[ANN] Donate to Wikipedia with Bitcoin

[BitPay Business Solutions]

Are you charging 0.99% fee?

No.  BitPay is offering this service completely free to the donors and to Wikipedia.

[ingrownpocket]

Are you charging 0.99% fee?

No.  BitPay is offering this service completely free to the donors and to Wikipedia.

Nice. Thank you 

[Sukrim]

Just to make sure:
BitPay essentially offers to take our BTC and pays something they consider an equivalent amount of USD to Wikimedia. All in all Wikimedia gets is a single donation per day by BitPay in USD (potentially with a remark like "this is coming from the Bitcoin community" or similar).

I like the idea, but as mentioned above it would be great to still ahve a list of payments in Bitcoin how much was donated, in USD how much arrived at Wikimedia and it would be nice if BitPay would offer such a service for some other uses as well ("Pay for paypal with Bitcoin"? "Bitcoin to SEPA"...)

[Gabi]

So merchants pay fees to bitpay so that bitpay can give money to wikipedia for 0 fee even if wikipedia DO NOT want bitcoins.

This is so retard...

[Sukrim]

Also if you wanted to do this yourself (register a merchant account and offer a button to donate to something you consider worth donating to) you would act against BitPay's TOS...

[samson]

Also if you wanted to do this yourself (register a merchant account and offer a button to donate to something you consider worth donating to) you would act against BitPay's TOS...

In what way ?

[imanikin]

Thanks for the initiative but I won't donate until THEY ask for bitcoin donation.

+1,000,000,000,000,000

+21.000.000 They don't need our Bitcoins; we should not send them anything! 

[Hexadecibel]

So its clear that people declaring that they wont donate until wikipedia themselves accepts bitcoin never intended to in the first place.

Good for you bitpay. Ill be making my donation as soon as I get home.

Seriously, trying to hold wikipedia hostage until they accept bitcoins is just childish and does more harm to bitcoin than good.

[Gabi]

Or maybe no. They don't need our bitcoin, then why should we give them to them?

[notme]

Or maybe no. They don't need our bitcoin, then why should we give them to them?

Because it will help show them the potential of our currency and our community.

[Gabi]

I wonder who showed us the potential of gold...

[annette786]

Wikipedia does not hate Bitcoin.  They just have a lot to lose since so much of their income is based on donations (i.e. public sentiment).  

If Bitpay is transparent (a transaction log would be nice), and the donations are plentiful, the press will pick it up and the tides will start to turn.

This is one of the smartest moves I've seen a Bitcoin company make.  

Bravo!

I am donating a bitcoin now.

[farlack]

Any chance we can see a daily log? 

[mcgravier]

Dear Wikipedia:

You are imperfect community institution with inferior payment processors, and as such you shall be assimilated into The Collective.
Resistance is futile


Sincerely Borg

[Serenata]

Supposing I'm a US citizen visiting a country in Europe....
There is a beggar in the street *selling* handkerchiefs. I take a $5 bill out of my pocket and hand it to the beggar. To my surprise he does not accept it and ask me to convert that in Euro first.

Does this sound right to you? To me it doesn't.

Some things to get straight:
Wikipedia is not a beggar by any means! They do provide a service, which is of course valuable, free of charge and *ask* for donations. If I decide to donate, I get to choose the donation method. If Wikipedia does not support or accept the donation method that works for me, then too bad for them. I don't see this approach as trying to hold Wikipedia hostage, as mentioned above by Hexadecibel. I see it as a simple case "What works for me doesn't work for them" and vice versa.

I like Bitpay's idea, though I'd prefer a single bitcoin address for all donations, so everyone can see the bits flowing (though there might be technical difficulties following this road).

[knight22]

Dear Wikipedia:

You are imperfect community institution with inferior payment processors, and as such you shall be assimilated into The Collective.
Resistance is futile


Sincerely Borg

LOL

I just sent them an email telling them that they don't really need money if they don't accept bitcoin.
BTW I have nothing against those who donate trough bitpay's solution but I want them to know that they will get MUCH more by accepting them directly.

period

[annette786]

Dear Wikipedia:

You are imperfect community institution with inferior payment processors, and as such you shall be assimilated into The Collective.
Resistance is futile


Sincerely Borg

LOL

I just sent them an email telling them that they don't really need money if they don't accept bitcoin.
BTW I have nothing against those who donate trough bitpay's solution but I want them to know that they will get MUCH more by accepting them directly.

They get millions from <i>voluntary</i> do-gooders around the world.  If they start accepting bitcoin and the media paints them as encouraging a form of payment that promotes (insert evil activity here), they are screwed.  It's just too risky for the amount they would get in bitcoin.

Bitpay has essentially allowed them to test the waters first (without their permission of course).  If Wikipedia sees that the media accepts it, the tides will turn.

Let's hope they can garner some positive press out of it.

[Sukrim]

Also if you wanted to do this yourself (register a merchant account and offer a button to donate to something you consider worth donating to) you would act against BitPay's TOS...

In what way ?

https://bitpay.com/terms

3. relate to transactions that [snip] (e) are by payment processors to collect payments on behalf of merchants, [...]

Edit:

Supposing I'm a US citizen visiting a country in Europe....
There is a beggar in the street *selling* handkerchiefs. I take a $5 bill out of my pocket and hand it to the beggar. To my surprise he does not accept it and ask me to convert that in Euro first.

Does this sound right to you? To me it doesn't.

Sounds very much like an US point of view. Ever been travelling in Europe before the Euro (or in a lot of countries still without Euro)? You will quickly learn that small amounts of money in any obscure currency but your own is useless - which is why e.g. services like Paypal exist that take a lot of smaller payments to convert them to whatever they need to. If you go to the US and try to buy a burger with a 2€ coin, good luck with that. I still have about the equivalent of a few EUR in foreign currencies lying around at home (I think USD as well) that are completely useless, as I can't exchange them or buy anything with them (even mailing them to that country would cost more than the money's worth).

Having useless stuff lying around actually has opportunity costs and as this beggar can't expect to ever use the 5$ bill, he's better off not taking it at all than having to store it somewhere and maybe even getting into trouble with his colleagues or anything else. Same with Wikipedia - if they don't accept BTC, accept that! Even if you put up 1 BTC in escrow that has to be claimed by them, there's probably too much hassle or overhead to get it converted to something they can use. Since services like BitPay offer to pay in USD instead, just do that or stop demanding to pay someone with something that's not usable to this person/entity.

If I decide to donate to you 5000 litres of milk (which are also worth something) you'd also try to sell it (which might be in some cases as hard as selling Bitcoins) and have BTC or USD or EUR or whatever and have great trouble with that instead of enjoying the great gift of fresh milk you've gotten.

[goodbc]

This morning we sent a direct deposit to Wikipedia for $790.36 which is all of the bitcoin donations received from noon yesterday until this morning.
Great job guys!
We will continue to do this every day.  I do have hope that eventually the donate button will be on Wikipedia's site, but for now having the button on our blog accomplishes the same thing. 

Would be interesting to know the number of addresses (people) that donated because I feel that many chosen to give only a small amount to show that they are willing to donate more (if the button were on Wikipedia site).

This number should be told to Wikipedia too, so they know there is more from where that sum came.

[Hexadecibel]

I just sent 2BTC to wikipedia.

Outstanding. Thanks bitpay!