For awhile now, I along with many of my fellow Bitcoiners, have been writing to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation demanding to know why on Earth they haven’t started accepting Bitcoin. To date, Wikipedia allows users to donate through certain centralized “e-wallets” for countries without Paypal support, they also allow donations of stock. For many people with access to the internet in third world countries, those that have the most to gain from services such as Wikipedia’s, a bank account is a non-extant luxury. While Wikipedia does try very, very hard to reach those users in the dozens of countries even Paypal, Visa and Mastercard avoid; however, until they accepted Bitcoin their reach is not truly global.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s reply to Bitcoin inquiries is shared below:
Hi Caleb,
Thank you for your email and interest in supporting free knowledge — it seems like you already know we don’t accept bitcoins :) The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. The Foundation does not currently accept Bitcoin or other currencies 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.
Thank you again for your interest, and please feel free to contact us with any further questions.
Sincerely,
Joshua VanDavier
Donor Services Manager
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
https://wikimediafoundation.org
Support us: https://donate.wikimedia.org
I just want to over-stress the following: Using BitPay would allow Wikipedia to accept Bitcoin donations, and receive their beloved fiat backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government.
As a matter of fact… BitPay has set up a merchant account that accepts and forwards donations, in fiat, to Wikipedia on behalf of the Bitcoin community in an attempt to show Wikipedia just how easy, perfectly legal, and in demand the function is. Some of you may notice that this service of BitPay’s has been in operation for over a year now with no response from the Wikimedia Foundation. It’s no wonder that some users have decided to boycott Wikipedia until they acknowledge Bitcoin by accepting it for donations.
