If you live in China or the USA, no payment system is guaranteed invisible from state agents. There is no reason to believe that cryptocurrency transactions going in or out of countries with sophisticated security agencies could be any more anonymous or trustworthy than, say, an anonymous payment using Paypal.
At the same time, the Wikimedia Foundation has legal and ethical obligations to not benefit from the proceeds of crime nor use its donations to fund crime, human rights abuse, or terrorism. Though it can choose to respect the anonymity of donors as requested during the donation process it is required to cooperate with US legal investigations which may make complete anonymity impossible especially for large donations or large projects that it provides money or chooses to invest its slush fund in.
It would be great if the Wikimedia Foundation made a clear and measurable statement about its financial policies beyond vague statements that human rights are nice, or that money laundering is bad.
I am honestly shocked about how the whole discussion does not touch the fact that for many people in many countries supporting wikimedia is politically inconvenient and doing so in a very transparent way such as through the banking system might result in a backslash from the authorities.
We should first of all be neutral towards our readers on the question "do you trust the state?", if their answer is no, a covert zero-trust way to donate should be available.
Hello all,
Sincerely,
Molly White (User:GorillaWarfare)
she/her