WikiLeaks Now Accepts ZCash Donations

WikiLeaks is now accepting ZCash donations. The organization still accepts Bitcoin donations as well. However, there have been requests from donors who prefer more privacy-oriented donation methods for this particular site. Given that, Zcash makes a lot of sense. This is an intriguing decision that will probably inflate the ZEC price for some time to come.

A Proper Use Case for ZCash, Courtesy of WikiLeaks

The story of WikiLeaks and cryptocurrency donations goes back some time. In the beginning, the platform survived thanks to donations made using PayPal. However, given the sensitive nature of the website and the parties it exposes on a regular basis, PayPal made the (wrong) decision to freeze the organization’s payment processing account. This created quite a backlash against both PayPal and the U.S. government alike, yet WikiLeaks used the time wisely to search for alternative solutions.

That solution was Bitcoin, which was still a relatively underappreciated cryptocurrency at the time. However, thanks to WikiLeaks’s embrace of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency gained significant notoriety. So far, WikiLeaks has continued to accept Bitcoin donations, and it does not appear they have any plans to change that. It is good to see organizations stick with what they know will work out best in the long run.

WikiLeaks is keeping all of their donation methods open for now. In fact, it plans to double down on accepting cryptocurrency payments. As of today, you can use ZCash to contribute to WikiLeaks as well. This makes Zcash the third cryptocurrency accepted by the site in recent years. Not too long ago, it enabled Litecoin deposits as well. Some people may wonder why Ethereum is not on that list just yet, but it seems unlikely that will happen anytime soon.

Zcash users have two different donation addresses from which to choose. They can send a regular transaction, or they can move funds to a private address. It is interesting to see WikiLeaks supporting both options, and it makes a lot of sense for them to work with more privacy-oriented cryptocurrency solutions. Neither Bitcoin nor Litecoin provides any privacy or anonymity when moving funds. It will be interesting to see how many people choose to donate their ZEC.

Once WikiLeaks made the announcement on Twitter, it immediately received a lot of feedback from the overall cryptocurrency community. It did not take long for certain altcoin supporters to come out of the woodwork and claim that their favorite coin is better than ZCash when it comes to privacy. Those comments are always great to see, as it shows there is a fair bit of competition in the privacy and anonymity race. Some users even feel Monero would be a better choice, since it would prevent anyone from seeing how much XMR the group holds in the first place.

It does not appear as if this decision will affect the ZCash price all that much. There are not too many use cases for ZEC, and donating to WikiLeaks is not something everyone does regularly. It is still good news for the currency as a whole, seeing as WikiLeaks values its work in the privacy department. It will be interesting to note whether other cryptocurrencies are added to the organization’s donation page in the future. WikiLeaks continues to make waves in one way or another.