Bitcoin Forum

ChangeTip, few years back one of the most promising Bitcoin startups (raised $3.5m seed funds) failed to get traction and will be shutting down soon.

https://www.reddit.com/r/changetip/comments/5dn3rc/changetip_shutting_down/

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-tipping-service-changetip-shut/

So much for now for the social media tipping for masses. All the users are encouraged to withdraw any remaining balances.
It's a shame to see them go, but you can't operate if you don't generate revenue. I think it's one of those cases when getting massive cash injection at the start does more damage than good to the business idea.

Ps. Dogetipbot seems still to be working tho  ;)

And I think most folks, which would include myself, prefer to get tipped in dogecoin.  You don't hafta deal wit fractions, you get whole coins.  That's a psychology thing I do realize, but it's true.

This don't surprise me none.  People with crypto jist don't want to part with it, and especially not to the retarded population that is Reddit.  How many people you know on this forum take the time to send bitcoin to someone's address jist because they liked a post?  Absolutely none I'd bet.

Frankly, I'm not sad about it. ChangeTip was a centralized service that actually undermined real Bitcoin use and if used imposed obstacles, risks and costs on tipping. It also reduced privacy. To tip another person all you need is a Bitcoin address. I don't see any benefit of using ChangeTip for this purpose and I wouldn't have thrown seed money at such kind of business ($3.5m for what? - a simple app). It doesn't surprise me that it failed to gain traction, because a real Bitcoiner doesn't use it and all other people can't see a reason to register at a service to receive minuscule amounts of a currency they are not familiar with.

So I shed no tear seeing ChangeTip shutting down. It's about time to use the real thing again. And even the lolly purchasers will soon be happy after SegWit and LightningNetworks are going live.

ya.ya.yo!

The Big result wasn't mirroring about the great future.
That had become the big fail for who the people was investing in there.
Their plan is useless in my mind.

It is true, none.

SegWit and Lightning are really cool altcoins - but they are not Bitcoin. 

ChangeTip would have been fine if G.Max didn't cripple Bitcoin so it can't do microtransactions any longer.  Blockstream did this so they can charge money for the same traffic on their private network. 

Fuckers.

While I agree with most of your sentiments, I do believe it has without a doubt increased awareness and helped draw many users into the cryptocurrency communities.
On another note, I'm glad someone shared about the discontinuation, though, I never received any communication from them and would've lost a good bit of funds!

I suppose it's because of a failed business model. They should have patterned ChangeTip to Patreon.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/5e23ea/daily_discussion_monday_november_21_2016/da9txhd/

there's gonna be more and more of this. 2013 inspired people to throw money at anything. now the chickens are coming home to roost. the next wave of investment might actually need to deliver.

changetip was so centralized and was even banning users, it is better they disappear sooner!

ChangeTip was one of the most used Social tipping platforms and I'm very upset to see it go. I really hope the founders have some avenues to sell their company and keep it running. The only reason I could see them fail is because of the fee's that they had introduced after which a lot of users stopped using it. They had a free service running for a very long time, due to which it built the perception in the peoples mind that it was a good free tipping platform and payment gateway for it. I really hope something similar on the lines gets into business and promotes tipping to charities and other social service institutions.

Well, it was a good idea, but the actual market doesn't really have a need for tipping on social media. Most users won't tip someone with a numerical balance, the best case scenario you could have would be something like what happens with Reddit; a token of value given to other users.

I wouldn't give someone $2 for making a good post online; most people do that for free.

About this news I noticed something interesting. You can find a disclaimer under that text which says that:

"CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in ChangeTip."

Does the fact that Coindesk has shares of ChangeTip change anything here?

Unfortunately it is the truth. Read this story: https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/guy-who-tipped-thousands-of-dollars-with-changetip-gets-banned-tells-his-story-t3083.html (https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/guy-who-tipped-thousands-of-dollars-with-changetip-gets-banned-tells-his-story-t3083.html)

There have been a couple posts that have helped me enough where I would tip the author.
Mostly things dealing with programming- PHP/ SQL, HTML, Java...
Stackoverflow and Reddit have reputation systems, but you can't actually tip someone with real money.
Sites like these could benefit from a payment system where users get money for their correct answers.

Such a shame. I loved this service, they were probably too soon on market. That was their demise.
Probably new version of changetip will take place in future.

Always start with the end in mind. That's a golden rule for startups. Plan your finances and marketing well. Most of the startup fails to see it right. Cash is not the solution, if you can't manage it well. It's sad to see a site like this go, but that's the harsh reality of life. Wish the owners come back with something better.

You know that unclaimed tips goes back to the sender? I could not disagree with you more at this moment. ChangeTip was launched to showcase micro tipping on multiple platforms, which would not be effective with any other payment methods.

I can still remember when Microsoft started to accept Bitcoin on it's XBox platform, and how people reacted to the Free money that were tipped in r\Xbox. We should not underestimate the influence that this application had on Bitcoin adoption or expose to the technology.

I for one, are sad to see it go. 

it was centralized and i didn't like their rules but a tipping platform which is off the chain is a good thing whether you and i like it or not. it helps speed things up and make everything so much easier.

for instance on reddit you could have asked a question in a non-crypto board like /r/techsupport and then tip the best answer that was very helpful with changetip and the answer didn't have to have a bitcoin address and that way he was introduced to bitcoin too. two birds with one stone!

ChangeTip one was of the early Bitcoin startups.
In the beginning it was a great idea, but it still was a centralized service.
I never used them.Well that's how it looks when ideas continue to develop and progress or not.Either you make it or you have to shut down.

this is sad somehow as their idea was nice and it brought some new people to bitcoin. but i guess this is what happens if you do not use a service enough and prefer to cling to your coins. known companies will close and this will be a warning to new startups, so we might miss out on some great ideas, because the did not want to take the initial risk. 

Funny how people are blaming changetip for being "centralised". Guess what, their goal was to enable instant tips on social media, not to become a high value, anonymous payment processor. FFS, they enabled people to send bitcoin tips to those who didn't even know what Bitcoin is. By that, changetip have probably done more in promoting Bitcoin than any other business. Not every service needs to be decentralised.

And no, sending small tips (micro transactions) directly to btc address don't work, it's horribly ineffective and uneconomical.

I wonder how many of members so concerned about centralisation are actually willing to sacrifice comfort and convenience and start using decentralised services. Open Bazaar failed to get any serious traction, probably same goes for bitsquare (not sure though), and this post it's also pretty revealing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1349944.0).

This remains true because of a couple of huge differences between Bitcoin (and its community) and Dogecoin (and its community).
While Bitcoin community is more focused on real gains and more ... serious, dogecoiners (while they got much less than before) are happy even with 100 Doge gift, although it means nothing as value.
The small valuation of dogecoin may have also helped in this.
All in all, Dogecoin tips on Reddit still happen, while for Bitcoin one has to actually work.


Edit: of course, there are a very few exceptions in Bitcoin community too, notable persons that still use(d) to give out free Satoshi now and then (I know of BipolarBob, philipma1957 and Stunna)

Have heard about changetip but can't find them useful or atleast i don't see any use for me. Recently micropayment platform faucetbox also announced it will be shutting down due to very low revenue. Now another bitcoin micropayment platform dying, anybody have good idea how they could have survived?

I thought of one idea to increase faucetbox revenue by adding one banner ad from faucetbox on faucet script which can't be removed by faucetowner and faucetbox could have sold that banner space on bidding.

The problem with most of these start ups is that they have nice idea but you still need to market it right and start generating revenue and making profit. These trend will still continue especially in crypto all these ICOs with no real way of making profit will wind down soon

yeah. this moan is getting a little old. and most people who are rolling it out probably bought something via a processor or an exchange or service like circle and are using this forum. none of them looked too decentralized last time i checked.


uh, yeah. the guy was abusing and exploiting their system. if i was running it i'd ban the asshole too.

We may see few other alternatives popping up on same idea as of changetip but with some better idea to generate more revenue for the project. Where does those seed money were used? Any info regarding how that was used and what return those investors got who have crowdfunded changetip?

there wouldn't be any return. i can't imagine one single bitcoin company has made a return for any of their investors. the only ones that do make money are gambling, dark markets and exchanges and they rarely seem to get legit investment.

i guess the money went on the usual stuff like premises, wages, promotion. it's pretty easy to burn through a million or two if you're trying to keep up appearances.

Was the main premise to create a easy way for writers that did not see the light of day in the circle of magazines to still get paid?
Its to bad,as we need more voices to counter the 'fake news"(Sorry could not resist) and breathe fresh ideas and concepts into a polluted narrative
ran over by big wallets.
Did not follow the evolution line of how the service might have gone off track but I would hope that there is still a place to reward well thought out papers and articles.

I also agree a lot of companies that are now needing life lines due to ill thought out ideas should go to the way side and be replanned or left to die.
Hopefully a better concept comes along.

I have to disagree with that

Once upon a time, namely, just a few weeks after my registration on the forum, some forum member had tipped me for explaining to him in simple language why deflation (i.e. appreciation of money) is worse for the economy than mild inflation in the long term. It was dust of course (something like 1 mBTC or even less than that), but it was exactly that and it was exactly me!

All microtransaction applications are dead.  The new bitcoin 'swipe fees' of $.20 are murder on most applications that are not settlement applications.  Blockstream wants Bitcoin as a settlement only scheme.  This way, they can charge you to use their "Lightning Bullshit"

Blockstream business model:
Step 1: cripple network
Step 2: sell the people a fix.

Only heard this news the other day, is it because they know that the writing is finally on the wall with Bitcache and LN on the horizon ?

You tell me. Does bitcache and LN allow you to send tip to twitter account, or tip reddit post? Will they allow you to tip someone who doesn’t even know what Bitcoin is?

ChangeTip failed because they were spending more than earning. It's that simple.

Is this the same as tipjar?

I never knew ChangeTip was a company. It's sad to see it go. I think the reddit community really liked it.  :-[ :-[ :-[

ChangeTip made provision for tipping on multiple platforms, not just on Reddit. They had plugins for Facebook, Github, Google+, Stack, SoundCloud, Tumblr, Twitch and Twitter. So you had a wide variety of choices where to tip. I think, people just got greedy. The Bitcoin price increased over a long time, and people started to hoard bitcoins more than usual. They did not want to spend it, because it got more valuable over time. 

Tipping is also not a custom all over the world.

people were using the tipping part specially in places like Twitch a lot and i have seen it be used on reddit too and i don't think people using or not using the platform for tipping has anything with them shutting down because it was free to tip and also free to withdraw. there must be some other reasons behind it.

You can't eat your cake and have it

At least, not in the form and state which you would like to eat it again, so to speak. In fact, this had to be expected. You can't raise the Bitcoin price without raising the fees at the same time and in the same fiat terms (say, dollars). If Bitcoin continues to climb the price mountain (what we all hope for), we will see a lot of other applications falling off dead till the time when even regular payments become too expensive to be made directly in bitcoins themselves

I never knew they expanded that much. It's a shame to see them go out of business. Maybe someone else will take the place.

What do you mean? There's no minimum, set-in-stone bitcoin tx fee (well, you could say 1 satoshi is the minimum). If BTC price goes up to $1m/1btc overnight the free market (after some time) would bring the fees to the lower level.

There's no strict correlation between fees/btc price. You could have btc price at only $100 and still have high fees, if there's high transaction demand and blocks are full.

You obviously missed that part about "fiat terms". You may set no fee to your transaction, and it may get confirmed in the end (though this is not likely to happen at the next block). I mean if Bitcoin price increases, so do the fees in fiat terms, while they obviously remain the same in bitcoins. This is what we see today, and some people are already complaining about microtransactions no longer feasible exactly because of the fees being too high. Whether the fees will go down if Bitcoin price continues to rise remains to be seen, though...

But so far the fees are what they were when Bitcoin was at $200

A business founded on bitcoin tipping doesn't really seem viable at this point in time. Maybe when bitcoin takes off worldwide on a much larger scale could it be viable. There's just not enough demand for this type of service at the moment since bitcoin still isn't adopted by the masses yet.

I missed nothing. You've missed a point.

First of all, current increase in fees is due to the block congestion, not increase in price. Fees now are higher than they were when BTC was at $1000 (in USD terms).

What I mean is:

Let's assume average fee being 10,000 sats ($0.07), if BTC price increased 1000-fold, do you honestly expect anyone to be happy to pay $70/tx? Of course not, number of txs would massively drop, leaving lots of room in the blocks, then you could send your tx again with $0.07 fee (this time being only 10 sats) and the miners would likely include it (providing they want to maximise their revenue).

Edit: shortly saying: fees in btc terms are not fixed, they're flexible.

I'm not talking about the current increase in fees due to the recent congestion. But I'm still utterly curious where you got this idea from (that I meant this rise in fees)


But I don't deny that. If you've been following my posts (just in case, many are, lol), I've been saying basically the same, in respect to future sky-high prices, obviously. Though this still in no way undermines the simple math that says that when Bitcoin cost 100 dollars (or 200 dollars) the fees in fiat terms were substantially less than they are now when Bitcoin costs 700 dollars, even if we don't take into account the transaction jam as of late. I don't really see any sense in challenging this point. In fact, I'm more inclined to think that you're not actually looking for an argument...

You just pop up, say something irrelevant, then go away

Such a shame Changetip is closing, let's hope the opensource the code and it can continue!

The thing is you seem to rarely know what you're talking about, you post your brainfarts at random and when you're called on that, you'd just beat around the bush and try to somehow justify it, or go with "that's not what I meant" or "(I posted complete nonsense) because I couldn't find a better term".

Your utterly curious how people bidding with fees on the limited block space are causing increase in fees? If that's not self-explanatory to you, I can't do nothing for you.


You don't? Than what's this?:


Flexible or 'remain the same'? Which one is it?



In case you failed to notice, for a good couple of years we had a 'default' fee of 0.0001 for the first 1000 bytes. Yes, if it wasn't manually adjusted, it would rise/fall (in USD terms) according to the price, but since it was always a trivial amount of few cents, rarely anyone cared. That's in no way an indication that people would be happy to pay significantly higher fees, just because it's 'default'. They'd either change it manually or use different wallet (with lower 'default').
Now things changed and most wallets would use flexible fees. As I already pointed out to you, you can find examples of standard fees (in USD) being lower when BTC was in $1,000 zone, then they are now when BTC is in $700. Similary, in the 'off-peak' (with BTC at $700) you could pay lower fee, then when BTC was at $500 or $600.
But that's irrelevant anyway, let's circle back to your original claim, from which you're trying to escape:


Can you provide short, on-topic explanation of what will prevent free market from keeping fees affordable? The only sensible answer you can give, to sound somewhat coherent, is that full blocks will enforce higher fees, but (according to yourself) that's not what you're talking about.
And if "fees are now higher than when BTC was at $200, therefore they'll always rise with the price" is all you got, then don't bother - I'm not interested in 'artificial discussion' with the main goal being that of increasing your post count.

Maybe somebody already wants it and they were just waiting for it to die so they could take over.  :p Life in the city!

The idea came and went, it was awesome at first, people finally thought we had the killer bitcoin app.  In the end it seemed it was more bitcoiner mass adoption than new blood mass adoption.  A universal tipping bot is needed though always.

I'm pretty sad about this, I really liked the service and have both sent and received tips through it.
But I have seen that it's just not used that often anymore, a year ago or so you would see people giving out tips on occasion, but now I don't see any of that anymore.