Wikimedia Foundation on Bitcoin: "Artifical" Currency, because it's not backed..

[yoyoceramic]

Hi Mark,
Thank you for your email and interest in supporting free knowledge. The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. This has been interpreted to mean that we do not accept "artificial" currencies - that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change. In the meantime, you may wish to view alternative methods of donation at https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give.
Thank you again for your interest, and please feel free to contact us with any further questions.

Sincerely,
Michael Beattie
Fundraising Customer Service Associate Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
https://wikimediafoundation.org
Support us: https://donate.wikimedia.org

[MaxSan]

Been through this... someone should point out that Forbes article... and then a link to Bitpay for offering charity services.

[yoyoceramic]

On it.

[sippsnapp]

maybe not gov backed but tell me somebody, isnt the producing cost some sort of backing, i mean you can pretty neat calculate the minimum amount of USD required to produce one bitcoin.

[yoyoceramic]

Lol.  As one user on the reddit thread said:

oh well then they must accept iranian Rials ... its a "real" currency (lol) backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the 4th largest oil producer in the world. So surely Wikimedia will have no problem with that. Also I'm assuming then that since Gold and Silver are not "real" money by Wikimedia's definition I will assume they will NOT accept donations in the form of physical precious metals either.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/117isl/wikimedia_foundation_on_bitcoin_artifical/

[cjp]

maybe not gov backed but tell me somebody, isnt the producing cost some sort of backing, i mean you can pretty neat calculate the minimum amount of USD required to produce one bitcoin.

With the risk of going off-topic:
No, cost does not back value. You can dig a huge hole and then fill it back with sand, and that could be very costly, but it would not generate or back any value.

Of course the difficulty of creating bitcoins is necessary for the market price of Bitcoin, but it is not sufficient. Something with a high market price is always scarce, but something scarce does not always have a high market price.

Besides, if I understand this correctly, Wikimedia is sort of waiting for government recognition of Bitcoin. Maybe they'd like to find out the recent statements made by the Finnish government.

[Gabi]

prudent with its money

Accepting printed paper is prudent? lol

"artificial" currencies

Uuuh... and guess what "fiat money" is? It exactly means that. It's artificial currency, not real currency.

not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government

Mmh... and dollars are backed by? The president? It's only paper, printed at will by the central bank.

Wikimedia epic fail  

+1 to accepting iranian Rials and not accepting gold and silver. Bernanke said gold is NOT money  

isnt the producing cost some sort of backing, i mean you can pretty neat calculate the minimum amount of USD required to produce one bitcoin.

Nah, producing it doesn't mean it has a value. If i produce a car it has a value because it's a car, not because i worked hard to make it. If i work hard to make a broken car, it will be totally worthless, despite the producing cost  Bitcoin has a value because it has a value

[benjamindees]

The irony being of course that the US defaulted on any "full faith and credit" backing of Federal Reserve Notes in 1971.  But I'm sure they still accept those.

[ElectricMucus]

inb4 Atlas hijacking the thread  


to contribute something: The Wikimedia Foundation has a tax exemption status along with the possibility to for donors to write off payments from their taxes. This will not be possible with Bitcoin, and I think it is probably the main reason they have not opted to accept Bitcoin.