Bitcoin Forum

Link to the Coinfinance article:

http://coinfinance.com/news/wikipedia-raises-237-btc-through-donations-in-one-week (http://coinfinance.com/news/wikipedia-raises-237-btc-through-donations-in-one-week)

That why fiat currency and electronic way ... will fail.
Because BTC can do every and more ... in a way more quickly and secure !

and they took so long to accept it - idiots  ::)

(and even NOW you will not see btc as a favourite payment option on their donation site  ::))

I don't know why they didn't accept it when the petition was first started they had nothing to lose but everything to gain and this just shows that they didn't have their business heads on.

This prove bitcoin is accepted & actively used by everyone
They should accept it earlier  ;D

I bet some company like wikipedia, will accept bitcoin as donation payment  :)

What do you mean? this is about wikipedia accepting donations and raising a lot of Bitcoin in a short period of time.

And now they are going to dump this 237 BTC on some exchange site and cause the market to drop....

Better late than never. Next time I see Jimmy's face on the page header I might actually chip in

200 BTC is nothing ... in exchange range.

It's a great thing, I hope all the people who use Wikipedia regularly realize that Bitcoin isn't this small niche idea anymore, but rather a very interesting and powerful means of payment and transfer of money. What we still need to do is make sure the actual Wikipedia site of Bitcoin isn't badly written and also in a negative way towards Bitcoin!

well, too tired of using paper money and electronic money in every transaction. need something more secure and makes me not afraid to save huge amounts of money

afraid is because you don't manage btc wallet like bank account.
in BTC world, many wallet is a safer way to not loose coin.
in BTC world, you must have a small amount in the smartphone ... and the others coins in many other wallet (only backup).

in BTC world, you can "recreate" a big amount of BTC in only 10 minute from 10 alone wallet in cold storage.
in bank, you MUST inform your bank that you want spend a "big amount" of money ... or retire fiat paper money from local bank.
in bank, you can't spend a lot of money in short time (24h for example).

Incredible! This is very good news! I just hope that the rate of donations doesn't go down! Of course this has to do because they just accepted Bitcoin, but it shows how people are ready and willing to give their hard-earned BTC to a good cause!

Then you should buy when they do.

They're using Coinbase, so they've already “dumped” them and received USD back.

That's right. A couple of years ago when the idea was first presented to them they had no way to easily convert them to dollars. They couldn't care less about Bitcoin. They would accept peanuts and beer as a donation if there was a no hassle way to convert them to what they really want - dollars.

I'm not going to donate, but it's a good thing that they've started accepting them. I hope more charaties or projects like this get on board. It's free money at the end of the day.

Whether they are dumping them or not isn't the point. The point is that they and many others will see bit coin as a viable way to do business. The next step would be to convince them and other organizations to hold a percentage as well.

The WikkiLeaks founder had said in a news interview a few months ago that if it was not for their investment in BTC several years ago they would likely have not been able to survive. They had purchased several thousand BTC for pennies and sold it near it's highs. The moral of the story is that dollars are not the only thing that can support a foundation.

I'd rather donate to wikileaks than wikipedia. It's quite an inspiring story if it's true that they survived on bitcoin.

Makes you wonder, what would have happend, if wikimedia accepted bitcoins way back and not sold all. Like wikileaks. They'dn't need a fund raiser for years to come ;)

The WikkiLeaks founder had said in a news interview a few months ago that if it was not for their investment in BTC several years ago they would likely have not been able to survive. They had purchased several thousand BTC for pennies and sold it near it's highs. The moral of the story is that dollars are not the only thing that can support a foundation.
[/quote]

Very interesting info, thank you for sharing.
Such testimonies, plus successful Bitcoin donation campaign for Wikipedia, really can help global popularity of bitcoin.
It's obvious that many business owners and merchants are still not aware of the great benefit Bitcoin can bring to their business.
It's good that at least Wikipedia realize that, better sooner than later :)

That really is a lot. It's so awesome to see that that Wales guy decided to give it a short. This shows that it was the right thing to do! If they continue that way they'll get like... 12'000 BTC over the next year!!!! That's over $7m USD!!! INCREDIBLE!

They state it clearly. They didn't collect 237 btc they collected $140,000. Shows you the mindset.

Now they should reciprocate by promoting the coin... solicit more positive contributions.

@question authority: Wikimedia needs to sell those coins. Like they need to sell stock donated to them. Even if they'd love to hold them, they can't because of the structure of their foundation. Read it up..

Give them time. Let's not expect them to instantly become the bitcoin fanatics.
I'm sure that with the next price spike they'll be reconsidering instant conversion to USD.



Yes, that's impressive, but don't think they'll be getting that much every week. Probably lots of bitcoiners decided to reward them for making the right decision.

I don't believe for one second that they bought Bitcoin for pennies and sold it later for a huge profit. If that were true why not just start accepting Bitcoin donations several years ago when they were first approached? Also, where did they exchange them? Do they have an address that can be checked? That's total BS. They finally know an easy way to get cash for them so they accept them now.

Given the exchange rate now, I'm guessing they're kicking themselves for waiting so long.

What are you talking about?

I said they can't hold them. So they need to exchange them immediately. They got 237 BTC through bitpay/coinbase and then received USD from those companies.

Not sure what you are saying..

Sorry quoted the wrong person. The guy above said they claim to have bought coins for pennies.

Yeah, I know they need the cash. That was my original statement. They wouldn't care if you gave them peanuts and beer as long as they can get cash for them easily.

Wikileaks is still a very controversial enterprise and many payment processors does not want anything to do with them. Wikileaks would need to open an account on an exchange and open a bank account to receive the money to. Both the exchange and bank would become magnet for possible regulatory action/investigations that are unrelated to their dealings with wikileaks.

They also tried to start accepting BTC donations in the early days of BTC, but satoshi asked they not accept BTC donations because it would attract too much attention to BTC when BTC was too young.

Oh, sorry for the cunfusion then!

Source?

i hope they end up keeping some of the coins to be used instead of just exchanged.


the source is buried somehwere here on bitcointalks.. i saw it a while back. maybe i can find again. i don't feel like digging through this rubble, but you can if you want https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=220

It's good progress from the Bitcoin wikipedia article being deleted in in 2010. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=652.0

And they still have the bitcoin donation option burried somewhere in their site...

That doesn't matter much. So are all the other "alternative" options.

finally found it.. it was on page 3. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1735.msg26999#msg26999


here is also his 2nd to last post. i think the wikileaks issue was what sent him away. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2216.msg29280#msg29280

Nice find. He was right after all ;)

^ wikileaks went on to accept bitcoin.. and bitcoin is still obviously going strong. so i'd say that despite his genius, satoshi was wrong in this instance. i think he was right to disappear though.

How much money did wikipedia make last week? From all the other alternative methods together  :P

140000*5/4 because the news sites reported about 18% of all donations were BTC in that week.

But I thought they didn't accept bitcoin until way later?

I meant methods besides paypal/credit card.

Oh, no clue. But I read somewhere a while back, that they only do about 5 million USD per year in stock donations, if its any help for you :)

wikileaks is not the same as wikimedia/wikipedia though. julian assange is associated with wikileaks. satoshi was against wikileaks accepting btc because it is an organization that functions to expose government secrecy.

That was not why satoshi was against wikileaks. He was against wikileaks accepting BTC donations because them doing so would attract a lot of attention to Bitcoin when the bugs were still being worked out. That level of attention would likely result multiple attacks on the network and exploits to be found and exploited and bitcoin to fail.

Ok, Satoshi was the reason they were not contacted in early 2010 but why didn't they respond to the other attempts? 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90729.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54988.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=32848.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50158.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1896.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70105.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51994.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52417.0

maybe i could have done a better job explaining. wikileaks exposes government secrets, which is consider a danger to the state. associating bitcoin with them, as satoshi thought, was bad news.


i'm a little bit confused here.. wikimedia/wikipedia is not the same as wikileaks.

Small correction. Wikileaks didn't purchase the bitcoins. They published a donation address and the bitcoins were donated. I donated a bunch way back.

That is really great. Good adv for bitcoin. Hope to see such thing on other different resources

And easy. Free and easy donation coming from a massive community with great potential to help any corporation

I thought for sure that the article said they purchased them for pennies each but it could have been that was the value that they had when they were donated. I am also certain that they did not accept BTC early on, but it is possible they started some time after it was initially suggested.

This is truly amazing, I'm stunned at what all of us can do together. :)

Last year, I had my wallet ready to donate, but nooo.... they wouldn't accept it.


 ;D

Late; but better late than never.

They could have raised a lot more if they had started accepting it earlier.

Just goes to show how many people are willing to use bitcoins to make donations and even payments on these kind of sites. It's a shame that wikipedia did not allow donations via bitcoin a while ago as it could have really been beneficial to them accepting a lot sooner. Still it's great to see them accepting now and see that it's working for them.

If just they started accepting bitcoin donations as the community repeatedly asked a few years ago ...

They'd be sitting on bitcoins worth millions of dollars by now.  ;)

how much is coinbase charging Wikipedia for this?

I believe it's zero. They support charities free of charge.

My thoughts, exactly. Wikileaks stands for a noble cause. On the other hand, Wikipedia is run by a bunch of greedy people who survive on bribes from the organized cabals who control many of its articles (especially in the politics and religion sections).

Glad to hear this. It will surely get some other sites to do the same because of this. It's a great way to help both Wikipedia stay up and get the news of Bitcoin across.

btc is becoming very popular as donations and i wish soon it becomes a legal currency and is accepted everywhere....

Really, I thought with Wikipedia it was free for the public to edit - although moderated to remove useless and incorrect material that hadn't had proper citing. Are you trying to say that the articles are designed to be biased towards specific causes?

You're just figuring this out? You must live in a cave. Much of Wikipedia is massively skewed. Selective omission makes it almost useless. It's a small step above Urban Dictionary.

Impressive. Showing the power of BTC right here in full force.

Any proof/source of Wikimedia taking a bribes?

They may not be perfect, you can disagree with many entries (especially on sensitive subjects) but there's no question that Wikipedia is a great source of knowledge for the masses.

I believe that as much as I believe the statement that Bitcoin is controlled by the criminals running the Bitcoin Foundation.

There's no organized group ruining Wikipedia. That's total bullshit. The average contributor is ruining it. People make Wikipedia subjects because they want to support their own viewpoint. They put enough supporting evidence with citations (which are frequently left unverified) to support their idea and omit anything to the contrary. It's not reviewed and supervised by a university. This makes Wikipedia nothing more that an elaborate story board of half fiction.

Wikipedia seems like a great thing to use bitcoins on. They arent like some massive corporation. They don't really run with a lot of overhead and they are completely digital. So it's great to see bitcoins being used for such a good purpose.

99% of the Wiki articles are fine. They are neutral. But there is the remaining 1% of the articles (especially in the religion and politics sections), which organized cabals are controlling. Even these articles are free to edit. But if you edit with unfavorable information, then those edits will be removed by the cabal and if you continue editing the page, you will be perma-banned using the most silly excuses. (I knew this because I was one of the most active editors with Wikipedia until 2011).

Where can I found the updated data about wikipedia btc donation?

Hear everything, trust nothing..
One can only suspect, but to know is something else. Unlike wikileaks, wikipedia seams more "socialy acceptable", and for
that reason i believe there are many thing around it not as innocent as they appear.

I'm guessing they don't have one address to send to, so their information can't be verified.  I wouldn't be surprised if they got less, but are inflating the number to make it seem a more lucrative prospect to other potential donatees.

Wiki articles are rarely moderated and only are in the most extreme of extreme examples. Even when they are moderated the moderation is so that only people with older accounts that have successfully edited many other articles over time can edit specific articles. It is almost like they are moderated by the community.

Wiki articles are suppose to be neutral and when they are not they are flagged to be updated.