Mozilla’s Dogecoin Pitch Results in Backlash

The Mozil­la Foun­da­tion, a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that over­sees the Mozil­la Cor­po­ra­tion, has faced back­lash after ask­ing for cryp­tocur­ren­cy dona­tions in a high­ly-ratioed tweet.

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

Its fol­low­ers didn’t mince words, crit­i­ciz­ing the foun­da­tion for destroy­ing its rep­u­ta­tion by pitch­ing Doge­coin and try­ing to legit­imize crypto.

Some long-time fans of Fire­fox, the pop­u­lar web brows­er pro­duced by Mozil­la Corp., said that they would have no choice but to begrudg­ing­ly switch to anoth­er brows­er since cryp­to is a deal-break­er for them. “Don’t make me down­load Chrome. Don’t make me do it,” one dis­grun­tled user wrote.

Oth­ers also threat­ened to can­cel their month­ly dona­tions to the Cal­i­for­nia-based non-profit.

pic.twitter.com/NZNc85B2HS

— aval­on 🦉 (@uwuvalon) Decem­ber 31, 2021

Datasette cre­ator Simon Willi­son sug­gest­ed that Mozil­la would prob­a­bly be sur­prised by the over­whelm­ing­ly neg­a­tive response its piv­ot to cryp­tocur­ren­cy dona­tions has received.

I’m inter­est­ed to know if you were sur­prised by the size of the neg­a­tive response this got

— Simon Willi­son (@simonw) Jan­u­ary 1, 2022

Fire­fox users also took a jab at the “Web3” buzz­word, jok­ing that the inter­net has to back to “Web1.”

Mozil­la now accepts Bit­coin, Ether, Doge­coin, Shi­ba Inu and sev­er­al oth­er cryp­tocur­ren­cies in part­ner­ship with lead­ing cryp­to pay­ment proces­sor Bit­Pay. Its dona­tions get imme­di­ate­ly con­vert­ed into dol­lars to avoid extreme volatil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with crypto.

With many com­pa­nies dab­bling in cryp­tocur­ren­cies, the back­lash against them con­tin­ues to grow. As report­ed by U.Today, Dis­cord users forced the com­pa­ny to put its Ethereum inte­gra­tion plans on hold after threat­en­ing to can­cel their Nitro sub­scrip­tions en mass.

When it comes to Mozil­la, how­ev­er, cryp­to is noth­ing new. Back in 2014, the non-prof­it part­nered with cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange Coin­base in order to accept dona­tions in Bitcoin.

The Mozil­la Foun­da­tion invests dona­tions it received from the com­mu­ni­ty into edu­ca­tion, lob­by­ing and research.

Fire­fox has a 7.87% usage share of the desk­top brows­er mar­ket, accord­ing to Stat­Counter, which makes it the fourth most pop­u­lar brows­er (behind Chrome, Safari and Edge).