Show HN: TipperCoin - Send Bitcoins over Twitter

http://www.tippercoin.com/

by sida • 13 years ago

34 30 13 years ago

tippercoin.com

retube• 13 years ago

is there an email equivalent service?

locksley2• 13 years ago

Yeah, Coinbase does this.

sida6• 13 years ago

Yeah, as locksley said you can use coinbase for over the email BTC transfers.

The original intend for building TipperCoin is for tipping and supporting open sourced projects. To send a tip / act of gratitude to people that built cool stuff and that you don't personally know (as opposed to email, which you tend to know them).

A few weeks ago, we built an open sourced browser wallet (www.sparecoins.io) and we posted it on reddit and got a bunch of tips with reddit tip bot. That was very encouraging for me. (The fact that people liked it enough to send us a tip!!) And so we decided to build this tipping service (open sourced, ofc!) to encourage supporting other projects.

steveklabnik4• 13 years ago

Tipping is a really interesting aspect of cryptocurrency. I've never made a cent from blogging, but I added Dogecoin and Bitcoin links at the bottom of my last post, and actually got some tips.

Tipping is also one of the reasons that Dogecoin is seeing such large growth, at least within Reddit.

ninguem2• 13 years ago

Is Dogecoin tipping real? I assumed it was just a parody of Bitcoin tipping.

steveklabnik4• 13 years ago

Nope, it is 100% real. Source: https://github.com/mohland/dogetipbot

ahoy• 13 years ago

I believe it's both real AND a parody of bitcoin.

sida6• 13 years ago

I agree.

I also find it's easier to tip Bitcoins. Emotionally, it doesn't feel like I am spending money, and as a recipient it also feels more novel (we got a few donations for some of our other projects). It is almost like a star on github but so much better. Like, "wow, they really like my project". It is very satisfying

There has been a lot of talks on micro-transactions in cryptocurrency. I think there is going to be a long time before a micropayment paywall will become effective. Not enough people have bitcoins.

I believe though that micropayment could grow out of tipping. When authors like yourself start accepting bitcoin donations, and one day there will be enough donations that someone would think, "oh wait, I don't need to need to spam my users with Google ads anymore."

Personally, I would like to see services like Gary Bernhardt's screencasts to start accepting micropayments in Bitcoin. https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog

steveklabnik4• 13 years ago

Yup. The fact that there are waaaaaay many Dogecoin and that they're easier to actually get encourages tipping too. I have a very small amount of DOGE, yet tipping 10 or even 100 doge is not even a second thought for me.

I actually do accept BitCoin and Dogecoin for both of my ebooks now. In the past I'd actually given people who wanted to pay me in BitCoin free copies because I didn't even want to take them.

brosirmandude• 13 years ago

Cryptocurrency tipping culture is really interesting to me. I can't think of another culture or system that encourages people giving away small amounts of money because they like something you said or just because they feel like it. I can see tipping becoming huge on Facebook and Twitter. And possibly even as a pseudo payments system for services like Pinterest.

sida6• 13 years ago

The beautiful thing is that tipping real money kind of doesn't feel right. Like, "hey ryan bates, good job on the railscast, here is a dollar"

But, personally, when it is in cryptocurrency it feels very different.

quantumpotato_• 13 years ago

Can you elaborate?

gfodor4• 13 years ago

I thought about how I'd add a tip action on HN via a Chrome plugin, but it's hard since HN users don't usually disclose contact info, so you can't onboard them when they receive a tip. Many HN users use their twitter handles, so that's something, but it would be nice if there were some simple OAuth API to get a user's e-mail. Or, pg could implement bit/dogecoin tipping :)

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

Reddit's tip not does it without an email address

-----

You could let a username claim tips by making a comment like:

CLAIM: email@domain.com

To start managing their tips on your app / site

gfodor4• 13 years ago

reddit has direct messages, hn doesn't

sida6• 13 years ago

If only HN had a comment streaming API!

PG, time to add some more features to hacker news

gfodor4• 13 years ago

Request: dogecoin support. (seriously) It's better for tipping due to the fact that to tip someone a nickel right now with BTC I have to type out a long decimal.

sida6• 13 years ago

haha nice. We should definitely look into dogecoin. I honestly didn't take dogecoin seriously until we got so many dogecoin requests today!

Have you tried, 1 Beer (4 USD worth of BTC) or 1 Internet (1.337 USD worth of BTC) ? :P

http://www.tippercoin.com/#/how-it-works/

bendoernberg• 13 years ago

If you're not sure if it'll be popular, make a post asking on reddit.com/r/dogecoin

spectrum3• 13 years ago

I am getting tired of all this dogecoin hype. This altcoin is not innovative, does not solve a problem that bitcoin has and was in fact created to mock all the altcoins. Yes it's funny (for the first 5 minutes) but tell me the added value? You think it's good for tipping because it's almost worthless?

The beauty of bitcoin is that you CAN type out long decimals. The beauty is that you can USE bitcoin to pay for goods and services. Bitcoin was like Dogecoin 5 years ago, why are you trying to repeat this proces?

If you look at the site of Tippercoin, you see that it is also possible to send for example a beer ($4) in bitcoin. Seems pretty easy to type, not?

The way I see it is that most of the altcoins are created by and for people who think they have missed the Bitcoin-boat and are stuck with their old mining hardware. Hoping that their altcoin will take off, by pumping and hyping it everywhere including Hacker News, so they can make some easy money.

wellboy2• 13 years ago

Dogecoin is the small man's answer to banks to shove it, think about it.

gfodor4• 13 years ago

Not really. People like dogs and people like large nominal amounts. It's not rocket science.

galactus• 13 years ago

It's fun to see bitcoiners get mad about it.

spectrum3• 13 years ago

I'm afraid your logo is not allowed by Twitter: "Do not modify or alter the marks or use them in a confusing way, including suggesting sponsorship or endorsement by Twitter, or in a way that confuses Twitter with another brand." See https://about.twitter.com/press/brand-assets

I'd change it if I were you! Otherwise, very simple and usable service. https://www.pikapay.com/ would be a competitor.

locksley2• 13 years ago

Ahhhhh, but it worked so perfectly!

Oh well, thanks for the heads up :)

Show HN: TipperCoin - Send Bitcoins over Twitter

Related Stories