As Mozilla Foundation paused crypto donations, nonprofits raised over $2.4M in 2021

Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit behind Firefox, has announced that it is reviewing its decision to accept crypto donations.

Mozilla had announced on 31 December that it will use BitPay platform to accept these digital donations. But, the entity’s backtracking comes amid backlash from the community for crypto’s environmental impact. On its decision, Mozilla stated in a series of tweets,

“So, starting today we are reviewing if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals. And as we conduct our review, we will pause the ability to donate cryptocurrency.”

Further adding that decentralized web technology continues to be an important area for the foundation to explore.

While Mozilla has said that it appreciates the community for bringing the issue to their attention, it is worth noting that some of the voices against the foundation’s decision were of the people that helped build it.

Jamie “jwz” Zawinski, co-founder of Mozilla tweeted in response that it should be “ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.”

Hi, I'm sure that whoever runs this account has no idea who I am, but I founded @mozilla and I'm here to say fuck you and fuck this. Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.

— j͕̠̦̪͕̓͛̊̾̄ͅw̧̧̳̪̘͊̋͗̾͢͠z̢̘̞͈̺̞̩̓̽̐̋͗̆̋̚͟͜ (@jwz) January 3, 2022

In support of jwz, Peter Linss, the designer of Gecko expressed shock and noted that “You were meant to be better than this.”

With that, the creator of the Mozilla Observatory under the handle April King also commented,

“I cannot begin to express how disappointed I am in this decision.”

Crypto philanthropy

Lately, digital asset donations have become a popular method of philanthropy. Reports had noted that there was a 583% year-on-year increase in digital asset donations in 2021 on Crypto Giving Tuesday. Moreover, in the first, the total amount donated surpassed $2.4 million with an 839% increase in participating nonprofits on the blockchain platform.

With that being said, it is worth noting that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had suspended the use of Bitcoin in May 2021 over similar environmental concerns. Meanwhile, Samsung has recently announced that it is using the technology behind it to fight climate change.

For 2022, the company had stated in a release that,

“Samsung is partnering with climate solutions platform, Veritree, to manage the tree-planting initiative by harnessing blockchain technology to verify and track every step of the reforestation process.”