Even the man who started Wikipedia needs to find information on other websites once in a while.
Jimmy Wales, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001, took to Reddit to ask about the increasingly popular and often misunderstood cryptocurrency Bitcoin on Monday.
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"I'm playing with Bitcoin, thinking about it and have some questions about how to look at blockchain.info," Wales wrote on the Bitcoin subreddit, posting from his known account JimmyWales1.
Specifically, Wales wrote that he is considering whether or not the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees Wikipedia, should begin to accept Bitcoin donations. Wikipedia is a non-profit venture maintained by and large on donations from individual users.
People interested in chatting with me about BTC will find this a good place to do it: http://t.co/6byj4LLVMA
— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) March 10, 2014
Bitcoin enthusiasts have been eager to convince Wales of the digital currency's merits. Wales posted his Bitcoin address on Twitter last week and, unprompted, received donations totaling more than 4 BTC, which is worth about $2,500 by current exchange rates. On Reddit, Wales claimed he would pass the money onto the Wikimedia Foundations.
"See how easy it is to receive donations by Bitcoin. Wikipedia would really benefit from this," an anonymous user wrote as a note that accompanied her or his donation.
The Wikimedia Foundation has not yet adopted Bitcoin as a donation option because "the more payment options we give people, the less they donate," Wales wrote on Reddit. Wales spent a few hours debating with other Reddit users on this point.
One user suggested that Wikipedia should feature a Bitcoin donation button at the bottom of every page, since "paying with Bitcoin is so easy that it can often be an 'impulse buy.'"
Wales responded with the following:
I think it would not be wise to put it on the bottom of every page. In the grand scheme of things the number of people using bitcoin is effectively zero. So we'd be showing what would effectively be a promotion for bitcoin in exchange for a very small net financial gain. That'd be great for lots of for-profit bitcoin businesses, and great for the bitcoin movement, but not really sensible for Wikimedia.
Yes, maybe someday if bitcoin becomes mainstream.
Wales even had a response to a user who wrote he had a "stupid face": "Thank you for your kind words."
You can find the full Reddit thread of Wales' Bitcoin conversation here.
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