The Wiki Community has voted against accepting cryptocurrency donations and unveiled at least three reasons to take such a decision. According to The Register, the proposal was made by Wikipedia administrator checkuser, who encouraged to Wikimedia Foundation to stop accepting crypto donations.
The vote was based on three points, the media outlet noted: it could be seen as an endorsement of cryptocurrency by the organization; the tech is not environmentally sustainable; and, last of all, accepting crypto could damage the Foundation’s reputation.
As of press time, the Wikimedia Foundation accepts donations in Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Ether (ETH), among other traditional payment methods in fiat currencies. However, crypto donations only represent a small amount in terms of revenues, only having a 0.08% of 2021 revenue, which is $130,100. Total revenue for the Foundation during that period was around $162 million.
“We never should have started accepting them in the first place. Many years later, they represent not even 1 percent of annual donations. Wikimedia is legitimizing a series of environmentally unfriendly Ponzi schemes by accepting Bitcoin and is getting almost nothing back financially in return,” one community member commented at the time of voting.
According to the Foundation’s policy, it converts crypto to US dollars immediately through the bitcoin payment service provider BitPay, a practice that has also raised concerns since it may be interpreted as an endorsement of the vendor.
71% (232) of the 326 votes cast between January 10 and April 12 this year supported the proposal to stop accepting cryptocurrency, while roughly 29% wanted to continue. However, the results are not binding.
Republican Congressional Committee and Cryptos
Last year, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) decided to accept cryptocurrency donations to support its candidates for the next year’s elections. The committee has become the first national party to take contributions in digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) in the midst of growing adoption in different sectors.
The Wiki Community has voted against accepting cryptocurrency donations and unveiled at least three reasons to take such a decision. According to The Register, the proposal was made by Wikipedia administrator checkuser, who encouraged to Wikimedia Foundation to stop accepting crypto donations.
The vote was based on three points, the media outlet noted: it could be seen as an endorsement of cryptocurrency by the organization; the tech is not environmentally sustainable; and, last of all, accepting crypto could damage the Foundation’s reputation.
As of press time, the Wikimedia Foundation accepts donations in Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Ether (ETH), among other traditional payment methods in fiat currencies. However, crypto donations only represent a small amount in terms of revenues, only having a 0.08% of 2021 revenue, which is $130,100. Total revenue for the Foundation during that period was around $162 million.
“We never should have started accepting them in the first place. Many years later, they represent not even 1 percent of annual donations. Wikimedia is legitimizing a series of environmentally unfriendly Ponzi schemes by accepting Bitcoin and is getting almost nothing back financially in return,” one community member commented at the time of voting.
According to the Foundation’s policy, it converts crypto to US dollars immediately through the bitcoin payment service provider BitPay, a practice that has also raised concerns since it may be interpreted as an endorsement of the vendor.
71% (232) of the 326 votes cast between January 10 and April 12 this year supported the proposal to stop accepting cryptocurrency, while roughly 29% wanted to continue. However, the results are not binding.
Republican Congressional Committee and Cryptos
Last year, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) decided to accept cryptocurrency donations to support its candidates for the next year’s elections. The committee has become the first national party to take contributions in digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) in the midst of growing adoption in different sectors.
Coinbase is delighted to announce the launch of the Community Analyst Program, a.k.a. the CAP Program. This is a new and exciting way for students, professionals and community members who share our core beliefs to contribute to Coinbase’s mission to increase economic freedom.
If you are crypto-native, crypto-passionate or insatiably crypto-curious, this is an opportunity to get involved in the fast-paced crypto industry.You will gain a foundation of meaningful experiences and relationships to build-on!
So let’s cover the basics: the Why, Who, What, Where and When?
Why Become a Community Analyst?
With the cryptocurrency industry evolving rapidly, Coinbase’s goal to help bridge crypto and the mainstream will become even more important. As such, we are launching a Community Analyst program to provide a platform for crypto-passionate individuals to launch their crypto careers, either at Coinbase or elsewhere in the space. At Coinbase, we believe it’s our responsibility to be good stewards of the space, which means developing the next generation of leaders and elite talent to drive growth for the wider industry. This will help accelerate wider industry growth.
As a Community Analyst, you will be on the front lines collecting information and signals from community hotspots, in-person events and/or conferences as well as public online resources (including the blockchain). Some benefits of the program include:
An hourly wage & Coinbase gear!
Opportunity to influence Coinbase initiatives
Further career development opportunities
Build relationships within your cohort and in the crypto community
Opportunities to meet and get to know the Coinbase team
Who Is Eligible for the Program?
Any university students, graduate degree students, full-time professionals or crypto community members are encouraged to apply. Community Analysts will be part-time contractors. Depending on company needs and candidate fit, Coinbase may extend summer internships or full-time offers.
What is Required of a Community Analyst? Where is the program held?
You need to be crypto-native or crypto-passionate and insatiably curious. The program is fully remote. Duties will include both virtual and real-world components, such as:
Embedding into crypto communities, participating and building relationships in community hot-spots throughout Discord, Telegram, Twitter, and other outlets.
Generating periodic reports or research analysis on emerging trends, community sentiment and grassroots activities.
Attending in-person meetups or crypto industry conferences as needed.
Average commitment of 10–15 hours per week.
You will update the Coinbase team during bi-weekly check-up calls and keep us updated on your progress via group chats. We expect Community Analysts to be self-motivated and dedicated to producing measurable results.
When does the program start?
The inaugural program cohort will be rolled out from January 2022 lasting through May 2022, and will be termed the “Spring Cohort”. A Fall cohort is scheduled for September 2022 to December 2022. Spring and Fall cohorts are expected to occur every year the program is active.
How do I join?
To join, you must first fill out the application form here. Those interested should have a basic familiarity with the cryptocurrency industry and blockchain space. If selected, you will have a call with our partners to ensure our goals and expectations are aligned. If you advance through the phone screening process, the onboarding process will begin — more details will be shared at that time.
Becoming a Community Analyst leads to opportunities to expand your role, such as potential summer internship offers, full-time offers or even opportunities developing within the communities you engage in. More information about opportunities to join a Coinbase summer internship or full-time offer will be given upon successful completion of the program. Note: Community Analysts will be contracted through a third party and will not be engaged as Full Time Employees of the company.
Coinbase Community Analyst Program was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
By Rishav Mukherji, Senior Product Manager, Coinbase
Many of our customers are looking for ways to better understand crypto both as an investment and as an app platform, but it can sometimes be challenging to find relevant information at the right time. Coinbase wants the crypto community to be an active part of this education effort. We want to help self-empower the community with easy-to-use sharing tools making it simpler and more fun to share information on your portfolio allocations or key crypto topics such as emerging new assets.
Sharing made simple
We’re making it easier to share information around your assets, such as price changes or portfolio allocations. Simply tap the Share button in the Coinbase app on any asset price page or your portfolio page and share these asset pages with your private network or on your social network. The choice is yours. When you share your portfolio with someone, you will only share your allocation percentages, never your portfolio balance.
You’re always in control
It’s easy to change your sharing settings and you can choose to stop sharing your portfolio allocations publicly anytime. Just go back to your portfolio, select Share and toggle to Private. Now, your portfolio is only visible to you. You’ll see a screen confirming your portfolio is no longer visible to anyone. You can always choose to share your portfolio again in the future by just toggling to Public.
More ways to learn and share, coming soon
We want to empower the cryptoeconomy to share knowledge and information and learn from each other. In the coming weeks, we’re launching new ways for you to share details about your trades. In the meantime, you can always check out our existing resources (Coinbase Learn, Bytes, Earn) to learn more about crypto.
Empowering the crypto community with new ways to learn and share was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Dubai, U.A.E, Oct 7th, 2021 — Socially conscious and ethical DeFi ecosystem MRHB DeFi is democratizing access to its private sale by allowing its public community members to partake in the pre-public sale rounds. Usually reserved only for the larger and institutional investors, the earlier stage private sale rounds offer early access, with investors able to enjoy privileged pricing.
MRHB’s community has reached 20,000 members in less than four months and to better reward their early supporters, MRHB has eliminated the large minimum participation amount required, in effect, leveling the playing field for smaller investors by offering access at pre-IDO prices. MRHB has officially announced that registration for the Pre-Public Sale Round 1 starts today, 7th October at 1PM UTC.
“In line with our ethos of inclusion, MHRB DeFi is pleased to offer this unique opportunity to our loyal community who has supported us from the beginning,” says MRHB DeFi CEO Naquib Mohammed. “Our inclusive and ethical philosophies promote equitable sharing of opportunities. This applies to our token launch as well as our products, so we stay true to our vision of empowering communities.”
Strategic Investments and Strong Support from Partnerships
Having onboarded institutional investors such as Mozaic of New World Group, Sheesha Finance, Contango Digital Assets and NewTribe Capital, to name a few, the DeFi ecosystem startup has received strategic investments which also comprise partnership support in various areas including advisory, marketing, networking, amongst others.
MRHB is currently developing eight different Shariah-compliant DeFi products, with the first being its Souq NFT, an NFT creation platform and marketplace which supports multi-chain solutions.
[Sneak Peak of Souq NFT]
Closely following the launch of the Souq NFT would be the Sahal Wallet, a multi-asset, non-custodial wallet that makes it easy to invest in halal crypto assets with in-built shariah-screening.
[Sneak Peak of Sahal Wallet]
MRHB DeFi was founded with a vision of bringing societies and communities not familiar with decentralized finance into the cryptoverse, and has a particular focus on delivering halal DeFi services which adhere to the ethical investment and financing principles of Islamic faith. Such business practices include those that avoid interest, usury, exploitation and other acts deemed unethical.
With more than US$3 trillion of liquidity invested in the Islamic finance market, bringing even a tiny portion of this to DeFi will represent a major step forward in the growth of DeFi worldwide whose total value locked is estimated to be around US$150 billion.
About MRHB DeFi
MRHB DeFi is a halal, decentralised finance platform built to bring ethics to the DeFi space with an approach that supports the inclusion of faith-based and other excluded communities, in addition to existing crypto-natives. Everyone can then benefit from the full empowerment potential of DeFi to help build a true peer-to-peer financial and economic value system.
Based on the tenets of blockchain such as trust, transparency, and security, MRHB DeFi has encapsulated universally applicable principles of Shariah into those tenets of blockchain to render a suite of offerings.
The project is backed by a diverse and strong team with backgrounds spanning crypto, technology, shariah, finance and seasoned institutional veterans of industry. The public sale offering will be in December. Register your interest and read more about MRHB DeFi’s Shariah Concept Paper, Lite and White Paper here.
Around the Block from Coinbase Ventures sheds light on key trends in crypto. In this edition, Justin Mart andConnor Dempsey explain what Loot Project is and why it’s interesting.
Pictured below, is a Loot bag: A text file consisting of 8 phrases overlaid on a black background. As it turns out, this text file is also an NFT, “Loot Bag #748,” and it sold for 250 ETH, or about $800,000at current prices.
So what can you do with it? Not much… for now, at least.
Dungeons & degens
On August 27th, Dom Hoffmann, who notably co-founded Vine, introduced Loot. A project consisting of 8,000 NFTs full of words that depict “randomized adventurer gear.” Closer inspection reveals items that a character might wield in a game like Dungeons & Dragons. A Short Sword, or Divine Robe of the Fox,for instance.
While we’ve seen a lot of NFT drops over the last few months, two things set Loot apart. First, these NFTs could be claimed for free. The claimee simply had to pay the standard Ethereum gas fee. The other more obvious differentiator: these NFTs are just a bunch of words.
Despite the glaring lack of chimp or penguin art, once claimed, these plain text NFTs quickly started selling for tens of thousands of dollars. At the time of writing, $230M in Loot has changed hands.
One’s knee-jerk reaction might be to dismiss Loot as just another symptom of speculative NFT fever. Loot does, however, introduce an interesting new NFT primitive. Before we get to what makes it interesting, it helps to understand a bit more about what a Loot NFT is.
Instead of just being a single provably scarce image, each of the 8 items within a given Loot bag has smart contract readable parameters. On top of that, each of the 8 items has its own rarity within the broader Loot universe.
Returning to Bag #748, while 6 of the 8 items are deemed “common”, the Short Sword and the Divine Robe of the Fox are decidedly rare. The Short Sword appears only 325 times across 8,000 Loot bags while the Divine Robe of the Fox appears only once.
Ok, so we have NFTs with Dungeons and Dragon-ey words on them that are smart contract compatible, with some words appearing less frequently than others. So what?
A community owned gaming platform
People appear to be excited about Loot not because of what the NFTs are, but what they could be. These NFTs were released into the wild and left to the interpretation of anyone who found them interesting. Anyone can build something using Loot NFTs as a foundation.
A sound analogy comes from Avichal Garg at Electric Capital, who likens Loot with a 52 deck of cards. Where on its own, a deck of cards is just 52 pieces of paper with pictures on them. With a bit of ingenuity, it’s also the foundation for thousands of games, from Poker, to Hearts, to Crazy 8’s.
Similarly, Loot and its 8,000 NFTs can serve as the foundation of an entire gaming metaverse. The ideal end state being an entire ecosystem of games where Loot items like the Divine Robe of the Fox serve different functions: think Dungeons & Dragons in the metaverse. Whoever builds something on top of Loot NFTs can determine the function served by a given item.
By building the foundation of a game, without building a game itself, Loot leaves its fate in the hands of a decentralized community. Whether or not one thinks it will be successful, it’s an intriguing idea to many.
So what are people building?
Early Loot experiments
For one, the image I showed above ranking the rarity of Loot bag #748 comes from an application built by someone named @scotato in the Loot community. By pasting your Loot contract address into 0xinventory.app, NFT owners can see the rarity of their Loot bag (note the ranking system was also devised by the community).
Another project called Lootmart will allow Loot holders to unbundle their Loot Bag into individual NFTs to swap items with other Loot holders, complete with AI generated images of individual items.
Similarly, lootcharacter.com was created to generate pixelated characters based on Loot bags. Here’s Bag #748.
A community member also spun up an ERC-20 token called Adventure Gold ($AGLD) while he was waiting at an airport. Anyone with a Loot bag could claim 10,000 $AGLD. FTX created spot and futures markets for the token and it hit a high of $7.70, meaning Loot holders were essentially gifted tokens worth $77,000 at their peak.
The idea behind $AGLD is that it can serve as an in game currency woven into a game that gets built some day. But like Loot itself, its value is up for interpretation. This didn’t stop people from incorporating it into other budding Loot projects, including a Loot themed “choose your own adventure” story, where $AGLD holders can vote on the direction of the story.
In Chapter 1 of, “Holy War Lore”, $AGLD holders were allowed to vote on whether a man wearing a Divine Robe should put on a Demon King’s crown to absorb his powers (they voted that he put on the crown). In Chapter 2, the crown gets the man into trouble and there’s currently a vote on how he should handle the situation.
These are just a few examples of what the grassroots community of Loot enthusiasts has created so far. The Loot discord reveals wide ranging discussion with distinct channels for builders, artists, writers and a whole lot more.
Creating value from chaos
To recap, Loot is interesting because it inverts the typical gaming and community development path. The Loot creator simply built the foundation of a gaming universe and threw it into the wild to see what others would do with it. And so far, it has energized a diverse community, with a host of new Loot projects in development.
This excitement, coupled with the current NFT bull market sent Loot NFTs soaring, with the cheapest Loot bag trading for $23,000 today. There are however, no guarantees that anything resembling a real game or real utility ever gets built on Loot. Owning a Loot bag is a bet on future utility, which is up to the community to build.
This is the challenge that Loot faces. Can a decentralized community channel its enthusiasm into creating inherent utility in owning a Loot bag? That utility could come from creating strategy games similar to Axie Infinity where Loot items can be used in combat, artwork and avatars exclusive to Loot owners, or from some other application yet to be cooked up.
We are just two weeks into the project, so imagination is required today, but the appeal is tangible.
The cost of entry
A key question surrounding Loot is “Why would game developers build games that incorporate Loot bags when only a select few can afford them?” Developers build games that appeal to the mass market, but the vast majority of gamers are priced out of owning a Loot bag today.
The question of incentives lies at the heart of Loot’s future. Are there answers? Yes — a few. First, game developers who build on Loot have the benefit of bootstrapping their game with a core, passionate community of Loot enthusiasts. Second, and more importantly, there may be unique ways to incorporate Loot without pricing out the majority of the market. We can take inspiration from Axie Infinity and Yield Guild Games. When Axie NFTs got too expensive for most players to afford, lending markets emerged that let players borrow the NFTs needed to play in return for a portion of the winnings from Play to Earn games. We could see the emergence of Loot DAOs that devise similar solutions. Synthetic Loot is another solution being explored. Synthetic Loot lets anyone claim a pseudo Loot bag that can’t be sold or transferred but can be used in Loot games, should a developer choose to allow it. This in theory can open the door for more players.
While many questions remain, we’re in the early stage of a radically new kind of project that’s completely inverted the typical game development model. A self organized grassroots community is now tasked with taking Loot’s foundation and building something real, with all of the tools that crypto, NFTs, and metaverse economies have to offer. The burning questions surrounding Loot’s future make it one of the most captivating experiments in crypto; one that will be fascinating to watch play out over the coming months and years.
Coinbase news
Kate Rouch Joins Coinbase as Chief Marketing Officer
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You can now mint NFTs on crypto exchange FTX
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Disclaimer: This material is the property of Coinbase, Inc., its parent and affiliates (“Coinbase”). The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Coinbase or its employees and summarizes information and articles with respect to cryptocurrencies or related topics that the author believes may be of interest. This material is for informational purposes only, and is not (i) an offer, or solicitation of an offer, to invest in, or to buy or sell, any interests or shares, or to participate in any investment or trading strategy, (ii) intended to provide accounting, legal, or tax advice, or investment recommendations or (iii) an official statement of Coinbase. No representation or warranty is made, expressed or implied, with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the information or to the future performance of any digital asset, financial instrument or other market or economic measure. The information is believed to be current as of the date indicated on the materials. Recipients should consult their advisors before making any investment decision. Coinbase may have financial interests in, or relationships with, some of the entities and/or publications discussed or otherwise referenced in the materials. Certain links that may be provided in the materials are provided for convenience and do not imply Coinbase’s endorsement, or approval of any third-party websites or their content. Coinbase, Inc. is not registered or licensed in any capacity with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Loot Project: the first community owned NFT gaming platform was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
