
Mozilla accepting Bitcoin donations - kang
https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/content/give-bitcoin
======
Mandatum
A little offtopic, has any of the major Bitcoin heists been traced to spending
yet? Would be funny to see a portion contribute to a project like this.
Especially in the case of Silk Road where no one can really come forward and
claim their bitcoin..

~~~
kordless
I don't think there's any good reason to speculate wildly about the interests
of a smallish segment of the market.

~~~
Mandatum
Sorry, was this a reply to the wrong comment? Can you expand?

~~~
kordless
Sure. Thank you for asking. No, it was directly addressing speculative
conversation.

I'm aware this might be a contentious statement, but frankly I'm tired of the
same old conversations about the value of Bitcoin compared to traditional
fiat. I much more appreciate conversations about the value of the technology
behind the blockchain, and the challenges we can surmount wielding it.

Conversations that incite conflict, including (perhaps) your original comment,
make me bored and sad when I think about how people approach and understand
crypto currencies. As the 'technical luminaries' for the the less technical in
the world, I think we owe it to ourselves to not incite FUD here in this forum
and then carry it out with us into the world.

It's the holidays as well, so it's a time when families gather and tell
stories. If we are having a good time bashing on Bitcoin value or relating it
to some two bit drug market that the FBI knocked down, we aren't educating on
it's value. You are just catering to the fear that is always present with new
technologies.

Anyway, you are allowed your own thoughts regarding the matter. I apologize if
I came off overly aggressive about it. It's important to me!

~~~
Mandatum
My comment was out of genuine curiosity. I agree they're not of much technical
value and for HN it's closer to "trash" material, however I don't see why we
must limit our comments to purely technical concepts.

I find the events surrounding Bitcoin, specifically the criminal aspects
fascinating. I mean come on, who doesn't love a good heist? Especially one
that's been committed anonymously and thus far turned up completely
untraceable. No, the content of the discussion generally isn't very
intellectual, however it does incite and bring about thought-provoking and
technically interesting arguments.

I never really put forth my thoughts on anything relating to Bitcoin when I
posted that comment. I was merely asking if there'd been work done around
tracing Bitcoin theft.. I don't think I'm inciting FUD whilst asking a
question. I understand that the talk of crime and theft in Bitcoin could
become tiresome for you and other technically and academically interested
parties, however my fascination with such topics isn't limited to Bitcoin. I
just don't think you should accuse me of speculation or inciting FUD when all
I posed was a question.

Also to be fair, I had labelled my comment offtopic.

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taariqlewis
Contributed to Mozilla for the first time ever with Bitcoin. Very fast/easy.

~~~
lkesteloot
Okay honest question: How did you get bitcoins? I've looked around and my
options seem to be to give my CC number to a shady website or to meet someone
in person and give them cash. Is there really no safe-sounding option?

~~~
yafujifide
Have you tried Circle? They're funded with over $17 million [1], so I don't
think they qualify as shady, and I'm pretty sure they let you buy with a
credit card.

[1] edit. Double checked and the looks like it's $17 million:
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/26/bitcoin-gets-another-
boost-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/26/bitcoin-gets-another-boost-as-
circle-internet-raises-17-million/)

~~~
walden42
Completely free with ACH purchases.

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t1m
When you hit the "Donate" link, it asks you for your email addy. IANAL, but
why not accept anonymous donations?

~~~
ChrisAntaki
When Coinbase gives the option to donate directly to a Bitcoin address,
"1GnkMmEjTHHrw8BaWzBxEzuNweUwhmwGrg" in this case, is that a wallet Mozilla
owns?

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MatthewMcDonald
It looks like a new address is generated for each transaction.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
Oh, good to know. I wish we knew Mozilla's permanent Bitcoin address.

~~~
teod
I don't think that's how it works. From my understanding, a new address is
typically used for every new transaction. What you are interested in is their
wallet which would be the sum of their addresses.

On the other hand, it appears that they are using Coinbase. In that case I'm
not sure Mozilla would have direct access to a wallet. Instead I imagine that
Coinbase keeps track of their balance which is divided among Coinbase's
wallets (sort of like a bank). I'm not too well versed however, so maybe
someone else can clear this up.

~~~
Arnavion
Correct. Bitcoin addresses are more like invoice numbers than account numbers.
You're expected to use a different one for each transaction so that you can
tell them apart.

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finnn
is anyone else seeing a broken image in the middle where I assume what should
be the "pay with bitcoin" button is?

[https://i.imgur.com/9oAmKDl.png](https://i.imgur.com/9oAmKDl.png)

~~~
robbyking
It looks like Coinbase's CDN uses unique identifiers for static assets to
prevent caching, and the one Mozilla used for that image is out of date.

Broken:
[https://coinbase.com/assets/buttons/donation_large-36ee93618...](https://coinbase.com/assets/buttons/donation_large-36ee936185fdf9a88e3a28cc685fb9b7.png)

Working:
[https://coinbase.com/assets/buttons/donation_large.png](https://coinbase.com/assets/buttons/donation_large.png)

~~~
davidascher
Ugh. Thanks, will get folks to look at what happened.

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BrainInAJar
No Dogecoin? Requires an email address? Why not just post a BTC and/or Doge
address and be done with it?

~~~
lappa
I would hope Mozilla's ethics prevent them from promoting scams by accepting
Dogecoin.

~~~
BrainInAJar
They're already accepting scams like bitcoin, why not accept the
crytpocurrency that doesn't try to pretend it isn't a joke

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eglover
Not on the main donation page. If it's hidden away in a nook it doesn't count.

~~~
davidgerard
When Wikimedia started accepting Bitcoin, I was utterly unsurprised that the
_very first_ reaction from Bitcoiners was to complain about how WMF was doing
it. You'd almost think their interest was in promoting Bitcoin rather than in
donating to the charity in question.

~~~
eglover
No, seriously.

Bitcoin users donate more to causes. Why would they require a separate Google
search just to donate in a widely used currency? What's the point of creating
a separate page? It's simply bad practice.

It seems to me you just want to jump on a soap box. Go blog about it. But when
I want to donate to something I go to the website and click 'Donate' and I USE
THE OPTIONS THERE...

~~~
vectorpush
> Bitcoin users donate more to causes.

No evidence of this.

> Why would they require a separate Google search just to donate in a widely
> used currency?

It's not "widely used" for any fair definition of the term, it's an upcoming
niche _at best_.

> But when I want to donate to something I go to the website and click
> 'Donate' and I USE THE OPTIONS THERE...

Fair enough. It's really up to you to decide what's more important, donating
to the cause or bitcoin evangelism; if you're more concerned with the former
rather than the latter, it shouldn't matter where the bitcoin option is
located so long as you can use it to make your contribution.

~~~
eglover
This is what I mean. This isn't a debate and I've no interest in your lack of
research and bad arguments.

Mozilla says they accept Bitcoin and has A page for it. But beyond this single
story, people are never going to see it. If they started accepting feces and
didn't put it on the donation page I'd still say it doesn't count.

If you want to rant about Bitcoin and act like you're on some sort of higher
ground because you don't care about what currencies are accepted, blog about
it. I don't care. It has nothing to do with my point.

~~~
vectorpush
> This isn't a debate and I've no interest in your lack of research and bad
> arguments.

This is a common tactic used by individuals with no evidence to support their
claim. Rather than substantiate _your_ claim that "bitcoin users donate more
to causes" or provide numbers to explain _your_ subjective assertion that
bitcoin is a "widely used currency", you shift the onus on me to provide
evidence for statements made by yourself. Its your responsibility to support
your own claims, not mine.

> Mozilla says they accept Bitcoin and has A page for it. But beyond this
> single story, people are never going to see it.

...

> _people are never going to see it_.

Don't you understand that _nobody cares about that_ except bitcoin
evangelists. The bitcoin donation page is functioning as intended, anybody who
cares about supporting the Mozilla foundation has the option to donate funds
using fiat or bitcoin. If your only complaint is related to the visibility of
the bitcoin donation option, then it's pretty obvious to everyone that all
you're really after is publicity for bitcoin.

> If you want to rant about Bitcoin and act like you're on some sort of higher
> ground because you don't care about what currencies are accepted

What's with the persecution complex? "Not caring which currencies are
accepted" doesn't mean I feel like I'm on "higher ground", it literally means
what the sentence says: I don't care, and nobody else does except people who
have a bitcoin promotion agenda.

~~~
eglover
> nobody cares about that except bitcoin evangelists

I haven't evangelized anything. I said Mozilla does NOT accept Bitcoin though
their donation page. Get over yourself.

~~~
vectorpush
> Mozilla does NOT accept Bitcoin though their donation page.

Wrong.

[https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/content/give-
bitcoin/](https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/content/give-bitcoin/)

------
steven2012
I'm curious why Mozilla needs contributions.

Previously they were getting $300M a year from Google and they were required
to spend that every year, from what I've been told from employees that I know.
Everything I've heard from them is that Mozilla is a very wasteful company.
They spend a bunch of money on things like boondoggles to Europe for the
staff, apartments in Paris that anyone can book, employees sitting around with
almost no work to do, etc. They also have really lucrative bonuses (>40%/yr)
for employees that push salaries over $200k for senior engineers, so I'm just
wondering why they even bother with donations? I'm assuming that their
contract with Yahoo is even more lucrative than $300M/year, so they must have
a lot of money to spend, why worry about donations that might only reach a
small percentage of that?

~~~
nrc
Major points: donations are used for projects working on things like web
literacy, rather than on large engineering projects like Firefox. The more
Mozilla get from donations, the less dependent on Google/Yahoo they have to be
and thus they can be more independent - even fairly small absolute amounts
will 'push the needle' here.

Minor point: I strongly contest that Mozilla is a wasteful company - salaries
are low by large-tech-firm standards and spending (on travel, equipment, etc.)
is fairly frugal. I have never heard of employees having almost work to do -
it is nearly always the opposite. Travel is nearly always for coordinated team
work since many employees and volunteers work remotely. For a (relatively)
small budget, Mozilla produce an awful lot of results - the entire company is
run on vastly less than the marketing budget (!) for Chrome, for example
(sorry, can't find a source though).

~~~
mcpherrinm
The "marketing budget for Chrome" is something thrown around internally at
Mozilla, but that number was pulled out of calculations on how much it would
cost somebody else to advertise Chrome that google does on its own properties.
Google does not have to charge itself to advertise itself.

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deciplex
They have to give up the revenue advertising for someone else, to advertise
for themselves.

~~~
tempestn
In theory; in practice most of the places where Chrome is advertised they
wouldn't advertise a third-party product. (Like on the Google search engine
homepage, for instance.) That said, I suppose they could be advertising a
different internal product there, so there's certainly an opportunity cost
regardless.

