The online encyclopedia’s co-founder recently said the website would not join the crypto bandwagon.
Jimmy Wales' appearance at the BlockShow Europe[1] in May turned a few heads because of his well-known critical attitude[2] toward cryptocurrencies and ICOs. However, it turned out his reason for attending the conference was to warn participants in the space. He noted that the industry was "in for a rude awakening," according to MarketWatch[3].
Following this comment, Wales recently revealed[4] that his brainchild, Wikipedia, would "absolutely never" issue its own cryptocurrency or hold an ICO. He said the website had "zero interest" in joining the crypto trend.
Wales told Business Insider his reservations regarding blockchain and why he attended BlockShow in Berlin in the first place:
"It's a super-interesting technology, but it's clearly a bubble with a lot of mania and hype around it. People pay me to give speeches, so I flew to Berlin. I really do like the city."
Clearly, he was not in Berlin to emerge as the next spokesperson for the development and adoption of the technology.
In a time of crowdfunding, it is notable that Wales vehemently opposes ICOs and instead relies upon conventional donations to keep the online encyclopedia running. ICOs have successfully raised funds for a variety of ventures, such as the blockchain platform EOS[5], even despite potential flaws[6] with these methods. Wikipedia could, in theory, benefit from its own token offering, especially considering its widespread use and large community of editors.
Although Wikipedia has passed on crypto, there are other encyclopedia platforms that use cryptocurrencies to reward users for their contributions. One example is Lunyr[7], an Ethereum-based platform that is essentially
