Recently, the Mozilla foundation announced it will be accepting donations in Dogecoin and other crypto, however this news did not sit well with the Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski as he criticized the move.
The Mozilla Foundation, which is responsible for the popular Firefox browser, said on Saturday that it has begun collecting Dogecoin donations through BitPay. The open-source community was less than enthusiastic.
The outcry was immediate, with some threatening to stop giving to the organization. However, these critics are unaware that Mozilla has been accepting cryptocurrency donations since 2014. Nonetheless, Mozilla’s co-founder was one of the fiercest critics of the foundation’s connection with crypto.
“Hello, I’m sure whoever controls this account has no idea who I am, but I started @mozilla and I’m here to say fuck you and fuck this,” wrote Jamie Zawinski, co-founder of Mozilla.org. “Everyone participating in the project should be utterly ashamed of their decision to collaborate with planet-destroying Ponzi crooks.”
Dabble in @dogecoin? HODLing some #Bitcoin & #Ethereum?
We’re using @BitPay to accept donations in #cryptocurrency https://t.co/EOsLD1Z88O
— Mozilla (@mozilla) December 31, 2021
In 1998, Zawinski co-founded Mozilla but left the project in 1999 to seek other opportunities. In 2002, the Mozilla project introduced the first version of their eponymous browser.
The Firefox browser was first published in 2004, and it is still one of the most popular open-source internet browsers, with over 211 million active users as of December 2021.
In November 2014, Mozilla started taking Bitcoin and cryptocurrency donations through Coinbase. Mozilla may accept a wide range of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, USD Coin, and Shiba Inu, through Bitpay. It’s worth remembering, though, that after everything is said and done, Mozilla may not even receive and hold crypto.
A cryptocurrency donation is delivered to BitPay, which is then converted into the currency desired by the receiver (in this case, Mozilla). To crypto’s critics, though, this detail is unlikely to make a difference.
The impact of cryptocurrencies on the environment has become a hot topic and a typical criticism levelled at the sector. Proof-of-work blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are known to be energy-intensive, with carbon footprints that exceed that of several countries.
