Mozilla announced on Monday that it would suspend its contribution to two cryptocurrency charities — one that focuses on promoting digital sovereignty and another that supports equality for women and people with disabilities.
What Mozilla said?
“As part of our commitment to transparency, we will be halting our contributions to these organizations until further notice,” Mozilla said in a blog post on Tuesday afternoon. “This decision is not taken lightly, but follows careful consideration of recent discussions around environmental, social, and governance considerations for FirefoxOS, including those outlined by the recently concluded Global Blockchain Summit meeting.”
The company added that they did not want their contributions being made during this time, especially given the risk of reoccurring issues associated with natural disasters in times like this. However, they noted, “we believe that the risks are minimal, as our main focus as creators of open-source technologies is to improve the Internet for all, and there are plenty of ways for us to contribute to this work.”
Mozilla began contributing to its foundation after its CEO Jamie Zawinski was quoted criticizing the use of Bitcoin in his interview about blockchain this month. According to The Verge, he called it “a terrible way to get money into your bank account or start a business.” In addition, some news outlets have reported that Mozilla founder Mike Cannon publicly criticized bitcoin in his 2017 testimony before Congress.
Jamie Zawinski posted on 3rd January, “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 fuck you and fuck this. Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.”
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More on the story
Although many argue against crypto exchanges using Bitcoin as their major asset class due to the potential for market manipulation, reports from DeFi projects that offer staking and lending are growing. At the same time, experts say that alternative cryptocurrencies could help decentralize infrastructure. However, other crypto investors have also voiced fears over the lack of regulation and how little regulation exists. As Cointelegraph points out, “despite concerns about cryptocurrency security, there are a relatively small fraction of crypto assets currently traded on centralized exchanges.” Meanwhile, Yahoo Finance notes that “some experts estimate that more than half of today’s markets are trading crypto in some capacity.” This means that crypto exchanges are still vulnerable to threats of manipulation, according to Yahoo Finance, “but that has been happening for years.”
The detailed plan of Mozilla
In October, Mozilla released detailed plans for what it considers a world where technology will be free and accessible to everyone. According to the plan, which includes a universal basic income (UBI) and payment systems that will be fair, the government would pay up to $50,000 per annum for each person within the UBI system’s reach, which translates to roughly $10,000 per adult in a household. Additionally, there will be no need to purchase any physical currency to access the UBI system’s resources. When you get them, you will be able to use them in any way possible, even if you don’t own or have the funds to afford them.
In the case of the GSI, Mozilla says that you would receive tokens as a reward when helping others to share and make resources, or helping fellow users, “or when performing tasks such as reporting illegal activities in public spaces, or participating in hackathons with hackers.” There are no fees, only “transactions,” and once a user receives enough UBI tokens, they can redeem them for gift cards to anyone else who needs them or wants them; they do not expire in 5 days or 60 days as some popular ICOs claim. Furthermore, it will be possible to use the UBI to “provide basic resources in situations like food, shelter, health care, or education to others in need” rather than paying for someone else to provide this.
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