There are two immediate question that jump to mind when I see this. What is the percentage of Reddit users that also use Bitcoin (or Coinbase for that matter)? And for those non-users, what is the minimum tip value that would entice them to actually go through the process of claiming the Bitcoins?
Any transaction of < 0.01 BTC attracts a transaction fee, which most clients default to 0.0005 BTC.
At present 'market' rates ( $179 per BTC as I type ), that means that the tipper has to give $1.79 to avoid incurring a fee, and the recipient should wait until their stash exceeds that level before transferring to their wallet. Which is good practice, anyway, to avoid creating lots of wallets with small values that can't be ( affordably ) used.
There's been a bot facilitating something similar for a while now. You can just post a comment, something like "+/u/bitcointip @RedditUsername $1". I haven't used it, but it seems pretty neat. Documentation: http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip/comments/13iykn/bitcointi...
The verify function causes the bot to leave a confirmation reply which has a help button, so people who want to find out often can. I know some subreddits understandably dislike that practice though.
We didn't think it was easy enough to use. Also you can do micro-transactions with zero fees on Coinbase, which is ideal doe situations like this which are all small payments, so we wanted to take advantage of that.
Pretty cool, but it's been possible to tip users bitcoins on Reddit for a while now. (http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip). Although this has the advantage of being fee less, since it can stay within Coinbase and avoid the blockchain.
Thanks for pointing this out. We wanted to do one that was (1) easier to understand for users new to bitcoin and (2) used the free micro-transactions feature on Coinbase that you mentioned. Number 1 in particular I think is really important, but it is still a work in progress, so if you have any ideas let us know!
...And (3) force people to either create a Coinbase account or lose their money. (The post wasn't very clear, but as I understand it the receiver will get a PM linking them to Coinbase where they will need to sign up to receive their money).
I don't want to just sound cynical, so I'll try to provide a solution. Perhaps there should be an option to reply to the BitTip PM with a regular Bitcoin address where all future payments will be sent.
The micro-transactions are off-blockchain (an in-network transaction between Coinbase accounts) - unfortunately that's the only way to get them for free without any miner fees (many are very small amounts). However, if you accumulate enough tips (at least 0.01 BTC) in your Coinbase account you can then send them out of Coinbase to any other bitcoin wallet and we'll even pay the fee for you. We don't want to have any lock-in there.
It would be nice to receive your tips at an external address like you mentioned, but the miner fees could be greater than the amount you receive with such small amounts.
The existing bitcointip on reddit is offensive on many levels, the main problem being all of the bitcoin enthusiasts that upvote someone's tip, and the verification even though neither contribute anything to the comment thread, and pushes actual conversation about whatever the topic is down in the thread which kills the reading experience for the user at the sake of promoting bitcoin.
What do people think about a similar service for HackerNews/Twitter/Facebook? You need a way to be able to send the person a private message (to receive the first claim URL). But other than it is pretty simple to set up.
Implementing the same service on Twitter and Facebook would have the most impact. Those should be the first priorities in my opinion. I really like this though, and the token API seems really useful.
I think the real "killer app" for this would be github.
There have been many times that I've come across a particularly useful piece of code on github for which I would have loved a frictionless way to tip the author. This would complement, not compete with, gittip I believe.
If you're interested please take a look. Still a lot of work to be done, but we welcome any requests, suggestions and criticisms you might have.
As announced at the San Jose Bitcoin Conference in May, we've built an enterprise API that's open to everyone. (See https://Github.com/PikaPay ) An integration with Coinbase is already in the works.
Look at the result: it just ends up hijacking what could have been constructive dialogue into a BTC proselytizers circlejerk and hangers on who want a handout by asking 'What just happened here??!!?'
I think tipping people in Bitcoin is an absolutely awesome way to introduce new people to Bitcoin. I think it would work well on HN, but I imagine not everyone would be a fan.
Why don't you guys start doing this on your own terms? People love using bitcoin in quirky ways -- let them, make it even easier than this current method.
It's a good point. You can actually buy reddit gold using bitcoin right now (through Coinbase) so we are familiar with it. When people give reddit gold they are actually supporting reddit which is cooler in some ways, although the poster/commenter doesn't directly benefit.
We thought about having an option in the Chrome extension that also contributed to Reddit on each tip, so something like "also tip 0.001 BTC/10%/whatever to Reddit each time I send money". The micro-transactions could be broken down like this in any arbitrary way. Just an idea at this point, but definitely doable.
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[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadAt present 'market' rates ( $179 per BTC as I type ), that means that the tipper has to give $1.79 to avoid incurring a fee, and the recipient should wait until their stash exceeds that level before transferring to their wallet. Which is good practice, anyway, to avoid creating lots of wallets with small values that can't be ( affordably ) used.
There's quite a significant userbase in r/bitcoin, although reddit itself supports Bitcoin for Reddit Gold purchases and they've stated the number of purchases is negligible: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1lcy3h/dreamhost_ma....
The reddit bitcoin tip bot that others have mentioned is used fairly often (thousands of times a month), here is a collection of stats incl. frequency of tips: http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip/comments/1nslow/updated_b...
I don't want to just sound cynical, so I'll try to provide a solution. Perhaps there should be an option to reply to the BitTip PM with a regular Bitcoin address where all future payments will be sent.
It would be nice to receive your tips at an external address like you mentioned, but the miner fees could be greater than the amount you receive with such small amounts.
It uses our Token api call https://coinbase.com/api/doc/1.0/tokens.html and a browser extension. Here is the one we wrote for reddit https://github.com/coinbase/bittip
Seems like in HN/Twitter/Facebook users don't give that much value to each other that they would want to tip.
> Can I use bitcoin? Sort of. We currently support manual payouts using Coinbase. However, you cannot use bitcoin to pay in.
There have been many times that I've come across a particularly useful piece of code on github for which I would have loved a frictionless way to tip the author. This would complement, not compete with, gittip I believe.
If you're interested please take a look. Still a lot of work to be done, but we welcome any requests, suggestions and criticisms you might have.
As announced at the San Jose Bitcoin Conference in May, we've built an enterprise API that's open to everyone. (See https://Github.com/PikaPay ) An integration with Coinbase is already in the works.
You've been warned.
We thought about having an option in the Chrome extension that also contributed to Reddit on each tip, so something like "also tip 0.001 BTC/10%/whatever to Reddit each time I send money". The micro-transactions could be broken down like this in any arbitrary way. Just an idea at this point, but definitely doable.