Wikipedia, the decentralized community-powered encyclopedia, is now accepting donations in bitcoin, the decentralized community-powered cryptocurrency. The Wikimedia Foundation partnered with Coinbase to process the donations. Also new today, Coinbase will waive processing fees for all registered non-profits.
Today’s news shouldn’t come as a surprise. Back in March, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales accidentally started a bitcoin donation campaign. After opening a Coinbase wallet, he shared his wallet address on Twitter and said that he would give all the proceeds to the Wikimedia Foundation.
“I’m planning to re-open the conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors at our next meeting (and before, by email) about whether Wikimedia should accept Bitcoin,” he wrote in a Reddit thread at the time. And here’s the result!
Bitcoin will just be another payment option as the Foundation doesn’t plan to hold any bitcoin. Immediately after receiving a donation, Coinbase will convert the amount of bitcoins into USD. This way, donations aren’t impacted by bitcoin volatility. The Wikimedia Foundation raised $18.7 million during last year’s campaign.
The Wikimedia Foundation is just a first partner for Coinbase. Non-profits will get a nice perk compared to other Coinbase merchants. Instead of paying a small transaction fee, non-profits won’t pay any fees, ever. Other merchants start paying fees after $1 million in transactions.
Comparatively, competitor BitPay recently waived fees for all merchants as long as you don’t need better support and enterprise features.
Dell also recently started accepting bitcoin thanks to Coinbase. You can expect a big race between Coinbase and BitPay to snatch merchants before the other.
