Mozilla study shows bitcoin negatively impacts donations

Mozilla, the team behind the well-known Firefox browser, announced in November last year that it was including Bitcoin as one of the many ways people can choose to support it. 

"We are joining a growing list of merchants and organizations now accepting bitcoin, including Khan Academy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, United Way, Greenpeace, and Wikimedia Foundation", Mozilla said in online post at the time.

Andrea Wood, Mozilla's Director of Digital Organizing & Fundraising, said that given the volume of page views to that form (millions during the life of the campaign), she was concerned that adding any unnecessary text would distract donors and depress non-bitcoin conversions, the source of more than 99% of all our campaign revenue. So it was decided to add "Donate with Bitcoin" text, and test whether it depressed conversion or not. 

The test showed that bitcoin had a negative impact as revenue per visitor dropped by about $0.07 USD.

"Seven cents doesn't sound like much. However, at scale, it adds up. Our donation form will get roughly two million more visitors before the campaign concludes on December 31st - which means adding "Donate with Bitcoin" would reduce income by about $140,000 - a significant amount. At this time, bitcoin donations are not high enough to offset that lost revenue. We want to make sure bitcoin donors can find a link to give bitcoin, but this test suggests our primary donation form isn't the optimum location", the post said.