gift to give, it isn’t a financial corporation last I checked.

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

#80

Post by gjs278 »

dehrmann wrote: post #41
jdrc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the last financial year we received $130,100.94 worth of donations in cryptocurrencies.

At that take, I'm not sure if it covers the engineering effort to maintain it, accounting and legal work to handle it, and opportunity cost of whatever else they could be doing.

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN