Share this article
WikiLeaks Shop Now Accepts Bitcoin Lightning Payments
In 2011, WikiLeaks was among the first organizations to accept donations in bitcoin. Now its shop is taking bitcoin payments over Lightning.
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 9:29 a.m. Published Jul 9, 2020, 6:29 p.m.
The official WikiLeaks Shop, an offshoot of the non-profit infamous for leaking government secrets, now accepts bitcoin Lightning payments.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
All proceeds from the online store, which sells WikiLeaks T-shirts and other swag, goes to fund WikiLeaks operations. The shop already accepts bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies for payments. Now, as of Tuesday, it also accepts bitcoin payments via Lightning, making the WikiLeaks Shop one of the earliest vendors to do so.
The Lightning Network supports a newer, faster type of bitcoin transaction that could potentially help bitcoin scale to support many more users. But using Lightning is still somewhat experimental and risky, compared to sending transactions directly to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Read more: Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Is Vulnerable to ‘Looting’: New Research Explains
A WikiLeaks Shop spokesperson told CoinDesk the site added Lightning support after receiving a few requests from prospective customers. "We try to offer as many crypto payment options as possible that our supporters request, as lots of supporters also love cryptocurrency," the person said.
WikiLeaks an early bitcoin adopter
This latest development from the WikiLeaks Shop carries historical significance since WikiLeaks was one of the first organizations to accept bitcoin in 2011 as a way to receive donations. At the time, U.S. banks were blocking payments via Visa and Mastercard to the controversial organization.
Read more:WikiLeaks to Accept Additional Cryptocurrencies for Donations
"I can’t speak on behalf of the main organization as the shop is technically separate. However, for the shop [bitcoin] was an easy process to add as we use the CoinPayments gateway," a shop spokesperson told CoinDesk.
Users who pay for items using cryptocurrency rather than traditional payment methods receive a 5% discount.
"We generally see most crypto orders in bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum and very few in the other altcoins, but perhaps we will have more orders with this one," the spokesperson added.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Solana’s Drift Launches v3, With 10x Faster Trades
With v3, the team says that about 85% of market orders will fill in under half a second, and liquidity will deepen enough to bring slippage on larger trades down to around 0.02%.
What to know:
- Drift, one of the largest perpetuals trading platforms on Solana, has launched Drift v3, a major upgrade meant to make on-chain trading feel as fast and smooth as using a centralized exchange.
- The new version will deliver 10-times faster trade execution thanks to a rebuilt backend, marking the largest performance jump the project has made so far.
Top Stories
