Fifteen years ago today, June 14, 2011, the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks fundamentally changed the trajectory of decentralized finance by: Official recruitment Bitcoin.
WikiLeaks faced a devastating financial blockade due to the controversial ‘Cablegate’ leak.
Traditional financial gatekeepers like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Bank of America, and Western Union suddenly cut ties with the organization. The embargo wiped out about 95% of WikiLeaks’ operating revenue overnight.
In response, WikiLeaks posted Bitcoin addresses and solicited donations. This was the first high-profile real-world stress test of Bitcoin as a censorship-resistant currency.
turning point moment
The integration of Bitcoin by WikiLeaks was a decisive milestone for the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Before WikiLeaks, Bitcoin’s ability to circumvent traditional financial blockades was largely theoretical.
It also served as the ultimate stress test. WikiLeaks was under a geopolitical microscope and faced immense pressure from the US government.
However, this adoption immediately brought the network, which was still in its infancy, to the attention of mainstream media. This horrified Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi famously warned on the Bitcoin Talk forum that WikiLeaks had “kicked the hornet’s nest.”
Just weeks after warning of the incoming “swarm”, Satoshi disappeared from public view forever.
After this, several other prominent organizations and companies started considering and accepting Bitcoin.
Content management system WordPress started accepting Bitcoin payments in November 2012. By February 2013, the Internet Archive announced that it was ready to accept donations in Bitcoin.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization responsible for Wikipedia, has followed suit and added Bitcoin as a donation method.
