Wikipedia community votes to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations:
More than 200 long-time Wikipedia editors have requested that the Wikimedia Foundation stop accepting cryptocurrency donations. The foundation received crypto donations worth about $130,000 in the most recent fiscal year—less than 0.1 percent of the foundation's revenue, which topped $150 million last year.
Debate on the proposal has raged over the last three months.
"Cryptocurrencies are extremely risky investments that have only been gaining popularity among retail investors," wrote Wikipedia user GorillaWarfare, the original author of the proposal, back in January. "I do not think we should be endorsing their use in this way."
GorillaWarfare is Molly White, a Wikipedian who has become something of an anti-cryptocurrency activist. She also runs the Twitter account "web3 is going just great," which highlights "some of the many disasters happening in crypto, defi, NFTs, and other web3 projects," the account profile says.
In her proposal for the Wikimedia Foundation, GorillaWarfare added that "Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two most highly used cryptocurrencies, and are both proof-of-work, using an enormous amount of energy."
[...] Bitcoin defenders countered that bitcoin's energy usage is driven by its mining process, which consumes about the same amount of energy regardless of the number of transactions. So accepting any given bitcoin donation won't necessarily lead to more carbon emissions.
But cryptocurrency critics argued that Wikimedia's de facto endorsement of cryptocurrencies may help to push up their price. And the more expensive bitcoin is, the more energy miners will devote to creating new ones.
[...] Ultimately, 232 long-time editors of Wikipedia voiced support for ending cryptocurrency donations, while 94 opposed the move.
[...] If the foundation complies with the community's request, it wouldn't be the first organization to stop using cryptocurrencies due to environmental concerns. Earlier this month, the Mozilla Foundation announced it would stop accepting cryptocurrencies that use the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus process. These include bitcoin and ether—though the latter is expected to convert to a proof-of-stake model in the future.
Last year, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin payments to buy Tesla vehicles. The announcement came just two months after Tesla started accepting bitcoins for Teslas.
Gaming company Steam stopped accepting bitcoin in 2017, citing the network's transaction fees, which were then near record highs.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @01:37AM (33 children)
So what happens if in the future, Wikipedia is cut off from normal fiat currency funding (credit cards, internet payment processors, etc) because enough governments are trying to suppress it? Cryptocurrency provides a channel that can't be turned off in that way.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday April 15 2022, @01:49AM (8 children)
What an amazing position to be in where you only take certain peoples money ey? I've never been in that position. I still take bitcoin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @02:02AM
Exactly. And pretty much every charity immediately sells in-kind donations the minute they get them.
If I send the American Lung Foundation $20k in Philip Morris shares, they'll send a thank you letter and immediately sell the shares.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @02:19AM (3 children)
What brought up that question? I don't think there's anything amazing about the scenario I present or that it somehow allows you to "only take certain peoples money".
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Friday April 15 2022, @03:11AM (1 child)
Hmm, because it was basically the same thing I was thinking. They apparently have enough money, and don't want yours if you have crypto.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @03:21AM
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday April 15 2022, @05:48AM
I was agreeing with you. That's how I presented my agreeability to your thought.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @03:11AM (1 child)
Whatever works, I'm more impressed with the $150 million. There's nothing a 501(c) can't do!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @11:41AM
I agree! [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by corey on Friday April 15 2022, @10:25PM
I’m not sure that’s what they are saying, but I didn’t read the article. 😴
I think they are saying, please contribute but use other means (which most people can), rather than crypto. Sounds like there’s some fraud issues with crypto (threads below).
I’ve donated in the past and they know how to nag and beg when they have their fundraising drives.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @01:50AM (1 child)
Wikipedia would never criticize the government, so there's not going to be any issues there. Maybe if Orange Man gets back in, but he wouldn't have power to start any reprisals against wikipedia as he would be busy defending himself from coordinated MSM attacks after eating two scoops of ice cream.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @02:21AM
Right. And Russia would never invade the Ukraine, right? At some point, you have to realize that the future is not going to be the same as the present. Just because Wikipedia doesn't criticize whatever "the government" presently is, doesn't mean that it won't in the future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @08:28AM (5 children)
Wikipedia has a huge budget, as in millions of dollars of hosting costs and salaries a year. If they get cut off that bad, then they are fucked. I doubt any of the big colos take cryptocurrency anyway, so they'd massively see their expenses increase too if they had to pay that way. Which means either massively increasing their fundraising onto a volatile commodity using worse colos or having to convert to cash anyway. And no random Tom, Dick, or Harry is going to convert their money to crypto just to donate. There is literally not enough cryptocrap out there to keep them afloat on its own.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @08:51AM (3 children)
Salaries are huge, hosting costs not so much. There is a lot of bloat over at the WMF.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @09:43AM (2 children)
I hate to tell you this, but their hosting costs are going to be in the millions as well. You cannot be a website their size with that much dynamic content, storage, bandwidth, etc. and not end up with big bills to go with it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @10:50AM
http://wikipediocracy.com/2015/05/10/wikimedia-fundraising-where-is-your-money-going/ [wikipediocracy.com]
Yes. Low single digit millions in hosting costs, huge amounts of waste, and despite a large war chest, renewed begging each year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @05:44PM
Perhaps they should, you know, tone it down. The whole idea of Wiki was to share our superior Western knowledge with shitty African villages so they know which end to put the food in. Not to wow them with punch the monkey screen freezes while they reboot their 486 Windows 95 state of the art techmologie.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @12:52PM
The ability to accept cryptocurrency could be the difference between being fucked and ceasing to exist. Of course, they can reverse their decision at some later point, if this were to happen.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:25PM (12 children)
>So what happens if in the future, Wikipedia is cut off from normal fiat currency funding
Easy - in the unlikely event that such a thing happens, they start accepting crypto donations until the problem is resolved. It's not like there's a huge setup time, or like there's many people who would decide not to make a donation simply because they are offended by the previous lack of crypto options.
Just because something is useful in one particular scenario doesn't mean it's worth paying the costs the rest of the time. I love my raincoat when it's pouring rain - but I'm not going to pay the price in discomfort and bad fashion to wear it on a daily basis.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 16 2022, @03:21PM (10 children)
What costs are there to cryptocurrencies for Wikipedia? Seems more cost to not accepting Bitcoin, for example. And in your example, you still pay the cost of storing the raincoat even when you don't use it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday April 16 2022, @10:58PM (9 children)
Causing X amount of environmental destruction is the obvious one.
I for one have no interest in doing such a thing without a good reason - and I really doubt there's many people donating to Wikipedia in Bitcoin that couldn't donate just as easily via some other channel.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 17 2022, @05:28AM (8 children)
So what is X? I'm fine with X as long as it's small, right? What people have been saying about Bitcoin and such seems to indicate that it is indeed small relatively to other large scale human activity - like the other financial systems out there.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday April 17 2022, @02:22PM (7 children)
A bunch of small Xs times billions of people is what got us into this mess in the first place. Which is part of the problem - we need a million small fixes deployed to billions to fix it.
And cryptocurrencies aren't small users. This cambridge study [ccaf.io] estimates Bitcoin alone currently consumes about 141TWh/year - that's more than the entire consumption of many countries such as Argentina, the Netherlands, the UAE, etc., and about 0.6% of the entire world's electricity consumption. That's huge, especially for something only used by a tiny minority of people: A quick search says there's only about 81 million active bitcoin wallets, or about 0.08% of the global population even if we assume only one wallet per person. Which means on average every bitcoin user is using about 75% of their "fair share" (per capita) of global electricity consumption JUST for bitcoin.
That's... really not a trend we can afford to have continue until a sizable percentage of the planet is using it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 17 2022, @08:45PM (6 children)
So unless you have a foolproof plan for getting rid of those billions of people, we will have to accept some levels of small Xs no matter what. At that point, cost-benefit matters.
When the worst you can say is that it uses some electricity, then it really doesn't have serious drawbacks. I'll note that most of that electricity consumption is the cheapest electricity around in the world and is cheap because nobody else is consuming it.
You already noted that a sizeable percentage of the planet is using it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday April 18 2022, @02:54PM (5 children)
Yes, we do have to accepts some amount of damage - but Bitcoin itsn't "some" - we're talking about the average Bitcoin user consuming almost *twice* the total electricity per year as the average non-bitcoin user. That's F-ing HUGE. That completely wipes out all the gains we've made with more energy efficient lite-bulbs and appliances since we started caring about such things without even trying. If everybody gets on board we're talking about increasing global energy consumption (from all sources) by ~20%, just for bitcoin! And what's the benefit to justify that cost?
And of course, as it catches on and the profitability of mining increases, the per-user energy consumption is likely to continue increasing at a fantastic pace.
As for electricity being cheap because it's "unused" - that may sometimes be true financially, it's because it's coming from from coal plants and other dirty power that were going to be decommissioned before getting a second lease on life. Environmentally that's just about the most expensive power available.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 18 2022, @08:05PM (4 children)
Wow! I thought it would be more than that. Well, you just made my argument better than I did. If they're only using twice as much, then it really isn't a problem.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 19 2022, @04:40AM (3 children)
I believe you're either trolling me, or smoking the good stuff.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:25PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:36PM (1 child)
Offhand I want to say electricity is roughly 20% of global energy consumption - roughly the same as transportation, agriculture, or the other major energy sectors. "Your" per-capita electricity share that bitcoin doubles includes all the electricity used in the farms, factories, etc. to produce the goods and services you consume.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @07:01PM
Indeed. So what? Why is this something we should care about? This feels to me like another example of the bike shed effect [wikipedia.org]. We don't know much about making the world a better place, but we do know how to save pennies by turning the lights out when we don't need them. So let's talk about that.
I happen to be fine with cryptocurrencies using a bit of electricity in order to explore some interesting practical economics.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @07:12PM
Two problems: first, they still have those beliefs that cryptocurrency is bad - those people may well get in the way of Wikipedia's survival in that unlikely event. Second, what are they doing to develop the infrastructure to support this move to crypto donations? It's a lot easier to make that shift, if you already accept cryptocurrency and have a demonstrated working system which they have now.
At worst, this is a cheap insurance policy against the sort of government financial-side attacks that we already see.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday April 18 2022, @06:38PM (2 children)
There are already plenty of other methods. Crypto-currencies are really just an also-run; they do offer a few end-user conveniences over some of the other methods but bring an enormous electrical cost that simply doesn't offset them. The only enterprises where it makes sense to use bitcoin are criminal enterprises where the obscene transaction costs are actually less risk and volatility than the other laundering and transportation methods they have available -- so for them, cryptocurrency makes sense.
But it's truly comical to try and justify $100+ worth of electricity for a single transaction because you are too ignorant to know that there are plenty of other ways to move money around aside from a credit card, and plenty of other liquid assets other than usd in a us bank account that you can/should diversify into if you are worried about US government influence over its own currency.
Even at the height of the Wikileaks blockade it was easy to get wikileaks money even from inside the US if you actually wanted to. Write a cheque and courier it over or even just use the USPS. Or do a wire transfer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 18 2022, @08:11PM (1 child)
I find it interesting how people complain about the pseudo-anonymity and transaction costs without understanding what infrastructure has since been created to address those problems. I can pay with Bitcoin without triggering transaction fees by trading through a exchange. Similarly, there are anonymizing services that allow one to trade anonymously.
Or pay with bitcoins.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday April 19 2022, @07:25PM
Ah yes, the problem of a centralized company like Visa and Mastercard controlling access to payment systems is solved by firing up a decentralized network and then because that works like ass attaching it to a centralized "exchange" to do all the actual transaction processing and hoping they never block or blacklist users-- oh wait... they already have done this a bunch of times.
Bitcoin itself added nothing to the solution, the value add was really just another payments exchange. The same solution would be to have a few new credit card company like Visa headquartered somewhere else so they aren't beholden to the US. You'll still be subjected to their whims, but that's no different than a crypto-exchange.
And if you are going to try to and backpedal by saying if the exchange blocks the transaction you can just go outside the exchange, you are right back to spending months worth of electricity on the transaction... so you might as well mail a cheque.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @02:11AM (7 children)
Unlike the cyber-libertarian fantasy, the only ones that use cryptos are drugs gangs, cyber cracker gangs, money launderers, tax dodgers, and dumbass "investors" (i.e., wannabe tax dodgers).
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @02:19AM (2 children)
In other words, people who are better and safer to deal with than the government.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @03:08AM (1 child)
go to somalia, no government, your paradise.
I really really despise your kind who never experienced genuine chaos - sheltered first-world morons.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @03:45AM
Keep in mind that Somalia is better off now than when it had an official government [wikipedia.org]. That link describes the genocide of 50-200k people (Isaaq people, there were other, smaller genocides as well) plus the destruction of the second and third largest cities in Somalia plus the forced exodus of around half a million civilians plus an estimated million land mines in said Isaaq territory.
So just as Somalia today is used as an example of the failings of anarchy and your genuine chaos, the Somalia of the not-so-distant past is an even worse example of the failings of government.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @02:29AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @03:14AM (1 child)
Except with the dollars, most transactions are "normal," (i.e., not criminal) whereas most crypto transactions are illicit crap.
It is a disaster - crypto failed to function as a currency for productive activities.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @03:33AM
So you allege. We see here that $130k worth of it was legitimate donations to Wikipedia.
Then you should be able to provide evidence for that claim, right?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @05:07AM
Which one of these is our young khallow? I hope it is not "dumbass investor", but I have my fears. The only upside is that he has so little to use. I mean, loose.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @03:11AM
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday April 15 2022, @04:22AM (7 children)
Any sport or game is easily turned ugly when big money is on the line. An organized sport has to have all kinds of safeguards to stop the hustlers and cheaters from pulling a successful swindle.
I played in a big money chess tournament, just once. Prizes of $100 or less tend to be too paltry to get the attention of those sorts of people, but this tournament had a $10,000 prize. There's this naive idealized notion that big money will encourage everyone to bring their very best game. I rather think the tournament organizers know better, but they nevertheless try to sell the players on that thought. My 1st opponent was a major sandbagger, and proud of it. Bragged that he'd purposely thrown his last 20 games to get his rating just under the threshold, talking as if he was so clever for manipulating the ratings system in that fashion. Really seemed to believe in what he'd done, beyond just trying to psyche me out by intimating he was a much stronger player than his rating would suggest. Technically, what he pulled wasn't against any rules, but it sure was unsporting. My next opponent used another old trick, of highly inaccurate clocks, making sure I got the side that ran too fast. (This was in the days just before electronic chess clocks permanently displaced wind-up mechanical chess clocks.) I took note of the time the 2 clocks showed at the end of the game, added up the minutes used, and compared to the start time of the round, and the time my game concluded. Yeah, I had about 10% less time than I should have had. That one, yeah, that is cheating. He made haste to reset the clocks at the conclusion of the game, thus erasing what little evidence there was. The whole miserable tournament was nonstop crap of that sort. About the only thing I didn't experience was an offer to pay me to throw my game, probably because after a loss, I was no longer in contention for the big prize.
I still don't know what to think of cryptocurrencies. I don't like that it has played a part in driving up the price of computer graphics. And uses so much electricity as to be a problem in that area too. But on the whole, I think anonymous financial transactions are good. And that cryptocurrencies help curb the monopoly power that nation states enjoy on their own currencies. What's the ruble worth now? Yes, it does make money laundering easier. But there are all kinds of situations where the buyer and/or seller should have privacy. And everyone should have assurances their savings won't be rendered worthless through hyperinflation caused by the political leaders taking the nation in a really wrong direction.
For instance, illegal drugs, prostitution, bootleg goods, and embarrassing medical treatments should be private. Knowledge of a medical purchase can be more than embarrassing, it can carry a financial burden. Your health insurer might decide you are a greater health risk and should pay a higher premium, your auto insurer might claim a medical purchase means you are less able to drive a car safely, and even your employer could get in on that game. Cash still works for anonymity, but it does grow ever harder to operate on a cash basis.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday April 15 2022, @08:13AM (3 children)
Except that's not really what crypto gets you; and what privacy there is steadily going away if you want to use any of the major exchanges.
There's already dozens of currencies. If you are worried about your government, pick up some gold or yen or CAD or Riyals... or all of the above.
Where are you going for medical care that they don't record your ID?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday April 15 2022, @12:24PM (2 children)
Over the counter drugs, that's where. Do you want your teenagers to skip the condom because they couldn't buy it anonymously? If you're a teen, what would you do if you couldn't buy such an item discretely? Let your parents find out about your purchase, or go ahead without it, taking your chances? Or, be an abstainer?
Then there such thrilling purchases as hemorrhoid creams and anti-fungal creams that can't help but prompt nasty, mean, and unfair speculation about just what perverted or stupidly unhealthy stuff you do to yourself. You got a yeast infection there???
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @08:32PM
Buy it continuously.
Option #2 is popular. But you left out option #4, which is shoplifting. Condoms and some of the other things you listed are some of the most commonly shoplifted items.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday April 18 2022, @05:34PM
OTC drugs and creams are available at the grocery store. What exactly are your parents going to discover if your bank card shows that you spent $25 at the grocery store? (Too young to have a credit card so I'm assuming they have a debit card.) It's not like an itemized list of your purchases gets sent directly to your mom. Toss the receipt before you get home and tell your mom you bought a six pack of redbull and a few bags of chips for movie night if she's auditing your bank transactions.
If is small enough that there is only one grocery store and their is a risk that the cashier there is going to read your name off your bank card and then tell your mom... then lets be real here, a) its 2022 - use the self checkout for your condoms and anti-fungals. b) The cashier here probably already knows who your mom is without needing to read your name off your bank card so cash doesn't really help. c) The 20th century solutions here were to drive to the next town, or get 'trusted older friend/friend without helicopter parents' to make the purchase, and trade/barter/pay them back and these still work.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mth on Friday April 15 2022, @08:26AM
The most popular cryptocurrencies right now, Bitcoin and Etherium, aren't actually anonymous: your transactions are public and your privacy depends entirely on no-one being able to connect your wallet to your identity. Which can be tricky if you're paying for goods shipped to your house, but even for digital goods and services it's not easy to avoid being tracked. If cryptocurrency would become widely accepted for legal purchases, I doubt most people would be able to stay anonymous for long.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday April 15 2022, @09:06PM
Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:44PM
>But on the whole, I think anonymous financial transactions are good.
So do I - and if you want that, you need to use cash. Crypto (at least all the current popular ones like bitcoin) isn't remotely anonymous, only pseudonymous, and it's relatively easy for intelligence agencies, etc. to connect your wallet ID to you unless you're a cautious and experienced criminal willing to engage in illegal activities like money laundering by using "mixers". Of which the benefits are dubious since your "clean" money ends up i a wallet that just publicly announced it's carrying laundered money.
The fact that bitcoin keeps a public paper trail of every transaction ever made by every wallet means that once that thin veneer of "anonymity" is stripped away, it is by far the least privacy-respecting method of payment ever invented.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Frosty Piss on Friday April 15 2022, @04:47AM (1 child)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/14/politics/fbi-north-korea-hackers-crypto/index.html [cnn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @07:18AM
http://wikipediocracy.com/2015/05/10/wikimedia-fundraising-where-is-your-money-going/ [wikipediocracy.com]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday April 15 2022, @05:42AM
Just send them here: bc1qpyaf58w9q57wpeemd4xr7tmfppuvj9rr2k3r42
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mth on Friday April 15 2022, @07:34AM (9 children)
In a recent interview [pcgamer.com], Steam boss Gabe Newell said that half the Bitcoin transactions on Steam were fraudulent. I guess that would be less of an issue for Wikipedia though, since they're taking donations instead of selling stuff that could be re-sold for fiat currency.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday April 15 2022, @10:20AM
Impossible. How can a Bitcoin transaction be fraudulent? Fraudulent does not mean "we don't like it".
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @10:59AM (7 children)
The interview doesn't explain what "fraudulent" means.
Given that Steam is a game platform, perhaps they were buying throwaway game accounts and were using them to cheat or grief the games. It's also possible that they were doing something involving hacked Steam accounts, although I'm not sure what that would be. Depending on how Steam refunds worked with crypto, they might have been using Steam as part of a laundering scheme, although that seems more like something you'd want to do with stolen credit cards.
The point is that "fraudulent" is not equivalent to "chargebacks" once you step outside the world of credit cards.
The trouble with crypto "currency" is that it doesn't work as well as regular money for anything that regular money can do. So it only gets used for speculation and the black market. Meanwhile it has destructive collateral effects. I was once excited about it, but it has turned out to be horrible.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mth on Friday April 15 2022, @12:32PM
Yeah, the article is light on details. I'm guessing people were using Bitcoin earned from either illegal activities or taken from compromised wallets to buy Steam balance or game keys or in-game items (*) and then resold those. I doubt they have hard evidence of fraud for all of the mentioned transactions; more likely they have identified certain suspect usage patterns (accounts buying a lot of things but never playing any games) and estimated which percentage of that is fraud.
(*) There was a time when illegal casinos were using CS:GO skins as currency. These were particularly scummy, not just offering unregulated gambling, but advertising to a young audience via influencers winning big because their account was rigged by the operators to win.
There are indeed no chargebacks, but even though they're not losing money on it directly I can imagine Valve doesn't want to be involved, both for moral reasons and to avoid having to deal with regulators investigating money laundering, customer support questions from victims, bad PR etc.
I would like to have a decentralized alternative to credit cards or PayPal, but I don't think that exists in any practical and trustworthy form yet.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday April 16 2022, @03:19PM (5 children)
> So it only gets used for speculation and the black market.
And international money transfers without the outrageous fees charged by banks - especially valuable for hardworking poor people sending money home to family in places that don't have any local banks, and may not even have any official IDs. All the infrastructure they need is an entrepreneuring crypto dealer with a smartphone.
And getting money to "inconvenient" people and organizations whose funding corrupt governments would like to cut off.
Granted, at this point those have become only a minor part of the market - but just because there's a raging opioid abuse epidemic doesn't mean that opioids aren't also being used for legitimate medical reasons.
Take away the pseudo-anonymity of bitcoin and you'd still have a robust trustless money-transfer system, it'd just have a HUGE privacy problem. A privacy problem that isn't actually solved by the thin veneer of pseudonymity it currently provides, which really only provides enough of an illusion of anonymity that criminals prefer it to the alternatives.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday April 19 2022, @07:44PM (4 children)
Except bitcoin transactions use the equivalent of a month or two worth of electricity... that's not free.
Ah... but you can use an exchange to avoid the fees... sure you can, but then you need an exchange; and guess whaat, the exchange doesn't actually need the crypto... an exchange minus the crypto is basically paypal. So why not just advocate for more 'paypals'?
There are VERY few problems that normal people have that actually require crypto-currency to solve. None of the problems you listed above are solved better by crypto than other solution. That's not to say that crypto is strictly worse but it is hardly necessary. Even when the card processors cut off wikileaks you could donate to them by writing a cheque and putting it in the mail. That's all it took.
The only exception is criminal activity -- it IS strictly better for a bunch of criminal activity, where the risks and tradeoffs and high transaction fees and huge electricity costs allow them move and launder large sums of money around without coming into contact with border/customs agents/law enforcement/bank regulations or even their own customers/vendors/victims, and usual risks of seizures and losses that come from attempting to smuggle and launder it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 19 2022, @09:37PM (3 children)
Hey, no argument from me against the wastefulness of proof-of-work crypto.
But, please enlighten me on the other options for sending money overseas to someone with no official ID, nor access to a trustworthy bank.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday April 25 2022, @08:33AM (2 children)
In your crypto version you proposed there is an 'entrepreneur with a smartphone'; presumably this person is also carry around hard currency too; and my overseas friend likewise has a smartphone and/or internet access etc in order to take the crypto you send his wallet to the local entrepreneur in exchange for local cash?
If so, there are two things to notice:
1) The overseas friend has some degree of trust in the entrepreneur to the extent that he's going to transfer him crypto and in turn get his hard cash. Maybe they meet with a few mutual friends around or something to help make it go smoothly? At any rate, this only works if you trust the entrepreneur to fulfill the transaction, and that each trusts the other isn't going to murder or rob him, etc.
2) If you have a trusted entrepreneur then you don't actually need the crypto. All you need is the entrepreneur. In coordination with my overseas friend I send the trusted entrepreneur a cheque in the mail; an itunes gift card number, a wire transfer to a swiss account, load his pre-paid visa, pay his utility bill, send money to his paypal account, or whatever terms we mutually agree to and he confirms receipt and hands local cash over to the overseas friend less his fee.
I mean this is a pretty solved problem. Every vacationer who has ever lost their wallet and ID has been in this predicament. Western Union even has (or at least used to have) a system for this... you indicated that the person could pick up the cash without ID, and provided a password. Even if western union doesn't do this anymore, your entrepreneur with a cellphone still could. This needs doesn't need 'blockchain technology'.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday April 25 2022, @04:12PM (1 child)
Things are simpler if your overseas friend has a smartphone, but it's not actually necessary - you could just give them the public & private keys to a wallet you created for them via phone, text, or paper mail. The entrepreneur can do the rest.
Okay, sure, there's always some level of trust involved in making any purchase - but in-person cash transactions tend to be the gold standard of limited risk.
"I want to buy this."
"You got the money?"
"Yeah, here. Pleasure doing business with you"
Is the level of trust you'd extend to a drug dealer or random stranger at a yard sale. Neither party has to trust the other out of their sight. Neither party is in the position of accepting an "I'll gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today" offer.
What you also seem to be overlooking in your scenarios is that your friend doesn't just have to trust the bitcoin merchant - the merchant also needs to need to trust your friend (and possibly you). Checks can be faked or canceled. Credit card payments can be reversed. So can Paypal transactions, and those also require a bank account or credit card, meaning your friend won't have one and will need to coordinate a three-way handoff including both you and the merchant (which would be inconvenient, but could work if not for the threat of charge-reversal).
Bitcoin solves that - transactions can't be reversed, and while your friend may have to wait around for the transaction to be entered in the blockchain before they leave with the cash, once that happens the merchant doesn't need to trust them any further.
Yeah, it's already a solved problem *in developed areas* that have the financial infrastructure. It may surprise you to know that there's not a Western Union within a day's travel of most of the world's population (especially considering that most of the world is stuck traveling on foot or animal cart if they're lucky).
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday April 25 2022, @05:30PM
"you could just give them the public & private keys to a wallet you created for them via phone, text, or paper mail. "
If I could use paper mail, I could just send him a cheque or a prepaid visa or even cash. If all I have is phone/text then we can either coordinate to use the entrepreneurs account in real time (aka the western union model) or hell... I can open an account literally anywhere, put some money in it, and give my friend the credentials for it. There is nothing about crypto or blockchain that is necessary here.
You do make an interesting point about the entrepreneur having to trust the friend with a number of the methods I outlined due to the potential for reversibility of some of them. However, crypto's irreversibility is not something that actually requires blockchain. Some traditional methods, like wire transfers, bank drafts/money orders, and prepaid/gift cards can't generally be reversed. The entrepreneur can determine his own tolerance for risk vs customer convenience and even determine his risk tolerance on an individual client basis.
" It may surprise you to know that there's not a Western Union within a day's travel of most of the world's population (especially considering that most of the world is stuck traveling on foot or animal cart if they're lucky)."
That was my point. The "entrepreneur with a smartphone" can do everything "western union" does, anywhere, in real time, with as little or as much risk tolerance he wants.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by cykros on Friday April 15 2022, @01:27PM (4 children)
Throw this fact in with their donation campaign that would have you believe they're on the verge of going broke year in, year out and I think more than ever I'd push people to find other organizations to donate to. "Your money's no good here"? Really?
Just another sign that they've got plenty of money to carry on just fine without any more contributions; you can safely ignore their begging campaign next time it comes around.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @02:28PM (1 child)
But, but... who's going to pay for their transgender washrooms if we stop contributing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @09:08PM
> transgender washrooms
One-time expense. Personal pronoun placards however are a recurring expense insofar as the discovery of a constant deluge of new genders.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday April 15 2022, @03:44PM
Too me it seems that paying with bitcoin is like trying to pay with monopoly money.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @05:03PM
While you're right about Wikipedia having plenty of money from big contributors (Google, etc.), at the same time it's important for Wikipedia's credibility to be seen to be getting a reasonable number of individual contributions. Hence the regular fundraising drives, even though they do nag a bit.
Editing Wikipedia is also a way to contribute to it, so for regular editors of Wikipedia contributing to fund raising as well is very much six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, so really just a matter of personal choice.
In TFA a comment from Wikipedia editor AnarkioC is mentioned about bitcoin being available to people who don't have a government ID and so no regular bank account. Well, if someone is too resource poor to have the means to contribute financially to Wikipedia, I can't see any objection to them having all the benefit of Wikipedia without making any contribution in return.
Furthermore, in the voting discussion [wikimedia.org] editor AnarkioC is identified as being a Single Purpose Account [wikipedia.org] which are generally associated with trolling or a hidden agenda - in this case probably a cryptocurrency promoter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @08:29PM
wikipedia == jews == international criminal banksters