{"id":442928,"date":"2022-05-03T07:29:12","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T05:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=442928"},"modified":"2022-05-03T07:29:58","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T05:29:58","slug":"wikipedia-will-stop-taking-cryptocurrency-donations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cryptocurrency\/442928-wikipedia-will-stop-taking-cryptocurrency-donations.html","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia will stop taking cryptocurrency donations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind Wikipedia, will stop accepting cryptocurrencies donations amid concern about their negative impact on the environment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We began our direct acceptance of cryptocurrency in 2014 based on requests from our volunteers and donor communities,&#8221; the organisation said in a statement Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are making this decision based on recent feedback from those same community.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The WMF will close its account on Bitpay, a crypto payment service provider, as well as its direct methods to accept cryptocurrencies as donations.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Requests_for_comment\/Stop_accepting_cryptocurrency_donations#Offwiki_discussion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>A<\/strong> <strong>proposal<\/strong><\/a> centred at this issue was made earlier this year, and a little under 400 users participated in the voting and discussing whether the WMF should stop accepting cryptocurrency donations.<\/p>\n<p>The majority voted yes to the proposal 232 to 94. Users who support halting the process are mostly concerned about the energy-intensive mechanisms of the digital currency space.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">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. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/RHAD0FRA5W\">pic.twitter.com\/RHAD0FRA5W<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Molly White (@molly0xFFF) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/molly0xFFF\/status\/1520793329302183940?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 1, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Some members in the Wikipedia community opposed the proposal and cited that there are less energy-intensive cryptocurrency options, and crypto has shown its advantages to provide safer ways of donations for people in oppressive countries.<\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg previously\u00a0reported\u00a0that the impact of the voting result would be minor in the context of the WMF\u2019s funding. Total crypto donations in crypto to the WMF in the last financial year made up only 0.08% of overall revenue.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cryptocurrency\/442920-south-africans-are-buying-a-lot-of-cryptocurrency.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">South Africans are buying a lot of cryptocurrency<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wikipedia has announced that it will no longer accept cryptocurrency donations over concerns about their environmental impacts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":442930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44696],"tags":[191,78156,4696],"class_list":["post-442928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-the-wikimedia-foundation","tag-wikipedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442934,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442928\/revisions\/442934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}