Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization running the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, stops accepting cryptos for donations. It released an update that says the organization will close its Bitpay account.
Related: Irish authorities ban political donations in cryptocurrency
On April 12, the WMF community requested to stop accepting donations in cryptos due to environmental concerns. Almost 400 users took part in the voting on the subject.
The release says 71.17% of the participants voted in support of the proposal excluding new and unregistered users. Wikimedia began accepting crypto donations in 2014 as the community requested to do so at the time. The organization accepted donations in BTC, BCH and ETH.
The community said accepting crypto means that WMF endorses the sector. According to the paper, cryptos are risky and the organization shouldn't endorse them.
It was also mentioned that Bitcoin and ETH are the two most highly used cryptos and they both are based on Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism which requires large amounts of energy. Although they promise to become more eco-friendly, at present the assets continue to consume energy.
There are eco-friendlier cryptos that are less-widely used but they still present risks for investors, the request stated. In 2021, WMF received about $130,000 crypto donations, which is 0.08% of the overall donations.