Mozilla Actually Started Accepting Cryptocurrency Donations Back in 2014

Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column looks at what happened after Mozilla founder Jamie "jwz" Zawinski slammed the group for accepting donations in cryptocurrency (which Zawinski called partnering "with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.") Peter Linss, one of the creators of the Gecko browser engine on which Mozilla Firefox is based, also stepped in to back up Zawinski, saying that he was 100% with him and that Mozilla was "meant to be better than this."

When Mozilla first announced it would accept Bitcoin donations in 2014, it cited Khan Academy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, United Way, Greenpeace, and Wikimedia Foundation among its moral and upstanding cryptocurrency-accepting compatriots. Of that list, just Greenpeace has since stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, telling the Financial Times earlier this year that "as the amount of energy needed to run bitcoin became clearer, this policy [of accepting cryptocurrency donations] became no longer tenable."
Thursday the Mozilla Foundation announced it was pausing cryptocurrency donations to review whether the idea "fits with our climate goals" — a fact the column also addresses: Mike Shaver, another Mozilla project founder, also tweeted his support, writing that he was "glad to see this reflection happening."

In a follow-up blog post to the ordeal, Zawinski doubled down on his condemnation of Mozilla's cryptocurrency acceptance, writing that "cryptocurrencies are not only an apocalyptic ecological disaster, and a greater-fool pyramid scheme, but are also incredibly toxic to the open web, another ideal that Mozilla used to support" — an idea also espoused in many of the comments on the initial Twitter thread.

Meanwhile, although Mozilla says that it is pausing the ability to donate cryptocurrencies during its review, the donations page still lists BitPay among its payment methods.

Proof of stake

[real_nickname]

So if the problem is energy, they can accept proof of stake based cryptos? Main argument against accepting crypto seems to be about the proof of work method. I don't understand why it always ends with "we don't accept crypto, it kills the planet". People seems to be more emotional than rational about this subject.

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[LibreHome]

Still it is a Ponzi Scheme whatsoever.

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[real_nickname]

Not sure of this definition. Wealth distribution is not uniform but the same kind of distribution apply to fiat currency or stocks.

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[LibreHome]

Well, it is a waste of time to argue with Ponzi scammers. Their ultimate goal is always scamming fiat currency.

Nothing to do with wealth distribution

[raymorris]

Ponzi schemes have nothing to do with the fact people aren't carbon copies, all the the same. That is, that we have unequal interests in different things, abilities, etc which means we don't all get the same results. Ponzi schemes have nothing to do with any of that.

To understand what a Ponzi scheme is, it is helpful to first be very clear what investment is. Investment is acquiring (buying or producing) an asset that produces more assets. An example would be buying chickens, would produce eggs. Building a

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[real_nickname]

I believe most things people don't like about crypto already existed in traditional economy: Joe could already gamble using leveraged positions in stock market and lose eveyrthing in one minute. Cryptos are just one more speculative assets. But because slashdot is a US website I will avoid saying bad things about capitalism.

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[Brain-Fu]

You are right, of course. Gambling has been around since before recorded history, and it remains extremely popular. Even in the USA, it has a long history, being a very tyrannical force in the early days and reigned in by religious awakenings and even secular legal push-back, but never being fully eliminated from our culture. The consequences of gambling are clear and obvious both to historians and statisticians alike: the HOUSE WINS over time. Money is funneled away from people who just can't seem to g

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[Brain-Fu]

That sounds legit to me. Blockchain is just a transaction tracking system, in-and-of-itself it is neutral on what it's used for. Bitcoin (in its current state) and NFTs are just obvious ways to use it, but not the only ways. It wouldn't surprise me if this technology gets embraced by the financial sector (and other's too, where it makes sense).

But it's not going to provide some way "out from under" the regulation of the financial industry. It's not going to provide some sort of more even playing field w

because proof of stake doesn't exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

etherium has been promising proof of stake for years now. it's just a shiny object to make people think, oh yeah crypto has crushed the semiconductor market and is ruining the planet to make the worst people alive richer, but it will all be over in six months. oh okay boss, I can wait six months, no problem. the people who own all the money-making machines don't want to make them obsolete, what a shocker.

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[Powercntrl]

crypto has crushed the semiconductor market and is ruining the planet to make the worst people alive richer

All of this shit is are the unintended consequences of making Bitcoin scarce. People were never going to be content just going "Oh well, I missed the Bitcoin boat, too bad for me. I guess I'll just buy some tiny fractional amount of Bitcoin and be happy with that, because it is divisible down to, uh, whatever the fuck that number is called when it's that far past the decimal point."

Nope, people forked Bitcoin. They changed the mining algorithm so they could still keep churning out "coins" using consumer

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[real_nickname]

because proof of stake doesn't exist?

It is totally false, sorry. Many tokens use proof of stake. I won't name them, I don't want people think I'm shilling coins but it is basic knowledge.

oh yeah crypto has crushed the semiconductor market

Unfortunately, it is not so simple. It is multifactorial: crypto, IA(mostly used for entertainment app), cloud gaming, remote work, resource exhaustion... I think it will get worse crypto or not.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[DrMrLordX]

You do realize that there are several blockchains that have already implemented Proof of Stake? Ethereum has been beaten to the punch.

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[demon driver]

Energy consumption is not the only civilization-threatening aspect of cryptocurrencies. And burning hard drives isn't exactly a sentient method to generate something that's supposed to resemble monetary value, either.

Re: Proof of stake

[cfalcon]

Proof of capacity and/or proof of commitment use hard drive space (capacity) or hard drive space with committed tokens (hybrid proof of stake and proof of capacity) as a scalar.

Both of these have the same exact advantages as proof of work- you are using something physical and real to secure the blockchain and encourage decentralization. And like proof of stake, they do not require energy expenditure to do so, instead the hashes are simply who has plotted "space" closest to an arbitrary point, with the amount of "closeness" needed getting more and more generous until a block is found.

The first for this is signum, which launched years ago, and a copycat chia came out a few months ago, hyped by a company which premined it. There are some others in this space I think.

I don't think most people who complain about energy consumption are legit though, mostly because they never bring up proof of stake, proof of capacity, or proof of commitment. They should be all about that, but instead they overstate energy issues with PoW, then pretend that all coins are that. Usually they THEN call it a "ponzi scheme" or something else, which tells you that, generously, they dislike risky assets and that is their real motivation.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Proof of stake

[cfalcon]

Correct, the energy and raw materials they use are a rounding error. Even better, said storage is valuable only in bulk- state of the art fast storage would not be competitive. A world that gets a fever for such things might begin making hard drives in more places than currently done, but would be unlikely to end up with degenerate use cases like ASIC hashers. It is definitely something to be encouraged, if your issue with proof of work is the endless consumption of fungible but finite energy.

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[themusicgod1]

Because this isn't actually about the climate, or anything like that. It is purely an attack on mozilla's donation infrastructure by its competitors, or possibly by the banks/enemies of bitcoin.

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[mysidia]

"we don't accept crypto, it kills the planet"

Short answer is.. There are a bunch of ludicrous statements made against Bitcoin by Cryptophobes - No it's not a ponzi scheme, No it does not kill the planet.

US Dollars kill the planet just fine.

Time to write Jimmy a letter

[space_spaghetti]

So Wikipedia is dabbling in Cryptocurrency and it still asking for donations? Time to write them a letter.

Wikipedia are rich, no need to donate

[couchslug]

Time to ignore donating as they can live off the interest on their assets indefinitely.

"US$157 million (2021, WMF est.) 127.2 million (2020)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Who doesn't?

[nospam007]

Why would you refuse a donation of any denomination, I for sure would not. :-)

Slashdot does

[Tailhook]

I've been contributing to Slashdot for about two years now through Brave's BAT coin.

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[NateFromMich]

Because this particular virtue signalling organization (and part time browser maintainer) has a climate goal, per the summary.

Irony

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

but are also incredibly toxic to the open web, another ideal that Mozilla used to support" — an idea also espoused in many of the comments on the initial Twitter thread.

Yeah, about that. True story... possibly Gab's biggest lifeline in the last 1-2 years has been Bitcoin. All of those "good corporate citizens" who wax piously in the abstract about openness, inclusiveness, diversity, etc. seem to have, well, done things like said "yeah, no payment processing for you."

Turns out that contra these old cranks, crypto has been a lifeline for the open web in the face of their ideological allies weaponizing the payment systems against "assholes." Funny thing, that. How people will suddenly say "well gosh, if no one wants to allow you to accept money then that must just mean you're an asshole and the free market spoke" and then complain when technologists find a solution.

Must be why I switched from Firefox to Brave a while ago...

Re: Irony

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

This is actually a really fascinating parallel. The people who I hear screeching loudest about crypto are also the far left ilk who love to use cancellation as a bludgeon. Maybe if legal due process was required to cancel someone's merchant account, crypto wouldn't be as widespread as it is today.

lol

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

If Mozilla really cared about ethics behind their funding, they wouldn't take Google's money.

one world currency to rule them all

[jdollatari]

I;'ve been a mozilla user since 2002. Mozilla is better than this I hope they change course here. in addition to concerns over environment and semiconductors due to these currencies we also need to be concerned about potential government controlled currencies which will allow monitoring and the kind of dystopian craziness we see in china