On December 31, the software community founded in 1998, Mozilla, announced it was accepting crypto-asset donations via Bitpay. However, shortly after the announcement, a number of people complained about the decision the company made. A week later, Mozilla has announced it is backing away from digital currency acceptance for now and has “paused the ability to donate cryptocurrency.”
Mozilla Revealed Crypto Acceptance Last Week and Quickly Backed Away After Backlash
Last week, Mozilla, the current owners of the Gecko layout engine, the Thunderbird email client, and the Firefox web browser revealed it was accepting crypto donations via the payment processor Bitpay. “Dabble in dogecoin? HODLing some bitcoin [and] ethereum? We’re using Bitpay to accept donations in cryptocurrency,” Mozilla tweeted at the time.
Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski criticized Mozilla’s crypto acceptance decision immediately after the tweet. “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 f*** you and f*** this,” Zawinski said. “Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.”
Many others shamed Mozilla because of the crypto industry’s so-called effect on climate change. “Bitcoin is so bad for the environment,” Rich Burroughs replied to Mozilla’s tweet. “You might [want to] rethink this. Surely the planet is more important than a web browser.”
April King, another former Mozilla developer and the security engineer at Dropbox, responded: Hey Mozilla. You probably don’t remember me, but I created the Mozilla Observatory, the Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator, revamped the Firefox certificate viewer, and kept Mozilla safe for a half-decade. I cannot begin to express how disappointed I am in this decision.”
Mozilla Holds an ‘Important Discussion About Cryptocurrency’s Environmental Impact,’ Then Pauses Crypto Donation Acceptance
It seems Mozilla did not appreciate the complaints and on January 6, 2022, the company responded to the criticism. “Last week, we tweeted a reminder that Mozilla accepts cryptocurrency donations. This led to an important discussion about cryptocurrency’s environmental impact. We’re listening, and taking action,” Mozilla said. The software company added:
Decentralized web technology continues to be an important area for us to explore, but a lot has changed since we started accepting crypto donations. 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.
For quite some time now, crypto skeptics have been claiming digital assets like bitcoin are bad for the environment, specifically the proof-of-work (PoW) mining that is tied to the Bitcoin network. The environmental complaints are said to be unfounded by a number of crypto asset supporters that believe “bitcoin is one of the most environment-friendly financial networks.”
In fact, many people believe governments and central banks should be blamed for hurting the environment. Crypto advocates stress that while energy concerns have increased during the last year, nobody discusses the carbon and military violence backing U.S. dollars.
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Jamie Redman
Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.
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