Wikimedia Foundation Urged to Stop Accepting Cryptocurrency Donations (wikipedia.org) 94
Software engineer Molly White has been a Wikipedia editor since 2006 (and also served several terms on the site's Arbitration Committee). White is now a Wikipedia administrator and functionary — and just published an Opinion piece opposing the continued acceptance of cryptocurrency donations for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Here's an excerpt from White's remarks in The Signpost, an online newspaper for (English-language) Wikipedia that's been published online since 2005 with contributions from Wikipedia editors:
When the Wikimedia Foundation first began accepting cryptocurrency donations in 2014, it was still fairly nascent technology. Cryptocurrencies resonated with many in free and open-source software communities and in the Wikimedia movement more specifically, and cryptocurrency projects tended to share similar ideals: privacy, anonymity, decentralization, freedom. In more recent history, cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based technologies more generally have morphed into something very different from the ideals of their youth. Some proponents continue to speak about freedom and decentralization, but the space has overwhelmingly become an opportunity for self-enrichment at the expense of others and the environment.
Cryptomining operations set up shop in locations with low energy costs — until late 2021, most bitcoin mining happened in China, where it relied on coal so heavily that the resulting coal mining accidents from increased demand contributed to a crackdown on the practice. Some of those miners moved to Kazakhstan, where they were using the nation's supply of lignite (an extremely harmful form of coal) to produce 18% of the global computing power behind bitcoin in January. Bitcoin mining alone rivals the total energy use of countries like the Netherlands or Finland;456 emissions from other popular cryptocurrencies like ethereum only compound the problem.
Furthermore, in recent years, more and more enthusiasts are being convinced that they too might strike it rich by buying in early to the next bitcoin or the next ethereum. But unfortunately, the playing field more often resembles a landscape with scammers and marks. Many are convinced that purchasing these currencies is an "investment", rather than risky speculation that would be more accurately described as gambling if not outright investment fraud. People are regularly scammed for enormous sums of money, and the anonymous, nominally decentralized, and largely unregulated nature of the space offers them little recourse.
The purported benefits of cryptocurrencies have also been largely unrealized. Rather than empowering the unbanked and distributing wealth to those in need, as once described, money has been hoarded in incredible amounts by a few wealthy individuals — 0.01% of bitcoin holders collectively own 27% of bitcoin in circulation, equivalent to around $232 billion. Furthermore, the underlying technology is enormously slow and difficult to scale when compared to databases used in most modern computing, so many technologies built around blockchains have spawned new, centralized solutions to the problems the blockchains themselves have introduced. As a result, the decentralization of the web that was supposed to result from the adoption of blockchain technologies has only resulted in the centralization of power in a handful of companies and venture capital firms.
The Wikimedia Foundation's acceptance of cryptocurrency donations has had minimal returns, and no longer accepting them is unlikely to have a major impact on the Foundation's ability to fundraise. In 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation only received about $130,000 in donations via cryptocurrency, making it one of their smallest revenue channels at only 0.08% of total donations. The benefits to donors are also minimal: the anonymity that might normally be offered to those who use cryptocurrencies is largely nullified by the WMF's cryptocurrency payment processor, BitPay, which requires prospective donors to disclose their identities.
The most impactful result of the WMF's acceptance of cryptocurrencies has been to normalize their use. As the technology space around blockchains has evolved over the years, so too should we. Cryptocurrencies have been joined by a bubble of predatory, inherently harmful technologies that take advantage of individuals and contribute to the destruction of our environment. It is no longer ethical for the Wikimedia Foundation to tacitly endorse a technology that incentivizes the predatory behavior that has become rampant in the cryptocurrency space in the past few years. I have asked that they stop doing so in an Request for Comments on meta.
Here's an excerpt from White's remarks in The Signpost, an online newspaper for (English-language) Wikipedia that's been published online since 2005 with contributions from Wikipedia editors:
When the Wikimedia Foundation first began accepting cryptocurrency donations in 2014, it was still fairly nascent technology. Cryptocurrencies resonated with many in free and open-source software communities and in the Wikimedia movement more specifically, and cryptocurrency projects tended to share similar ideals: privacy, anonymity, decentralization, freedom. In more recent history, cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based technologies more generally have morphed into something very different from the ideals of their youth. Some proponents continue to speak about freedom and decentralization, but the space has overwhelmingly become an opportunity for self-enrichment at the expense of others and the environment.
Cryptomining operations set up shop in locations with low energy costs — until late 2021, most bitcoin mining happened in China, where it relied on coal so heavily that the resulting coal mining accidents from increased demand contributed to a crackdown on the practice. Some of those miners moved to Kazakhstan, where they were using the nation's supply of lignite (an extremely harmful form of coal) to produce 18% of the global computing power behind bitcoin in January. Bitcoin mining alone rivals the total energy use of countries like the Netherlands or Finland;456 emissions from other popular cryptocurrencies like ethereum only compound the problem.
Furthermore, in recent years, more and more enthusiasts are being convinced that they too might strike it rich by buying in early to the next bitcoin or the next ethereum. But unfortunately, the playing field more often resembles a landscape with scammers and marks. Many are convinced that purchasing these currencies is an "investment", rather than risky speculation that would be more accurately described as gambling if not outright investment fraud. People are regularly scammed for enormous sums of money, and the anonymous, nominally decentralized, and largely unregulated nature of the space offers them little recourse.
The purported benefits of cryptocurrencies have also been largely unrealized. Rather than empowering the unbanked and distributing wealth to those in need, as once described, money has been hoarded in incredible amounts by a few wealthy individuals — 0.01% of bitcoin holders collectively own 27% of bitcoin in circulation, equivalent to around $232 billion. Furthermore, the underlying technology is enormously slow and difficult to scale when compared to databases used in most modern computing, so many technologies built around blockchains have spawned new, centralized solutions to the problems the blockchains themselves have introduced. As a result, the decentralization of the web that was supposed to result from the adoption of blockchain technologies has only resulted in the centralization of power in a handful of companies and venture capital firms.
The Wikimedia Foundation's acceptance of cryptocurrency donations has had minimal returns, and no longer accepting them is unlikely to have a major impact on the Foundation's ability to fundraise. In 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation only received about $130,000 in donations via cryptocurrency, making it one of their smallest revenue channels at only 0.08% of total donations. The benefits to donors are also minimal: the anonymity that might normally be offered to those who use cryptocurrencies is largely nullified by the WMF's cryptocurrency payment processor, BitPay, which requires prospective donors to disclose their identities.
The most impactful result of the WMF's acceptance of cryptocurrencies has been to normalize their use. As the technology space around blockchains has evolved over the years, so too should we. Cryptocurrencies have been joined by a bubble of predatory, inherently harmful technologies that take advantage of individuals and contribute to the destruction of our environment. It is no longer ethical for the Wikimedia Foundation to tacitly endorse a technology that incentivizes the predatory behavior that has become rampant in the cryptocurrency space in the past few years. I have asked that they stop doing so in an Request for Comments on meta.
The grand master plan of crypto (Score:3, Interesting)
The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.
After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.
But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and for it a new financial system detached from traditional ones (those burdened by "governments and regulations") - they called it "DeFi" for "Decentralized Finance", but its dirty little secret is that it's really "Deregulated Finance".
Their plan is to make this new money be adopted by the masses, so they start it off with a low price, then gradually increase it, by virtue of them just pulling numbers out of thin air for its value, until it catches the attention of the masses - then it gets more and more "valuable" from the collective faith of its given value ("network effect"), until traditional institutions and the typical "1%" billionaires start to notice and, greedy as they are, want in on the action too.
So now those that got in at the ground floor have gained all this "value" out of thin air, and once they're ready, they'll pull out all pretty much at once - that it'll create a sell-off panic, and a new meltdown is born! And because of their "De[regulated]Fi" system, the bros have already shifted all the risks away from themselves onto others, so they'll make out like bandits, leaving everyone else to "hodl" the bag.
But the bros were really observant about that last meltdown - and noticed all the "bailouts" the big banks got - so as they were shifting the risks to others, they increased their investments into what would get the next bailouts - so in the end they'll make out like bandits twice: the first time from suckering everyone else into their pump-and-dump scam, and again once they benefit from the bailouts that'll get handed out.
And there you have it folks, the real master plan of crypto.
--
Those who fail to accept it will mod the truth down to -1. -Prof. Feynman
Re: The grand master plan of crypto (Score:4, Funny)
Re: The grand master plan of crypto (Score:1)
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Back during the height of BTC in 2018, the devs at Fintech meetups in Chicago were saying there was clear market manipulation in regards to the BTC market. There were a lot of people finding weird transfers all along the blockchain. It was classic pump-and-dump.
What OP is saying isn't fringe or conspiracy. You can literally see it happen.
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Don't you get tired of literally copy/pasting this in every Crypto/NFT/Somethingremotelysmellinglikeit thread?
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Who really wants them to stop - banks (Score:3, Insightful)
This entire article is written as if it cares about the little guy, but the purpose is to stop people from using money where large banks get a cut of every transaction, at every step, and get to use both your and the business's money for vastly leveraged gambles on the stock market until they implode and either lose all your money or get all new money handled to them by the federal government.
Just one way in which the core argument falls apart if you think carefully, is them starting out with how Wikipedia should stop accepting ALL cryptocurrencies - but then only delivering an example of what it claims isa problem with Bitcoin:
0.01% of bitcoin holders collectively own 27% of bitcoin in circulation
Does that apply to all crypto? The article surely will not let you know.
And even for BTC is that really so bad? If you are going to go with that route then why not give us the shocking calculation for how much USD as a percentage is held by the top 0.01% of holders...
"The" has meaning you know (Score:1)
Found the bitcoin boomer
You say that yet you posted the same thing under at least one other person's reply.
So who is it? Or do you not realize that "the" implies singular?
Certainly someone who ascribes a singular label to multiple people cannot have very intelligent opinions on BitCoin.
Re:Who really wants them to stop - banks (Score:5, Insightful)
0.01% of bitcoin holders collectively own 27% of bitcoin in circulation
Does that apply to all crypto? The article surely will not let you know.
What they also don't want you to realize is that by "bitcoin holders" they mean wallets. 0.01% of bitcoin wallets hold 27% of all bitcoin in circulation. That includes wallets held by crypto exchanges, which may in fact represent tens of thousands of bitcoin holders.
There's been an organized push to try and stigmatize cryptocurrencies. It seems clear that they're threatening someone's money, which is really all you need to know to realize that can only be a good thing.
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I wondered how these cryptocurrency exchanges work. One thing is that some of these "coins" track each transaction in the blockchain, giving an indication on who held that coin in the past. What keeps the government from getting in the cryptocurrency trade to "unroll" these chains of records to get an idea of who is trading these coins, and how much they've traded?
I see a means to anonymize the chain. People stop trading the coins but instead trade the wallets. Or, rather make up a means of combining th
Re: Who really wants them to stop - banks (Score:2)
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That includes wallets held by crypto exchanges, which may in fact represent tens of thousands of bitcoin holders.
And which have a dismaying tendency to suddenly end up in the hands of hackers. Crypto itself will not be broken until someone gets really creative with quantum processors, but the next major exchange hack are where the great crypto crash will get its start.
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It seems odd to both applaud BTC's transparency, then when over-concentration of coin is brought up, then it's just an exchange abstracting away transactions off-ledger and thus nothing to worry about... though in almost any other context the 'transparency' of bitcoin where *everything* is in the ledger is presented as an important feature of the cryptocurrencies that traditional systems fail to provide.
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There really shouldn't need to be an organized push to stigmatize crypto currencies, as they already do a good job stigmatizing themselves without help.
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This reminds me of a computer engineering class I took where the first assignment was to read some articles on the energy use of computers and answer some questions on what was read. I didn't find this unusual at first because the first assignment of the semester is usually just some BS busywork so students can get in the habit of a weekly assignment, any issues of electronic submission can be worked out before any "real" assignment, and just generally gets the "flow" of the semester going. What I found u
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As opposed to mining pools backed by disreputable people and/or corrupt regimes in shadier parts of the world? It costs me zero to move money around domestically, but it costs me a shitload of gas to move crypto.
Re: Who really wants them to stop - banks (Score:2)
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This entire article is written as if it cares about the little guy, but the purpose is to stop people from using money where large banks get a cut of every transaction...
The cost structures for cryptocurrencies will blow your mind then. Hey, how much are the ETH gas fees today?
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The cost structures for cryptocurrencies will blow your mind then. Hey, how much are the ETH gas fees today?
Substantially less than bank transfer fees, and those fees go all over to people, not banks. I'd way rather people running systems that keep the network going get that money over banks.
And again, no-one can use the funds I have stored in a crypto wallet, unlike a bank account.
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Um, right now the fee for a ERC20 transfer is ~$28.33 [etherscan.io]. That's double the worst bank transfer fee you can find in the US for a wire.
And infinitely worst than the rest of the world, where's is mostly zero.
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Last time I did an international transfer, banks tend to charge a percentage, currency conversion etc, while I believe bitcoin and ETH charge a fixed fee, so unless you are doing large transactions you loose with crypto currency. For everyday transactions bank fees are significantly less than crypto.
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I know for a fact the last time i made an international transfer (with Wells, which is not the cheapest bank when it comes to fees too) i got charged a flat fee for my transfer.
And outside the US, this is not even an issue. I regularly make international IBAN transfers within SEPA countries, and the cost for those is zero, regardless of the amount.
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Cryptocurrency miners also charge transaction fees. At least the banks can be regulated.
Buying bitcoin is also a gamble - you are gambling that you will be able to sell it again for more dollars and Bitcoin implodes regularly. Just recently, it lost half its value. If that's not imploding, what is?.
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You have an odd idea of imploding. Imploding means losing it's value permanently. Bitcoin goes up and down, and has so far always gone up over time.
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Is it really so difficult to accept that some people just don't like certain cryptocurrencies because they waste huge amounts of electricity, facilitate cybercrime, and as an investment are little better than a trip to a casino?
Yes, cryptocurrency has legitimate use cases in places where it is difficult to transfer money by any other means, or when the traditional banking industry doesn't want to do business with you for whatever reason (pot dispensaries, adult entertainment workers, far-right conservatives
Re: Easiest call (Score:2)
Found the crypto-fascist.
I think that term wil get a whole new meaning.
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Pronouns in bio? Naturally.
It has to be said that people that do this often end up being very moralist and authoritarian about the tiniest things
I remember reading an article from a critic who was very mad about fiction moving towards “complex villains”, desiring that villains are simply evil and have no redeemable traits, and it was the only critic on that website whom I ever saw to have pronouns in the small biography. — It very much stood out.
I suppose the man who wishes to divide human beings into “genders
Bias in favor of banks (Score:3, Interesting)
I just listened to episode 441 [linuxunplugged.com] of Linux Unplugged a few days ago and it brought much needed perspective to this. I'd recommend everyone head over to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index [ccaf.io] put out by Cambridge University to really put things into perspective.
Basically, mining gold uses as much electricity as mining bitcoin. MANY things do. For instance, the current banking system consumes TWO AND A HALF TIMES [nasdaq.com] more energy than bitcoin. But, more bitcoin transactions aren't a 1 to 1 comparison to energy consumption. So, why the focus on bitcoin?
It's easier to get payments around the world with bitcoin. Bitcoin is very popular and is a threat to the banking system's monopoly on currency transactions. So, take things out of context, demonize cryptocurrency and profit....
Re:Bias in favor of banks (Score:5, Insightful)
the current banking system consumes TWO AND A HALF TIMES more energy than bitcoin
But does it only do 2.5 times as many transactions as bitcoin?
Re:Bias in favor of banks (Score:5, Informative)
A quick search says there's around 265,000 transactions per day for bitcoin, and over a billion credit card transactions per day (even leaving out all the other types of bank transfers). That's about 3800 times more credit cards transactions, which makes credit cards around 1500 times more energy-efficient than bitcoin.
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Not only that but the number thrown around to reach "2.5x bitcoin power usage" doesn't include just simple credit card transactions, includes Data centers used by financial institutions, and power consumed by well as ATMs, card networks and bank branches, all play a role.
From application servers (which run everything under the sun, not only the db), ATMs (which is so
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A quick search says there's around 265,000 transactions per day for bitcoin, and over a billion credit card transactions per day (even leaving out all the other types of bank transfers). That's about 3800 times more credit cards transactions, which makes credit cards around 1500 times more energy-efficient than bitcoin.
It's perfectly capable of supporting all of current transactions at lower energy cost via Lightning. Right now the adoption of Lightning is slow, but only because there isn't enough demand. Once the demand appears pretty much everything will go with Lightning.
Re:Bias in favor of banks (Score:4, Insightful)
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"That's about 3800 times more credit cards transactions, which makes credit cards around 1500 times more energy-efficient than bitcoin."
Well no... you can't say that at all based on the number of transactions. The only way you could say that is if each method's energy consumption was proportional to the number of transactions it does. That's not the case with bitcoin and may not even be the case with the bank. What you can see is that they're manufacturing concern over bitcoin's footprint when having a foot
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But isn't that how humans we optimize a problem? If bitcoin is only 1% (to be generous) of financi
Re: Bias in favor of banks (Score:2)
It may be how humans approach the problem, but that doesn't mean it's an intelligent way to approach the problem or the right way.
If the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency allows you to move consumption to areas where waste is happening, then it's very plausible that cryptocurrency could be a more eco-friendly alternative to the current system, for example.
Or, like they're doing in Texas where they're beginning to mine cryptocurrency so solar power can remain connected to the grid and doesn't have to be
Somebody oughtta tell the Wikimedia Foundation! (Score:2)
Of course, the thought that someday you might need a wheelbarrow full of them to buy a loaf of bread is disquieting. I don't even know if there's that much cryptocurrency on the whole planet.
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But, more bitcoin transactions aren't a 1 to 1 comparison to energy consumption. So, why the focus on bitcoin?
Maybe because the two should be put in context. Like, how many transactions a day can the "current banking system" handle? What services does it offer?
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Far more currency and transactions are handled in banks; that doesn't seem fair.
Having said that, the value of a product is more or less proportional to the effort, thus energy, needed to obtain. — Air, despite being quite essential, has almost no value simply because it's very easy to obtain.
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Having said that, the value of a product is more or less proportional to the effort, thus energy, needed to obtain. — Air, despite being quite essential, has almost no value simply because it's very easy to obtain.
Air is very valuable, take it away and see how much people are willing to pay for it. Although I get that you mean how much people actually pay. I would also not be surprised if they found a way to charge for air they would.
The problem is the thing you are comparing is the ability to transfer wealth (assuming that is what crypto's purpose is), the less efficient one should not be considered more valuable just because it is less efficient.
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Air is very valuable, take it away and see how much people are willing to pay for it.
By “take it away” you simply mean “make it had to obtain”.
Re: Bias in favor of banks (Score:1)
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mining gold uses as much electricity as mining bitcoin.
But hardly anybody uses gold as a currency these days. I have never owned a gold coin in my life, but somehow I have always had (nearly) enough money. I don't think my landlord would to too pleased if I offered to pay my rent in gold coins.
Ignore them and they will leave. (Score:2)
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Yep, that is an example of a disagree down mod. Thankfully I can re-post the text that got moderated down.
The letter is largely focused on the CO2 emissions from cryptocurrency, the tendency for miners to pop up in places with abundant cheap energy from fossil fuels. That is a problem that will resolve itself because I've been told repeatedly by numerous sources that renewable energy, especially wind and solar, is lower cost than fossil fuels.
How then do we explain the observation of miners moving to place
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Perhaps I'm naive but sounds like a moral stand (Score:2)
Debanking is the elephant in the room (Score:2, Insightful)
Accepting cryptocurrency normalizes cryptocurrency. Not accepting cryptocurrency normalizes debanking [projectveritas.com] which happened to wkileaks bank account, [aljazeera.com] paypal account, [techcrunch.com] and credit card settlement account [forbes.com] all in the same month.
If Wikipedia starts accepting cryptocurrency, that signals they think it should be normalized.
If Wikipedia stops accepting cryptocurrency, that signals they think debanking is good for society and approve of what happened to another organization with "wiki" in its name.
If it's all about "signal
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Thanks for that. That's incredibly insightful. What Paypal has been doing is super fucked; literally killing funding and income to independent creators, just due to their political views. Wikipedia is badly biased, according to one of the original founders:
https://larrysanger.org/2020/0... [larrysanger.org]
The entire statement reads like hard left viewpoints. Crowder did an excellent video on Wikipedia bias as well:
https://rumble.com/vtetzj-expo... [rumble.com]
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Comedy GOLD.
The nonsense about crypto being energy intensive.. (Score:1)
...is just FUD, really. I remember when slashdot and tech had a libertarian streak, but now it's all taken over by folks who want more, bigger government and regulations.
Crypto is NOT energy intensive -- it is CHEAP energy intensive. Basically, if a government or its "regulated" energy suppliers have any sort of loophole to provide or create cheap energy, someone is going to profit from it. Usually, it's their cronies who do, but in crypto's case, other folks are finding those loopholes.
Crypto does not N
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It is energy intensive in proof-of-work because it explicitly encourages a piss-away-energy contest. It can scale down if no one *wants* to use energy, but that's irrelevant when the reward is basically 'use energy for the sake of using the energy'.
People aren't concerned about the financial cost of energy, we can cheaply extract pretty much all we want. The problem is the more that people demand, the harder the road to reducing harmful energy sources that have largely externalized costs not explicitly pai
Fud Site (Score:3, Insightful)
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What? Slashdot is the home of persistent crypto advertising. How many pro-crypto stories did we get last week? Compare to just one negative one this week. Look at the articles being posted, not the readers who keep saying to stop pushing all the pro-cyrpto propaganda.
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Yes, you're spot on. It would be really neat if the world would recognize this simple concept, rather than micromanaging every transaction between humans.
Oh, and also please stop subsidizing
Maybe just use a 'green' cryptocurrency instead? (Score:2)
Shocking (Score:1)
anonymous (Score:2)
Whoever wrote this article is grossly uninformed. The "name" and "address" fields required by the likes of BitPay in order to make a charitable donation to Wikimedia are ignored, and the user is free to enter "xxxx" for all of these.
Seems like a reasonable argument... (Score:2)
Some valid points, but ... (Score:2)
Sorry but have to disagree.
Yes there are scammers in everything, and crypto makes it easier. Yet people get burned by credit card scams, rug pulls and phishing attacks in the dollar world. Everyone has to learn how to avoid and spot the scams, whether by crypto or fiat.
Energy use by Bitcoin is less than friggin TikTok. Yes, proof of work takes energy and it is energy well spent, securing the first honest system of money ever invented.
Yes there are hawaiian shirt-wearing crypto bros trying to get rich from t