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

[Nathan]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 8:24 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

>
>
> Re: http://blog.bitpay.com/2012/11/donate-to-wikipedia-with-bitcoin.html
>
> I'm not sure I'm following all of this correctly. I thought the idea was
> that BitPay would exchange Bitcoins for USDs and then donate the USDs to
> the Wikimedia Foundation. Why would that require the Wikimedia Foundation
> being in control of whatever account is used to transfer the funds? Isn't
> the merchant account simply a means of transferring USDs? I'm lost. :-(
>
> I think Andrew makes a compelling argument, though it's difficult to be
> sure when the implementation details are not entirely clear.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
I think the problem is that Bitpay doesn't appear to be a charity.  They
are accepting bitcoins and paying dollars; without a lot of transparency
that hasn't been described yet in this thread, there's no way to know they
aren't using the Wikimedia marks to support speculating in the value of
bitcoins. We allow and encourage commercial reuse of most Wikimedia
content, but the same isn't true of Wikimedia trademarks. I'm not against
Bitpay making a profit, I just don't think they should be able to advertise
for Wikipedia donations to pad their bottom line.