Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales appeared at the BlockShow Europe in May that turned a lot of heads because of his critical attitude toward ICOs and cryptocurrencies. However, it turned out his purpose for joining the conference was to warn the other participants. According to MarketWatch, Wales said that the industry was in for a rude awakening.

Following his comment, Wales revealed that Wikipedia would neither issue its cryptocurrency nor hold an ICO. He said that the online encyclopedia has no interest in joining the latest trend in the cryptocurrency industry.

Wales told Business Insider his reservations about blockchain. He also revealed his reason why he attended the BlockShow in Berlin. Based on the interview, he noted that the technology is super-interesting. However, it is a bubble that’s full of mania and hype. He added that since people paid him to deliver speeches, he flew to Berlin and he really liked the city.

It was clear that Wales was not in Berlin to emerge as the spokesperson for the adoption and innovation of technology.

During the time of crowdfunding, Wales extremely opposed ICOs. Instead, he relied on the conventional donations to keep his brainchild running. Reports showed that ICOs have effectively raised funds for a wide array of ventures, including EOS, the blockchain platform despite the flaws with the techniques. Theoretically speaking, the online encyclopedia could totally benefit from its token offering, considering its community of editors and worldwide use.

Even though Wikipedia has passed on any cryptocurrency, there are still other online platforms that utilize cryptocurrencies to reward different users. One good example is Lunyr. Known as an Ethereum-based platform, Lunyr is the blockchain equivalent of the online encyclopedia. Of course, there’s a difference, and it comes thru the tokens that are given to people whenever they contribute.

Lunyr believes that its blockchain encyclopedia can fix inaccurate information and push the limitations of crowdsourced knowledge. This is because the token would encourage users to offer factual and robust data. At present, Lunyr has 3, 080 articles.

Nevertheless, it’s imperative to ask whether or not Wikipedia needs a token to enhance its fundraising efforts. Over the past few years, the encyclopedia is doing just fine. In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation raised more than $80 million worth of donations. Eliminating the foundation’s overhead, it still boosted its endowment by approximately $20 million, which is not a small amount.

Then, Wale’s decision to avoid cryptocurrency should come as no surprise. Wikipedia has proven that it can succeed with its campaigns. If people want to keep the site well on a donation basis, then, the tokens from crypto may not be a good option.