Wikipedia for the week brought Bitcoin donations for 140 thousand dollars

In late July, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it would begin accepting donations to Bitcoin. According to the partner of the fund, the platform Coinbase, for the first week he collected 140 thousand dollars, writes TechCrunch. Taking this opportunity, Coinbase canceled the commission for all non-profit organizations.

Wikimedia does not plan to keep Bitcoins; instead, the fund transfers them to dollars at the exchange rate at the time of donation. Last year, the fund raised a total of $ 18.7 million in donations, against the background of which 140 thousand may not be very much, but 140 thousand a week can turn into a round sum, unless of course the pace of Bitcoin donations continues.

In March, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had already experimented with Bitcoin. Then he simply wrote his Bitcoin address on Twitter and Reddit, and many began to send him bitcoins in order to show that Wikipedia should accept Bitcoin as an option to transfer donations. Thus, he inadvertently collected 11 thousand dollars, which he promised to transfer to Wikimedia.
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"I plan to resume the discussion with the board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation at our next meeting (and before that by e-mail) about whether Wikimedia should accept bitcoins," then wrote Wales on Reddit. One of the reasons for doubt was that “the more payment options we give to people, the less they donate” - no matter how illogical it may sound.

The Wikimedia Foundation became the first Coinbase partner. Non-profit organizations received a pleasant advantage over other Coinbase users: instead of paying a small commission, NGOs will not pay any fees at all. Other companies are starting to pay fees after transfers of $ 1 million. At the same time, a competitor to the platform, BitPay, recently waived commissions for all companies if they do not need support and corporate functions.