Elder statesman evangelist! Vitalik excitedly recalls news from eight years ago: WordPress accepts Bitcoin payments
On November 16th, cryptocurrency wallet developer Block.io pointed out on Twitter: "8 years ago today, Wordpress.com became the first large organization to accept Bitcoin payments in history." Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, upon seeing this tweet, also expressed excitement: "I remember this, I even wrote a report about it."
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Historical Milestones
Vitalik believes that since November 16, 2012, cryptocurrency technology has made significant advancements. Transaction confirmation times are now faster, and features such as scalability, stablecoins, and privacy settings have been developed. He also emphasizes the need for further promotion of consumer cryptocurrency payment applications.
I remember this! I even reported on it: https://t.co/YNTOhD9BZA
Crypto has come far since then: in 2020 we now have fast confirmations, scalability, stablecoins, privacy options, etc. I actually think crypto for consumer payments deserves another push! https://t.co/nPWyfqFmy2
— 豚林 vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 16, 2020
Thereport written by Vitalik at that time was published on the venerable blockchain information platform "Bitcoin Magazine." In fact, this platform was co-founded by him and Mihai Alisie, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, and the backend of Bitcoin Magazine was also built using WordPress. Vitalik pointed out two reasons why WordPress adopted Bitcoin:
Geographically Restricted Payments
WordPress emphasized in apress release the restrictive policies of PayPal and credit card companies:
PayPal alone restricts access from over 60 countries, and credit card companies have similar policies, some due to political reasons and others due to high fraud rates. However, regardless of the reasons, we don't believe users from countries like Kenya, Haiti, Cuba, or Iraq should be prevented from accessing WordPress due to uncontrollable payment issues.
The article continues to state that unlike PayPal and credit cards, Bitcoin has no central authority, enabling instant payments over the internet without excluding any country. It also emphasizes, "Bitcoin payments take less time than entering credit card information."
Anonymity
Vitalik mentioned the anonymity of Bitcoin not mentioned in the press release. He pointed out that many blog authors on WordPress use pseudonyms to protect their real identities, a situation where credit card payments would expose their identities. Bitcoin, on the other hand, enhances user anonymity, which could be particularly useful in authoritarian regimes.
Boosting Bitcoin's Visibility
Despite some conflicts between the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities, as the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik has been involved in the Bitcoin community since 2011. He also pointed out in the report that WordPress's adoption could strengthen the confidence of other large institutions in Bitcoin, including potential adopters like Reddit, the largest forum in the United States. Although Reddit does not use Bitcoin in its applications, it launched a community points program based on the ERC20 standard earlier this year.
Currently, the Ethereum development team is preparing for the launch of 2.0. However, the mainnet deposit contract address 0x00000000219ab540356cBB839Cbe05303d7705Fa has only received 99,040 Ether, far from the required threshold of 524,288 Ether, which is 10%. There is a high possibility that the release date will be delayed once again.