Wikimedia Foundation Now Accepts Bitcoin

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We’re fortunate that millions of people all over the world support the work of the Wikimedia Foundation through donations. It has always been important to the Foundation to make sure donating is as simple and inclusive as possible. Currently, we accept 13 different payment methods enabling donations from nearly every country in the world, and today, we’re adding one more: bitcoin.
For those unfamiliar with bitcoin, it’s a relatively new digital currency, currently being accepted by a growing number of institutions and merchants throughout the world. Members of our community have asked the Foundation to start accepting bitcoin. These requests, coupled with recent guidance from the US Internal Revenue Service, encouraged the Foundation to once again review our capacity to accept bitcoin.
During this review, we identified a new way to work around past technical challenges, as well as to minimize the legal risks of accepting bitcoin. Through our work with Coinbase, a bitcoin wallet and payment processor, we’re able to immediately convert bitcoin to U.S. dollars, requiring minimal technical implementation on our end. Since we now also have guidance on how to account for bitcoin, there is a clear understanding of how to legally manage it.
If you are interested in donating bitcoin to the Wikimedia Foundation, you can now do so on our Ways to Give page. Thank you again to all our friends and supporters. Your support enables us to realize the Wikimedia vision – a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.
Lisa Gruwell
Chief Revenue Officer, Wikimedia Foundation

2014-07-30: Edited to clarify implementation details

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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Is it the begining of the end ?

Really disappointing that Wikimedia is now supporting this pyramid scheme mostly used by drug dealers and scammers.
I will never donate any money again.

Really good news. Now i can’t send real money with low fees 🙂

@Peter Wogenband – What’s really disappointing is to see such ignorance about a great technology. The fact that the wikimedia foundation has decided to accept bitcoin donations doesn’t affect you in any way, or affect the usefulness of the wonderful services they provide. Unsure why you would decide to stop your donations because of this.
Not to worry though, I’ll donate double to make up for it.

Two years too late 😉

I have tried donating, but when I clicked “Next” on the bitcoin donation window yesterday, I got an error “Physical address is invalid”, today I get an error “Physical address requires full name”. Please fix this, looking forward to donate.

Worked well in my case.
Alex, I needed to fill all address entries to pass through the system.

@Peter Wogenband wrong! check your facts dude! drug dealers and scammers love uncle sam banknotes! still not convinced? PGR Y POLICÍA FEDERAL ASEGURAN 205 MILLONES DE DÓLARES, 200 MIL EUROS Y 157 MIL PESOS http://www.pgr.gob.mx/cmsocial/bol07/mar/b11007.htm a big pile of uncle sam bills! well, is from 2007, so next may be better: Australian Crime Commission taskforce seizes $500m in drugs http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-23/australian-crime-commission-cash-seizures/5214310 in all this examples and countless others i see lots of uncle sam bills and no bitcoins so, following you flawed logic, should USA ban its own money because is the main vehicle of any and all crimes all around… Read more »

To those that think that Wikipedia is supporting a pyramid scheme just look at what they say that they are doing.
Alice Buys Bitcoins from Bob.
Alice Sends Bitcoins to Wikimedia.
Wikimedia Sells Bitcoins to Coinbase.
Coinbase Sells Bitcoins (possibly to Bob).
The net effect is a transfer of currency from Alice to Wikimedia, and the only difference between them is the identity of the third parties involved.
Those third parties will still take a cut for their trouble, this is one of the reasons that agricultural societies often banned banking and money lending.

Never donated to wiki before, but I now will in btc.

[…] More: Wikimedia Foundation Now Accepts Bitcoin — Wikimedia blog […]

I notice that I must give my full name, email and postal address to donate using bitcoin. Why is this?

You must remove the address and information collection for bitcoin donations. All you have to do is publish your bitcoin address and your donations will skyrocket.
I will not donate until you do so.

I will not donate until you remove the collection of personally identifiable information.

I already donated bitcoin to wikipedia… the account was that one of the founder, I guess. It was in Twitter where he admitted to accept it and use it for the wikipedia.
Months ago, at least. Now it’s official. 😉

I would donate using Bitcoin, but don’t desire to give my information.

Probably IRS guidelines.
Of course I didn’t identify myself to donate bitcoin.
And I won’t.
This is Bitcoin, Joe….

Same as others are saying, prefer not to give out all the extra info for a donation. With security hacks these days, I’d rather not hand out the info…

Nonprofits in the United States are legally required to collect donor information (with some exceptions).

Please remove the need for my information for Bitcoin donations. The beauty of bitcoin is that is not required. Just show your address and Qr code 🙂

[…] accepteert sinds vandaag bitcoin. Dit laat Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Gruwell vandaag op de blog van de Wikimedia Foundation […]

I will also donate without sharing information. I don’t trust the government of any country especially the US.

Just publish your Bitcoin Wallet QR code. Coinbase e-mail registration sucks.

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

Thanks, Jimbo!

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

Woow! Congratulations, big step.

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

Will Wikipedia accept Dogecoin or Litecoin for donations at some point in the future?

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

Thanks for taking this step. You sent me an announcement email. There is a link in the email of https://diff.wikimedia.org/2014/07/29/wikimedia-foundation-now-accepts-bitcoin/ . However, your security certificate is invalid:
“links.email.donate.wikimedia.org uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for *.links.mkt41.net (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)”

Can you please publish your Bitcoin donation address so we can audit our donations?

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

I was ready to donate some Bitcoin until I saw that we must give our full name and address etc etc…..lets not make things complicated here all you need is a Bitcoin address.
HUGE FAIL

[…] accepteert sinds vandaag bitcoin. Dit laat Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Gruwell vandaag op de blog van de Wikimedia Foundation […]

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

I guess you can use fake personal info and donate anyway.

[…] by kouiskas [link] [113 […]

You guys are whiney as hell, you can put fake nonsense data in the form. Stop being so obnoxious with your demands.

Congratulations, I can’t wait doing my donation in BTC this year !!

[…] Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and curates Wikipedia, announced on its official blog that it is now accepting donations in the digital […]

[…] The Wikimedia Foundation is now accepting bitcoin donations, according to a newly-published blog post on Wednesday. […]

[…] Wikimedia Foundation announced that it will now accept Bitcoin donations. The foundation will use Bitcoin exchange Coinbase to convert the virtual currency to US […]

[…] the decentralized community-powered encyclopedia, is now accepting donations in bitcoin, the decentralized community-powered cryptocurrency. The Wikimedia Foundation […]

Thanks for doing this and I have donated. However, you guys need to stop asking for people’s personal information. That is a very basic violation of privacy and not really acceptable at all in the current day and age. I have donated, and I will continue to donate, but *only* with bitcoin and only without giving out my personal information online which, if you didn’t know, is one of the most important key features of bitcoin as a value transmission protocol.