Wikimedia Foundation now accepts Bitcoin

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/07/30/wikimedia-foundation-now-accepts-bitcoin/

by kouiskas • 12 years ago

120 25 12 years ago

blog.wikimedia.org

Two9A• 12 years ago

I remember that there were multiple userbase attempts to lobby Wikimedia for this in the past. Looks like Coinbase's recent partnering successes have made the difference, in this case at least.

nullc• 12 years ago

Some of these "userbase" attempts involved doing some things that people perceived as unethical (e.g. bribes) and caused damage that took effort to undo.

coryking• 12 years ago

You mean, "Wikimedia now uses Coinbase as another payment provider to collect US currency for donations"?

hayksaakian• 12 years ago

Imagine they accepted Japanese Yen instead of Bitcoin.

They would still convert it to USD, but would your opinion still make sense?

runeks• 12 years ago

When I used to donate previously, my DKK were converted to USD. But I still use DKK every day.

dublinben• 12 years ago

It's that you can donate in BTC that matters, not that they're exchanging it for USD.

onestone3• 12 years ago

It matters. Automatically exchanging large amounts of BTC for USD creates a downward pressure on the BTC exchange rate.

Organizations which truly support Bitcoin would choose to keep it.

jdfellow• 12 years ago

Two thoughts:

1) About time! You'd have thought a crowdsourced open source software community would have adopted Bitcoin sooner.

2) Why does the Coinbase donation form require my email and mailing address? Just give me a QR code.

deweller2• 12 years ago

If this donation is tax deductible, I expect it is so they can send you a receipt.

Still, an anonymous option would be nice.

_delirium• 12 years ago

They also are legally required to collect donor information for donations above $1,000 [1]. Mostly this is to ensure that nonprofits aren't playing weird games with funneling money around, e.g. being registered as a 501(c)(3) charity but actually being funded mainly by one person who also controls the board/spending.

Maybe they can rework the donation flow so it allows anonymous donations below that limit? But if that has the effect of making large donations seem different/weird/complicated, it might be counterproductive: you have to get a lot of extra $5 donations to make up for a single lost $10,000 donation. I'm no UI/flow expert though so maybe there's a good way of doing it. There are basically three cases that would need to be worked in: 1) above $1,000, information is mandatory; 2) between $250 and $1,000, information is not mandatory but must be entered if the donor is American and wants a receipt that would enable them to deduct it; 3) below $250, receipts aren't necessary for tax deduction so donor information isn't needed at all.

[1] More precisely, they're required to report all donors who gave more than $5,000 cumulatively in a given year (or possibly a higher threshold for very large organizations), which requires keeping a running sum of per-donor totals. Except that as a concession to ease of recordkeeping, individual donations below $1,000 do not need to be included in the total, and therefore I believe (?) could be accepted anonymously. Or so I read the IRS's guidelines, but IANACPA; see Form 990 Schedule B or your local accountant specializing in nonprofit law for details.

orn• 12 years ago

I started BTC donation, but they ask you for your name and address... what! Anyway I found out you can go through with a bogus name and address.

davidgerard• 12 years ago

I find myself unsurprised that the very first reaction of Bitcoin fans to this is to complain.

deweller2• 12 years ago

Looks like coinbase.com is not loading at the moment. Is it conceivable that this crashed their site?

wyager• 12 years ago

Interestingly, it seems to prevent BIP 0070 from working properly, although the payment went through fine.

ToastyMallows• 12 years ago

Where is their address, how do I just send them bitcoins?

thisjepisje• 12 years ago

At the time of the last fundraising round I was quite surprised that they didn't accept bitcoin. Good news.

Wikimedia Foundation now accepts Bitcoin

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