Bitcoin Forum

Hello Bitcoin community,

several weeks ago I got an idea aimed to popularize Bitcoins - give tips for domestic services in Bitcoins. We give tips regulary, so why don't use Bitcoins for this procees? It is convinient (you don't have to keep small cash bills for tips) and fun. Please take a look below and judge.

Anyone can print several papers with unique URL's, like instawallet. Each paper URL contain amount of Bitcoins equal to $1 to $10 dollars (according to the current exchange rate) and short description of what Bitcoin is. You can give the peace of paper to anyone and he/she will master the funds.

The killer feature is expiration period. If somebody not activated the tip (no matter of what reason) in some period, then funds from unused tips goes back to the owner's wallet. Nice and safe.

To enable the idea I created web service https://www.bctip.org (https://www.bctip.org). The web site generates printable A4 paper PDF, which contains this URLs and short instructions. It also helps you manage tips and provides some statistics.

Begin promote Bitcoins today - print BCTIP yourself and give away for domestic service you like!

This is fantastic!

One question though regarding the currency.  If I make a $5 BTCTip, that means that the BTCTip URL holds an amount of bitcoins that were worth $5 at the time that I generated the URL?   (Versus holding $5 USD and converted to BTCs at the time of redemption?)

Pure win. Get this man out of the newbies section ASAP!

Thanks for posting, this seems very interesting.  A few thoughts:

How are the deposited bitcoins secured for the (perhaps) 1 month until the recipient receives them?  Are the majority in 'cold storage'?  (Note: there is no more instawallet!)

Perhaps a next step would be to be able to print out 1,2,5,etc. of other world currencies worth of bitcoins besides the USD.  And also maybe to have the option to print out the tips in other languages.

Also, it shouldn't be too hard to get your program to print out any number of 'tips' besides the fixed 9/18/36 (9/sheet?) options.  Just leave blank spaces if someone wants less.

I'm guessing English isn't your native language?  The default message "Thanks for Service!" sounds a bit like something a foreign speaker of English might say, perhaps "Thanks for THE Service!" would be better.


Thanks again, great job on this.


P.S.: would there be any way using just the blockchain and standard bitcoin tools to independently print out some bitcoin 'tips' like this without having to trust some 3rd-party with your bitcoin deposits and still have this "return after 30-days" type feature?

Very, very, nice looking website! Great work!

I am a bit skeptical to if people would care about doing a whole extra dance just to get $5 extra tip, but given the right audience it could be a great way to introduce someone to Bitcoin.

I would want to customize the message and in particular specify the value in other currencies than USD. Would you accept help with this?

The biggest obstacle right now is probably trust. Do you have plans open sourcing this or placing your private keys with a trusted third party? An alternate way to reduce required trust with you would be to publish keys directly in the QR-codes, I believe there are services which can import these.

I like it and I think the idea of the expiry is essential as ... well .... let's put it this way - have you ever seen those fake dollars that extremist christians like to use for "tips" ( http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/11/23/waiters-phony-10-tip-includes-religious-lesson/ ) ? If someone was to give me a bit of paper saying "this is worth 10 dollars" my first thought is "sure it is, I just spend 50 dollars to get my 10 dollar discount etc etc" . I hope it takes off for you !!

Interestingly enough - the automated claim back of unregistered tips also makes your service "essential" for it to be executed as it does - as if you just created a pdf generator which people would have to self-populate, then it wouldn't make your site mandatory.

Things I would add

1) Alternate currencies (the big ones, Euro, GBP (!), JPY etc etc)
2) Configurable expiry dates
3) Perhaps -the ability to mark some tips as lost. It would suck if you had (say) 50 bucks of these in your wallet, you lose your wallet and someone cashes in all this cash. OK, someone ill-feeling could cancel tips that they've given - but if they were that way inclined, would they have gone to the trouble of tipping in the first place ?

Lastly... and I think we are going to disagree on this ... you need to be more public facing including a real email address, name etc etc. Running a service like this works better without anonymity.

No-one is going to come after you (legally) for running this service (bad guys will always be bad guys though), but people like to know who they've just sent a whole heap of btc to.

Suggestion: Make it possible to create a smaller amount (maybe even a single?) of tip-coupons. People might want to try this out without putting in too much BTC in one go.

You could add support for other currencies and languages as well. Spanish would be a start (as I suppose there are many Spanish-speaking people in the American service industry), but tipping is also common in a lot of places all over the world.

Another idea is to use the same service and layout to create giveaway coupons/fliers. They would work in the same way, but are handed out as fliers. Maybe they should have a different wording, smaller denomination and shorter expiry time?

slim shadey

Right, I've revealed my real email and name. I am working to add new currencies and languages.
Here some tips URLs for testing (they are REAL), pls don't activate every by yourself :)

https://www.bctip.org/ncdv-tbmm-3xjd-v7qb-su7x
https://www.bctip.org/b1ty-xppt-mzce-tusv-qvgm
https://www.bctip.org/hw58-arr6-ftxp-prz2-tjyo

Here the screen of paid wallet:

"Activation success rate" is broken.

Thaks for the tip

this is bloody wonderful!

do you think I could get  the source? LOL
would love to make smth similar to this for LTC ;]

thx! fixed

We are thinking on release the source. May be we will after paranoid security audit.

could I be the first to get it? lol :D

love the concept! This will really make it easier to promote bitcoin offline!

in Amsterdam i heard they have some local currency called the Amsterdametje or something.
this will just supplement the development of alt currencies!

I've heard complain that the white text in the orange is too small for some printers.

Could we get a sample .pdf to test printing before sending BTC to a bunch of address ? I fear it would be a PITA to retrieve the BTC if I wasn't happy with the end result.

Took a peek at these on Reddit early this morning, these look fantastic. I love how folks are trying to tangibly convert BTC, this is just another way of making it much more easily accessible to people. Keep it up!

Sure, https://www.bctip.org/static/img/sample.pdf (https://www.bctip.org/static/img/sample.pdf) (embedded fonts) and https://www.bctip.org/static/img/sample.odt (https://www.bctip.org/static/img/sample.odt) Open Office ODT (no fonts).

Hi !! This is a super duper damn good idea!!
May I suggest you to make it available in other languages (I'm french, and would like to use it there but French people are usually not good in English, so a website that they would understand in "one shot" and in native language could be nice).
I can help for French like you could guess, anytime ^^
may the tip be with you ^^

I do agree - awesome idea.

For those of us that are a wee bit paranoid, please release a standalone version that I can run sandboxed on a computer w/o internet connectin and import the tpaddress' privkeys into a wallet of my choice, so I am in full control.

Ditto

Hey! Wonderful idea!
However, if this is to work outside of English speaking countries -- it must be localised.
I can help you with Polish and Japanese translations if you intend on including any sort of localisation mechanism.

Interesting...

Available for a future eng>ita translation.

Very cool site! If you want plan translations, I'd help out with a german version.

I can translate this into Dutch, Lithuanian, Russian and Spanish if need be. Please let me know!

Thanks everyone for good words!

We are definitely going to add multi-currency and multi-language support in the nearest time (can take about a week), as well as new print templates. Also we are thinking about opening template so everyone who not trust us can make tips himself using any web-wallet with unique URL.

Any help in translation is appreciated.
If you can provide quality translation, nobody offered this language before, then pls leave the message.

New to bitcoins, but in the service industry full time. Allow me to make a few points:

* US services industry speaks Spanish, more so in positions that need tips the most
* Someone has to actually explain BTC before a person would understand what it is

I feel that there are three camps here:
* those who think that www.bctip.org is unsecure;
* those who think that tipping in bitcoins only is a bad idea;
* those who want to promote bitcoins by all means (including the topic starter).

I am none of the above. I use bitcoin as an investment, and as a medium for remittances and would never consider tipping in bitcoins, because when a bitcoin is worth a thousand dollars, I'll regret it. I know sitting on bitcoin is bad for its overall sustainability, but since I have no need for things so far being sold for bitcoins, I would let them go in only few scenarios, and tipping is not one of them.

The site is great, but in my opinion this service is an awkward way to promote bitcoins. It's not playing the bitcoin cards right. Those who want to take advantage of the bitcoin stronger side, like transfering money abroad without paying exorbitant fees, or transfering money out of countries with capital controls, will reliably learn about bitcoin through the word of mouth.

The fatal flaw of this idea is that BTCIPs are unitaskers. I can use fiat as tender anywhere so why would I have a special currency to tip with? Not until BTC is more wide-spread. And even then this idea would present other problems...

i had an idea similar to this for helping spread the word of bitcoin.

the basis of the idea was to present people with a small amount in a physical form along with how to set up a wallet and other basic information.



these things wouldn't be hard to translate.

once they have it, i think they would be much more likely to be invested in learning about it. the more people that have interest in bitcoin, the quicker the community grows and as such the value.

security can be upgraded and fixed if it is even an issue. we have lots of people that will "test" the security for their own interests.

of course you wouldn't tip in only btc, if anything i would tip in addition to my normal cash tip.

a lot of mexican workers are doing so that they can send money down south and or provide money or transportation to people down south. instantly transferring funds between US/MEX with no fees surely would be welcome. i am sure you have seen the "fast cash transfer" places in almost every ethnic center.

Today we deployed new version with EUR and GBP currencies. We also added template translations in Spanish, French, Russian and Esperanto. Translations were made in google translate, but if you have any corrections please contact my by email. Landing page will be translated soon.

I just redeemed on of the Tips given out in the goodie bags at the San Jose Conference, very slick! Nice job!

I've lost my redemption page and can't find anyway on checking which tips have been used. Is there anyway of locating the URL from one of my unused tips or from my Bitcoin address?

to OP ... dude, the idea and execution of this site .. awesome! Ive had this idea for a while but never know how to get things pulled off... you did it! love it...
stay honest & good bout this service your offering and it will make strides =) Thanks a ton man!

Solved! the URL was in the name of the PDF file I printed them from.

Good news,  today several new templates were added, now you can choose the favorite one!
https://www.bctip.org/static/img/examples/all.png

I can help to translate chinese ~~

Why can't I just print one, and customize the amount? :(

Tips are given by free will, there are no reason for cheating.

Hi,

I can't redeem my tip. It always says "Not enough confirmations or not enough funds. Please wait for several minutes or contact support if necessary."

I tried it for several hours - still doesn't work

Cream!

Dear community,  there are some news related to BCTip project.

The first - we added visits counter to the wallet page and now you can see if anybody visited the page with tip and how many times.
It is useful to understand BCTip recipient behavior and find out if he/she visited the site or throw the paper away.

The second - if you redeem the tip, then the destination Bitcoin address is saved to the cookie and on the next tip page your address will be predefined.
This mod makes activation process much easier for numerous tips.
Using the phone you just enter your address once, and then just scan QR and send bitcoins, scan and send.

The third news is related to the bug discovered by user elements (thanks!).
He reported the bug with tip which can't be redeemed.
The investigation shows that the bug was related to the forced TX fees and resulted to the last tip can't be activated.

To fix the issue I modified the site to add some extra TX fees into invoice.
Also I added extra bitcoins for fees for every paid wallet to fix the issue. So if you generated your wallet before - no worries, every tip should be redeemable.

Tipping a complete stranger with Bitcoins could piss them off -- (what is this crap?).  Offering a tip in Bitcoin *or* fiat puts the receiver in a much better position -- (keep track of how often they choose Bitcoin vs. fiat and report back here).  *If* you can/will see the receiver again in the near future then offering to replace the Bitcoin tip with fiat at that time will make them feel good.

It is recommended to give BCTip in addition to the regular tips

Really cool idea!

All problems have been resolved. Thanks for your help!

Really a great idea!

Love this!  I would also love however to have a custom value option.  I would like to basically this tool as a way to do kind of a physical paper faucet.  Giving out $1 in BTC to someone who provided you a service is reasonable, but say you are explaining bitcoin to a large group of people, handing out $1 to every person would not work out well (for me), where as a smaller amount would at least get them started.

Love the idea and the execution.

Will try out properly tonight and print some off.

Well done though mate. It looks fantastic

Read about it in a blog post some days ago and now looked at it in more detail. It's a very cool idea and I like it!  :)

Are transaction fees paid in USD or BTC?

Transaction fees are in Bitcoins.
Thanks for pointing out, I have added the BTC postfix to the transaction amount field.

At the Crypto Currency Conference this past weekend there was an event on Friday at BitPay's offices and they had a tablet set up so tips in Bitcoin to the bartenders could be accepted:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BVxMSs7IAAAKfUY.jpg:large

However, ... the bartenders were serving customers faster than tippers were tipping -- (and who wants to stand there sending a tip after you finally got booze in your hands anyways), so having some BCTips with me really would have been useful.    I wish I had thought to print some up ahead of time.  

And then the cocktail hour on Saturday evening had only a regular tip jar, so there was no bitcoin tipping (though the bartender said she had plenty of people ask to give bitcoin tips).   There too these BCTips would have come in handy!   i did have a paper wallet funded with some tip-sized amount and offered to give that as a tip but the process to redeem it (i.e., installing an app, sweeping the funds, etc.)  was beyond what the bartender wanted to hear.

There's definitely a place for these!

Had a printer error.. cut off a little of the edge of the first card.  had to adjust some settings, and got a good page out.

shredding the bad pages.

works great.

is there anything other than bookmarking my purchase url to help me keep track of what has been redeemed?

Italian localization is still missing :(

would be interesting to see the number of tips for each $ amount and % redeemed for each value.  I would guess the $10 worth of btc are more likely to be redeemed.

I have printed some for various friends!
Thanks for the nice service!  :)

I wonder what the reaction is when someone gets a tip this way

Again congratulations, Norn, I keep using the service!  :)

Could you change the price to the ones from Bitstamp o Bitcoinaverage? Thx!

Thanks MarcoPon! The rate has been changed to the Bitstamp one.

Finnish translation has been added.
https://www.bctip.org/static/img/examples/bctip-finnish.png

Awesome idea!

Just printed my first tips!

Could you add a 50cent option though?

Again thanks for this. It's awesome.

Love this service Norm!

You have made introducing people to Bitcoin fun. It is now enticing for the investigative and less risky for us enthusiasts. I find it useful as not just for tipping but it can give a person newly introduced to Bitcoin a loss aversion feeling.

I commend you on the lower denomination and new language options.

Since overstock.com and Tigerdirect accept them your service could start a trend for replacing store specific gift cards. The expiration time options would need to be expanded and extended. Think about it. In most states of the US, when someone gives a gift card they don't know if it gets used, if it does not, the stores don't get to keep the money, neither do you. The money goes to the governement. With your service at least it would go back to you... a year later, sure... but it is not lost. Bitcoin peeps will start using it. Eventually it could go big. The benefits to the user is very clear.

Rock On my friend! You have made a fine service. I hope you get rich delivering beneficial service to this vibrant community.   

Where is the German page?

The German page is in place. Any tips generated in German locale will point to the page translated to German.
I will send you URL of German tip in PM to check it out.

A friend just told me about your site today. I must say I think its a great idea!! I will definitely be using this in the near future.

One criticism / suggestion I have is in regards to the wording and description printed on the tips. The average person who knows nothing about IT / bitcoins might be confused and intimidated by all the language used on the slip. Words such as "Open source", "Cryptography" and "P2P Technology" can be intimidating to some people.

I would suggest a new template, "Bitcoin for Dummies" so to speak which replaces this explanation with an ELI5 version. Simple things like "Digital Cash", "Safe and Secure", etc..  Something that engages EVERYONE to a point where they go "I need to find out more about this stuff".

Also, the "Search 'Bitcoin' online" wording is telling the user they need to look into this more. This sounds silly, but people can be REALLY lazy. I would suggest saying "Visit Bitcoin.com for more information" or some other relavent big site.


Anyways thats my .02 cents. Thanks!

Dear community,

thanks for comments and new ideas.
Last week I committed several enhancements to the site. Here the list:
 - full translation, including printed tips text and landing page
 - example of landing page now available at https://www.bctip.org/gratuity-example/
 - optionally you can use email for notifications purposes (you'll be notified if someone activates your tip and if wallet expires and bitcoins are sent to you)
 - email and return addresses are saved in cookie and re-used on next wallet generation
 - statistics page now has a chart showing how many tips were activated for last 12 months
 - one premium template was added (Nice Label), it costs extra $1 and looks nice
 - printed tips now have global unique IDs instead of 001,002,003

Please volunteer translation at https://poeditor.com/join/project?hash=df771a28a33e56b2031035c1dde49e43
Your help is very appreciated!

I noticed that most of the receivers dont redeem the tips because they don't really get the point, and they wonder where to spend these coins. Maybe adding this link to the page would help: http://coinmap.org/

Also, 2 more userfriendly wallet suggestions would be useful, e.g. Hive, RushWallet, ..

Landing page was actualized. Coinmap is in place, as well as Hive and Rushwallet.
You can check this out at https://www.bctip.org/en/gratuity-example/ - preview of landing page.

Great :)
On the German page the currency is still USD, should be EUR.
edit: one more note concerning: No waitress and no hairdresser (in Germany) knows what 'Peer-to-Peer' means. It's confusing and superfluous.
My suggestion: Unverzügliche Geldsendungen.

Uhh... I just got the tip from the example on https://www.bctip.org/en/w/rxAyawGFUnhR1NFefRm8YHFbXWYQcLEK2/ which lead me to https://www.bctip.org/en/6enc-ctom-a5dn-c434-mtuy/

Want the the btc back (0.0020202 btc)?

btw, this site is awesome :D Definitely gonna use it!

Feel free to keep it. It was waiting somebody curious to collect :)

Thanks a ton :)

Well done. Gona print few of these.

Hello, so I bought 10x tips last night but cannot get them to download no matter what I do...I keep getting the same error 

"Error
Template has not been generated yet, please try again in 5 minutes.
Result=False, Info=None
Try again"

It's been a few hours now...would appreciate some help..thanks.

I am having the same issue as BlackMarketKarma where the site won't generate the PDFs.


Template has not been generated yet, please try again in 5 minutes.
Result=False, Info=None

Is there something additional I need to do?

The issue has been resolved. I had some software problem and even my
monitor service didn't recognize it.

Sorry for this, now everything should work fine.

Man. This is AMAZING. Just came across your site. Thanks so much for the wicked service

It looks like you're getting a little press time via CoinDesk!

http://coinde.sk/1v9lU0P (http://coinde.sk/1v9lU0P)
https://i.imgur.com/QrLuqxU.jpg (http://imgur.com/QrLuqxU)

Hey, I emailed you yesterday at the email listed on the site :)

This is a fantastic method for businesses to pump their clientel up about their Bitcoin strategy. Love it. Will be adding you to YOCrypto service listings - http://yocrypto.ca/?s= , just need to make a new category. Thanks for the cool service man really appreciate it.

Thank you guys, I am glad you find my service useful!

$50 option would be nice

just noticed the $50 option in there.

also $25

The ATMs around here only allow a cash out of $20+

they have a 6-15% fee

and the exchange rate fluctuates.

so a $20 won't do much good here sometimes but a $25 does.

Hi Opticbit, I added the $50 option by your request, just went it silent.
Now $20 have been transformed to $25. I hope you like it!

Today I've found a bug which caused two month delay in return of coins from unused tips.
Now everything is fixed, coins from unused tips were sent to wallet owners.

Sorry for inconvenience  :)

Hi,

The JS interface (calculator etc.) don't work.

Fixed missed closing bracket! Thanks for report!

only one style card now?

It should be several as usual. Please write to support email if you can't change template.

Great ideea!  I will try it as soon I go home  ( I just saw the website on my phone)
One first suggestion: I see "Donate to bctip"  has 0%, 5%, 10%.  Could you make that field editable (for example I want to offer 2%)?
Also you can ad custom sizes for these templates?  I think A4 is too big :)

PS: did you released the source code?

found it, i was tired, wasn't used to the new layout.

Hi
Back home? We have met in Paralelní Polis.
I would appreciate a lower number option. I want to give it as optional presents. So higher value, but start with 3.

Could there be a template that is more cash sized.

maybe something that looks like some of the paper wallets

Dr. Evil paper wallet
https://evilwallet.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/example1.jpg?w=917&h=488

I used that Dr Evil template a few times, it really rocks.

BCTIP is new for me but i like it already. I am gonna try it today. Gonna make some gifts for some friends so they can start with bitcoin.

Did the source get released?

Sources have been released: https://github.com/norn/bctip

Hello,

Recently, I used BCTip for promoting bitcoin and I like the tool very much since people have to deal with the technology. And they will, because they get money for free. However, I was not able to change the time span until the coins fall back to my wallet. In the moment it seems so be fixed to 1 month. But I would like to have valid tips for longer time spans, since I plan to put the tips into a kind of piggy bank, which is cleared only once in several month. Is this functionality already available and I was only to dumb to find it?

I don't want to tip private keys because this would be too much for a newby.

Best regards,
cu

Thanks for using BCTip!
I've added new Expiration option. There are several variants from 30 days to 12 months.

Love the time span variants! Thank you!

You are providing a valuable service. Even when the BTC fees average over $1 per transaction it is worth having these type of methods to share the ideas behind bitcoin. If I gave out bitcoin directly I would be spending 9x as much and getting less value. Only those willing to spend the time to redeem it will earn it. They will also get a lesson as well.

Thanks again!

This is a really good idea. I would like to mention that the text on the coupon is quite clumsy.

A waitress usually dosen't know what openSource or Peer to Peer (P2P) means. So keep geek things out there and go for the common people. Thats the goal, that Bitcoin will become a customary, every day thing. Like our FIAT currency, we do not speak about the chemistry in the color thats printed on, or the composition of the paper thats made of. So I would suggest something like:

"Make worldwide payments on low fees with Bitcoin. This is a international crypto currency. No central authority or policy ist involved. It works direct from owner to customer."

This is only meant as example.

PS: And very important: "Bitcoin can be exchanged to your preferred currency!" or something like this.

I think thats not the point here. I'm sure you can find pissed off people even you give them gold. Let them be pissed of. Its primary to promote bitcoin, if they are happy with it is up to them.

Hello, a month ago I used BCTIP to give a number of tips to coworkers for the holidays.  Some of them were not cashed in and a return to donor was started and sent to my account at bitcoin.  Now seven days later and still pending the blockchain transaction states No transaction found with the hash...  The amount is in my wallet as pending, but it never showed up.  Any thoughts on this?  Thanks and love the service, but would like to know where the returned amounts went or are pending at.

It looks like a long transaction times this winter. I hope everything is ok now.
If your transaction is still stucked please email me to andrey.perliev@gmail.com

We have just created a listing for bctip at Coinpages.

Would be an ideal Christmas present and a good start to explain Bitcoin to the recipient.

https://coinpages.io/en/listings/bctip-bitcoin-vouchers/

BCTIP is now available in our Bitcoin Directory Tools List (https://cryptodirectories.com/tools)