Wikipedia May Be Next To Drop Support For Crypto (techrepublic.com) 56
New submitter Ol Olsoc writes: "When the Mozilla Foundation took to Twitter on New Year's Eve to announce it was going to begin accepting cryptocurrency donations, it likely didn't think about potential blowback from one of its founders, but that's what it got," reports TechRepublic. "In response, Mozilla has said it's pausing cryptocurrency donations." Wikipedia is now discussing whether it should stop accepting Cryptocurrency as well.
Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski has some strong feelings about the matter, [telling TechRepublic]: "Anyone involved in cryptocurrencies in any way is either a grifter or a mark. It is 100% a con. There is no legitimacy." I cannot disagree with him. Zawinksi tweeted scathing criticism of a Mozilla tweet late last month promoting cryptocurrency donations. They first started accepting bitcoin for donations in 2014.
Here's where Wikipedia comes in: "Shortly after Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's change of heart, Wikipedia editor GorillaWarfare opened a request for comment on Wikimedia's meta-wiki calling for the organization to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations, citing Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's reaction," reports TechRepublic. "Zawinski has read the Wikipedia talk page about the discussion and says he hopes it indicates the beginning of a trend."
He added: "I'm actually a bit surprised (and pleased) to see that the conversation seemed to be going in an anti-cryptocurrency direction. Good for them."
Further reading: Wikipedia Faces Pressure to Stop Accepting Crypto Donations on Environmental Grounds (CoinDesk)
Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski has some strong feelings about the matter, [telling TechRepublic]: "Anyone involved in cryptocurrencies in any way is either a grifter or a mark. It is 100% a con. There is no legitimacy." I cannot disagree with him. Zawinksi tweeted scathing criticism of a Mozilla tweet late last month promoting cryptocurrency donations. They first started accepting bitcoin for donations in 2014.
Here's where Wikipedia comes in: "Shortly after Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's change of heart, Wikipedia editor GorillaWarfare opened a request for comment on Wikimedia's meta-wiki calling for the organization to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations, citing Zawinski's tweet and Mozilla's reaction," reports TechRepublic. "Zawinski has read the Wikipedia talk page about the discussion and says he hopes it indicates the beginning of a trend."
He added: "I'm actually a bit surprised (and pleased) to see that the conversation seemed to be going in an anti-cryptocurrency direction. Good for them."
Further reading: Wikipedia Faces Pressure to Stop Accepting Crypto Donations on Environmental Grounds (CoinDesk)
Running scared (Score:1)
If your shitty currency is so scared and useless that it cannot compete without running to mama, it does not deserve to exist.
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Congrats! You manage to be *both* a mark *and* a scammer.
Donations are donations (Score:1)
Re: Donations are donations (Score:3)
The total $ value of donations made in cryptocurrencies
In the last financial year we received $130,100.94 worth of donations in cryptocurrencies. Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels.
The total number of donors who opted to donate cryptocurrency
In the last financial years we had 347 donors who used the cryptocurrency option.
Which cryptocurrencies were donated (preferably with information about total value and number of donors using each)
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 doesnâ(TM)t have a significant environmental impact.
More interesting to me is that on these figures they seem to be pulling in way over $130M a year in donations. Which seems to be quite a lot for a website notionally run by volunteers.
Re: Donations are donations (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Donations are donations (Score:5, Insightful)
Most important when you rely on donation is a good public image. If it is one day someone analyzes the blockchain and figures amounts of those cryptofunds were dirty (e.g. ransomed from a hospital and people died), the bad publicity can kill them as a charity. Crying "How could we know" is not going to save them. It's not worth.
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> Most important when you rely on donation is a good public image. If it is one day someone analyzes the blockchain and figures amounts of those cryptofunds were dirty (e.g. ransomed from a hospital and people died), the bad publicity can kill them as a charity. Crying "How could we know" is not going to save them. It's not worth.
this isnt true. every dollar that flows around the world flows through corruption, theres no such thing as innocent money, whether its overt crime like cartels to covert crime l
Re: Donations are donations (Score:1)
E = MONEY? (Score:3)
All cryptocurrecy requires energy in order to make, and in many places the energy bill exactly cancels the cryptocurrency gains, plus or minus a walk of randomness.
What a waste...
Re:E = MONEY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only some do. Saner ones use proof of capacity (mining wastes disk space), proof of stake (mining earns interest), and my favourite: proof of coverage (you mine by providing network connections).
The last one is used eg. for LoRaWAN: these are ridiculously low-bandwidth (300b-5kbps) ridiculously low-power very long range (several to tens of kilometers) that are useful for eg. soil sensors, meteo stations, etc.
For all of these, energy costs are minimal.
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> proof of stake (mining earns interest), and my favourite: proof of coverage (you mine by providing network connections).
Neither of those are even remotely related to "mining".
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I can't say that I understand these types of mining. From what I could gather, they are even more dodgy than bitcoin and amount to a pump and dump operation by their founders. Would like to hear more though.
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They all waste resources. Proof of disk space made hard drive prices spike, until people realized it wasn't going to make them rich. A few people got cheap NAS boxes out of it.
Proof of stake is in theory low energy, but in practice people waste energy by spooling up more machines than they need for actual productive work. People don't like the concept either, because it makes it too easy to earn crypto coins and they don't want the masses getting in on their business.
Proof of coverage just wastes network re
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Proof of coverage just wastes network resources and energy. Not as much, but still waste.
Except for the side effect of providing network coverage to actual users.
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> All cryptocurrecy requires energy in order to make
Seriously, man, just stop posting.
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To be not only hesitant but actively anti-crypto today, in 2022, can't be much more than just a mark of faith. Mindlessly repeating long-debunked FUD about environmental impact and black market use is the litu
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Cryptomining today does have a negative environmental impact and to claim otherwise is a lie. Cryptocurrency itself is not inherently environmentally harmful, but current cryptocurrencies rely on power intensive operations to function, and those rely on buring fossil fuels. Sure, ethereum could shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, miners could use only excess renewable energy and stop operating when there is no excess, miners could relocate to oil well-heads that flare unwanted methane and use that f
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I would argue that it is inherently environmentally harmful. The only reason you can't do a 51% attack on the Bitcoin blockchain is because it is impossible to get a medium-sized country's worth of electricity at your disposal to conduct the attack.
It just wastes this huge amount of power. For no v (Score:2)
Religious, yeah, sure.
The whole 24GW of constant electricity use is fake ?
No. It's not.
It just wastes this huge amount of power. For no value.
Crypto=Cancer (Score:2)
Cryptomoney is exactly like cancer.
A good thing turned to exponential growth.
It just spreads uncontrollably until it takes up all of the resources just for growing more.
100000000x social media posts = 1 in person (Score:2)
Re: 100000000x social media posts = 1 in person (Score:1)
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surely jamie zawinksi isn't the new jesus christ (no idea) but ... lazy couch potato?
Ol Olsoc isn't new (Score:1)
abusing the word crypto (Score:5, Funny)
Re: abusing the word crypto (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, unless this means that Wikipedia is no longer going to support "https" connections, they're NOT dropping support for crypto.
Let's stop the bros in their quest to redefine the common abbreviation for "cryptography" into the name for the latest scheme they want to get all hyped up about.
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It's 13 years (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some people get burned because they did not do their research and remember people money launder and scam with paper currency as well.
Many are not mined and work wonderfully for cross border payments. If you are cross border buying services, products or sending money to loved ones it makes life a bit easier with fast transfers and low fees. For collecting donations internationally and transferring to USD is a pretty ideal use case.
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Ah well, generally paper currency is "that which is laundered" or "that which is obtained via a scam."
Crypto, on the other hand, is used as an instrument of laundering, and also as the hook to scam people out of actual money.
This difference does seem significant.
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Thirteen years and many cryptocurrencies later, cryptocurrencies remain good for those five activities and - anything else?
Yeah. It's good at storing value long-term. That volatility makes it not good for short-term storage of value is perhaps obvious. But if you bought Bitcoin during any one of its first 12 years of existence and held onto it, your value would not only still be there but would have increased.
Fiat currencies generally lost value, some more than others. That's called inflation. Actually the central banks that manage fiat currencies typically target a certain amount of loss of value every year. It's intentiona
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Thirteen years and many cryptocurrencies later, cryptocurrencies remain good for those five activities and - anything else?
If you aren't aware of other uses for crypto then you haven't been paying attention.
Here are some interesting ones with actual use cases:
District0x - decentralized marketplaces
BAT - replace ads that pay google with ads that pay you
Orchid - decentralized VPN
Filecoin - decentralized file storage
Mana - Decentraland - decentralized metaverse
Theta - decentralized video streaming
Vechain - supply chain traceablilty
Civic - identity verification
IOTA - Internet of things - micro transactions - fast and free
Not all cr
Scarily Ignorant (Score:1)
Now I understand even more why Mozilla keeps destroying Firefox little by little. These people are morons.
I just finished reading https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik... [wikimedia.org] and more ignorance. It is like what century are these people living in.
There are enough stable coins out there that could easily be converted to USD on payment. No issue there. If you are accepting USD payments online, you are using energy. Many popular cryptocurrencies are not mined so there is no difference in energy usage. They should jus
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Technically not harmful (Score:1)
If you assume that Wikipedia/Mozilla will immediately convert their cryptocurrency donations to USD, the effect will be to put downward pressure on the price. Which will lower the incentive to mine the currency, thus reducing energy wastage.
It's a ponzi scheme (Score:1)
"The more you think about it, the more “it’s early days!” begins to sound like the desperate protestations of people with too much money sunk into a pyramid scheme, hoping they can bag a few more suckers and get out with their cash before the whole thing comes crashing down."
I posted this quote to twitter without context from https://blog.mollywhite.net/its-not-still-the-early-days/
Everyone knew it's crypto. If I just say it's a ponzi scheme without mentioning crypto everyone knows what I'
Crypto must have a really bad stench... (Score:2)
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Meh, they've got plenty of cash. Donate to the Internet Archive instead. You'll get a better return on your investment.
Privacy (Score:3)
No way am I going back to HTTP. How much money can they really need to keep the HTTPS service running?
They're not cryptocurrencies,they are cryptoassets (Score:1)
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