1y ago

Open Source Collective Is Disabling Contributions in Cryptocurrencies

Open Source Collective Is Disabling Contributions in Cryptocurrencies - Open Source Collective

Old news that I just happened upon. Open Collective manages donations for many open source projects. Their reasons for discontinuing crypto supports are all problems that XMR fixes.

So frustrating when people throw the baby out with the bath water here. Imagine Henry Ford with his Model-T.

You have to inflate the tires? You have to keep filling it with gas all the time? Only 10MPH? Yeah no thanks, we're banning your "auto mobile" project, this would never work.

This isn't even a good metaphor considering XMR already exists as a solution.

18 comments

How does XMR prevent transactions from sanctioned nations?
- How does XMR prevent transactions from sanctioned nations?
  how does cash or digital cash(XMR) prevent transactions? your question doesn't make much sense
  it would be like asking a 20$ dollar bill to stop being transacted from someone sanctioned. A 20$ dollar bill itself cannot discriminate who is using it. You give that 20$ bill to someone and they don't know the history of that 20$ bill, you don't know who used it before and that's why everyone can take it, because this means they know they will be able to use it.
  when something is fungible like cash or digital cash(XMR), law enforcement needs to find other ways to stop what they considered sanctioned nations or criminals or bad people or whatever.
- How does anyone accepting cash donations prevent donations from sanctioned nations?
  Also pretty sure that Ukraine has gotten a bunch of donations from Russian citizens (who faced consequences if they used traceable means of payment).
  
  I don't know. You're the one making fantastic claims. The onus is on you to back them up.
- No, how would that be possible? Exchange can block you if you are you send/receive transactions from sanctioned countries.
- Why should it? If I want to send money to a person, that's noone's business except mine and of the person receiving it.
  
  I'm not making the claim that it is. Open Source Collective had an account shut down because they received a crypto donation from a sanctioned country. They decided to stop accepting crypto because of that incident. OP has made the claim that XMR has already solved all the problems they describe. I question that claim.
The major issue is the low market share of crypto and the higher effort required to get USD. If you want USD, Monero can not fix this. So whenever you can offer your goods and services in XMR natively to lesser the dependence on fiat ever so slightly.
fwiw Open Collective still manages crypto funds/grants for projects, I just saw this recently: https://blog.orhun.dev/open-source-funding-with-ratatui/ the Ratatui project set up a Open Collective to handle donations from the "DRIPS network" crypto
edit: also just looked more at the blog's site and at the donation page Crypto only has Monero ;) https://donate.orhun.dev/ love it @orhun@fosstodon.org !
- @rafaelxmr @edisondotme Haha, thanks!
  I think our case was a bit special due to the fact that we explored this option together with OC. They might update their documentation to officially support it soon.
  
  That is awesome, thank you for the write up and setting the precedent with an open mind!
  Their initial reasoning makes sense, with their crypto earnings being only 1.4% of the total usage, while technically having to manage the services to handle incoming payments for all different asset, and all mainstream coins having traceability as a feature making dealing with it way more complicated, so if they looked at it impartially and not politically biased they should definitely consider having a Monero only option by default, which curiously was also missing from the initial implementation, where I can send money I purchased, received or mined and no one can ever receive "tainted funds" but rather just receive digital cash, as like cash it is money that can move from various different hands without a trace, which then can all be equally spent to pay developers, goods, services, etc. and not face risk of what the real origin of funds is. It should come with the intent to be a saner option for payments rather than accepting many coins at once just for the sake of accepting it.
  but I hope the Drips approach has success
- Great read! Love the documentation style.
  The donation address being a QR code only makes it annoying to do on a phone. (Share to QR reader then copy address, adds a lot of friction)
- Wut? They stopped accepting crypto. So you have a link at OC that says otherwise?
  
  As per docs they removed this option for individual users to contribute using crypto as a payment method: https://docs.opencollective.com/help/financial-contributors/crypto but they still manage crypto assets, as shown by the recent Ratatui invoice paid by the "drips network" https://opencollective.com/ratatui/contributions/751695
Yeah that was like a year ago.
They didn't say why, but I think the risk was money laundering. Like creating a project and you yourself donating to it.

18 comments