this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2022
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Mozilla accepting donations via cryptocurrency has caused a stir. (twitter.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Nyaa@lemmy.ml to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
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Just before New Year's, Mozilla posted a tweet talking about how they're going to accept cryptocurrency as a donation method, and a lot of people in the replies are very upset about it. Jamie Zawinski, a Mozilla founder, has also directly responded to it.

What's your thoughts on this?

Wayback Machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220105052253/https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1476951030638260225

Update: https://lemmy.ml/post/140209

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think, it's blown way out of proportion, like most criticisms of Mozilla are.
It's not like they're actually endorsing cryptocurrency, it's just their usual non-profit call for "if you happen to have too much money, please gib money".

Besides, Mozilla is a privacy-adjacent organisation. Cryptocurrency is horseshit for the environment, but it is a useful tool for anonymization.

And I have a feeling that people wanting to make a donation to Mozilla are largely not going to be the egoistic wealth chasers, but rather privacy-minded people that would prefer to stay anonymous as much as possible. I don't think chewing those people up over their environmental impact is good.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Cryptocurrency is horseshit for the environment, but it is a useful tool for anonymization.

Crypto is literally a public ledger, as anti-privacy friendly as you can be. Almost exchange in almost every country requires an insane amount of data before it lets you trade, so they can easily follow your transactions around the blockchain. P2P trading in the US, Canada and other modern countries requires the seller collects your ID as well.

[–] mayetili@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Some cryptocurrencies like Monero are private and anonymous

[–] Sal@mander.xyz 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I thought so too until I looked into it in more detail. After withdrawing from an exchange (if an exchange is used), one can use trust-less mixing to deposit fractional amounts into many different accounts generated from the same seed. I don't know if any crypto has a fully functional trust-less mixing protocol already implemented, but it is a work in progress for at least the project that I follow. The algorithm has already been described and I expect that in the future it will be accessible to anyone.

For a regular person using crypto in their day-to-day transactions, shuffling the coins can work well enough.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Exchanges already block shuffled coins so that doesn't work

Couple examples [1] [2] [3] [4]

[–] Sal@mander.xyz 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Thank you for pointing out those examples, they provide some valuable insight.

The government is not going to want you to have privacy, and they will continuously push for KYC laws. The exchanges will choose to abide by regulations because of self-preservation. In those messages that you posted, the exchanges cite "risks" without specifying - the risk that they worry about is regulatory risk. They don't want to be punished.

Once you have the crypto under your possession, you own it and you have control over it. You can take steps to make this private. Crypto deposited in an exchange is not under your possession.

These are not problems that show that crypto does not work. Quite the opposite. These are problems that showcase why we need to crypto! Adoption and development could allow us to not need centralized exchanges anymore.

[–] Thann@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

They still accept money printed by war criminals though

[–] Windows97@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

The idea isn't awful but the way they announced it definitely was

[–] onlooker@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I just took a look at what coins they take and yikes... all centralized coins. As in, the company behind the coin folds and the coin becomes worthless. Well, except Bitcoin, which is decentralized, but unfortunately is also an enormous energy hog, which other users here and on Twitter have pointed out.

So, yeah. I think they're right to call this a bad move. If you're going to support crypto, for the love of god, at least pick one that doesn't gobble up huge amounts of electricity or one that doesn't make rich people richer.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ah yes, Bitcoin is so decentralized only large institutions can afford to use it!

[–] onlooker@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 years ago

I meant decentralized as in there's no company or organisation behind Bitcoin, but yes, it's very cost prohibitive.

[–] testingthis@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why specifically is everyone so mad?

[–] jokeyrhyme@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Proof of work cryptocurrencies have pretty much ruined the concept of free compute: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html

The other complaint is that a huge problem facing humanity at the moment is insufficiently-regulated capitalism, and cryptocurrency makes that worse instead of making it better

[–] embaixadordaursal@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It is natural for the capitalist state to be deregulated. And it is desirable that it be so that the system is fragile and incapable of fully controlling the masses. Of course, it is mainly used for tax evasion and in criminal or parasitic activities, but it is possible and desirable that it be used for noble causes.

Cryptocurrencies are helping palestinians and many other peoples and groups around the world.

[–] jokeyrhyme@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I'd suggest that "natural" and "ideal" are not necessarily the same thing

I agree that it's natural for capitalism to be unregulated, because it is all-consuming and unsustainable by default, because it is inevitable that the few will centralise wealth, care only about their own interests, and subjugate the many

An ideal setup (for me) in a carefully-balanced capitalism would be to have equal power between the masses, the media, multi-national corporations, the wealthy, and the various levels of government: all would be doing important things in a society, but each is capable of holding the others accountable, none is able to gain control of the others

I believe we are very unbalanced currently, far from that ideal