The Wikimedia Foundation is now accepting bitcoin donations, according to a newly-published blog post on Wednesday.
The news comes several months following the Foundation — which runs the web’s most popular encyclopedia, Wikipedia — was mulling bitcoin acceptance, but was said to have reservations.
Wikimedia Chairman Jimmy Wales has previously expressed interest in this digital currency, and he even accidentally started a fundraiser for the organization, collecting a sum of ten bitcoins in a short period of time.
Lisa Gruwell, the Foundation’s Chief Revenue Officer, writes:
[blockquote style=”2″]We’re fortunate that millions of people all over the world support the work of the Wikimedia Foundation through donations. It has always been important to the Foundation to make sure donating is as simple and inclusive as possible. Currently, we accept 13 different payment methods enabling donations from nearly every country in the world, and today, we’re adding one more: Bitcoin.[/blockquote]
One of the biggest reasons Wikimedia has looked into accepting bitcoin donations comes from requests originating in the bitcoin community, not surprisingly.
This triggered an internal review at the Foundation. Eventually, they decided to go with Coinbase to process the payments.
Gruwell writes:
[blockquote style=”2″]During this review, we identified a new way to work around past technical challenges, as well as to minimize the legal risks of accepting Bitcoin. Using Coinbase, a Bitcoin exchange, we’re able to immediately convert Bitcoin to U.S. dollars, requiring minimal technical implementation on our end. Since we now also have guidance on how to account for Bitcoin, there is a clear understanding of how to legally manage it.[/blockquote]
Coinbase offers fee-free for non-profits
Interestingly enough, Coinbase announced today that they are offering no fees for registered non-profits.
“This means that any non-profit accepting bitcoin through Coinbase will be able to instantly cash out their bitcoin donations for U.S. dollars and receive a daily bank transfer, free of charge,” the processor said in an announcement.