[Wikimedia-l] Let's accept Bitcoin as a donation method

[Peter Coombe]

On 13 December 2013 14:00, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 13 December 2013 11:43, Steven Walling <steven.walling at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Who's to say if the work involved in accepting bitcoins, monitoring
> > transactions, converting them, etc. will be worth the actual donations we
> > receive in bitcoin? Developing and maintaining payments systems doesn't
> > come for free. Fundraising and finance staff at WMF work extremely hard
> to
> > keep these systems running smoothly, and I for one don't think it's worth
> > adding yet another potential system to build/maintain just to placate
> > bitcoin devotees who want us to help promote their libertarian fantasy
> > project.
>
>
> This is probably the key point: will it be worth the resources? How do
> comparable charities that accept Bitcoin do?
>
> I'm sceptical about Bitcoin in general, but if it was worth it, then sure.
>
> (If you have reliable payment conversion, the acceptance bit is easy.
> Hardest bit is someone to supply reliable and trustworthy conversion
> from Bitcoins to dollars. e.g. Mt. Gox wouldn't pass the sniff test
> IMO. Some Bitcoin operations are *terrifyingly* naive, as if
> financial-quality computer system reliability had never been thought
> of.)
>
>
> - d.
>
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Anecdotally:

>From Reddit in March this year (not sure whether the situation has changed
or not)
"So far we're spending more money on accountants handling the non-trivial
reconciliation of our BTC transactions than revenue we're making in
Bitcoin, haha. Hopefully it will get better."
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/19t3uq/hey_rbitcoin_you_asked_for_some_stats/


>From the Humble Indie Bundle (a collection of indie computer games)
"It [bitcoin] represents less than 0.1% of our sales for Humble Indie
Bundle 8, which is pretty surprising for me"
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fex7h/were_humble_indie_bundle_8_creators_of_thomas_was/ca9l01t


Peter / the wub
(speaking in a strictly personal capacity)