Bitcoin Forum

If there isn't one already, we need a Bitcoin micropayment plugin for this forum.

Don't underestimate the inconvenience of three clicks instead of one.

I wonder how easy that is to code.

Pretty sure this will never happen.  I don't think theymos wants the forum to be holding money for random people.

Plus we don't even have 2FA.

I had an idea about that, though I'm not sure whether I'll do it. The forum could accept BTC and in return give "forum credit", which could not ever be withdrawn for BTC, but which could be used for ads and donations. Since forum credit has value, a market would develop with an exchange rate somewhat less than 1 BTC per BTC of forum credit. A micropayment system could be based on forum credit; receiving 1 BTC of forum credit would be just a less convenient and more centralized way of receiving ~0.95 BTC.

Micropayments are a very low priority in any case, though.

Very interesting concept, but I had something much simpler (and less risky) in mind. User enters send/receive addresses in profile, and a button is displayed on every post (in the sig or sidebar or wherever) that allows anyone to micropay directly. The forum would not hold onto the BTC at all, just a direct payment. Or maybe you could skim off 1%, etc. You might need to ratchet up your servers' security a bit to prevent hackers from changing peoples' profile addresses, but it's a pretty simple plugin I'd imagine.

Bitcoin micropayments (tips) works on sites like Reddit, I believe, because of the visibility of the tips made against each comment or post. So as a community a new ethos is formed around tipping quality discussion and helpful/meaningful posts.

If as you suggest a button is displayed, then it also should provide visibility of the tips received. User preference should determine whether your forum name is displayed alongside the amount of the tips you make.

In terms of security, I propose that Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets described in BIP0032 (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0032) could provide the solution. Any forum member who wishes to receive tips creates their own HD Wallet and provides just the minimum chain code public key information to bitcointalk. This is enough for the forum to derive new child public keys without ever knowing the private key. To save on resources a child public key would be created just-in-time when the first tip is performed against a post or comment.

If what I've described is accurate then bitcoin micropayments could work on bitcointalk without becoming a target of hacking.

Theymos, I'm curious why you see micropayments (or forum credits) as low priority.
I agree in the sense that there are bigger problems to solve around bitcointalk, but if this can encourage more quality posts then it lifts the forum as a whole.

Are you sure the value would be close to one? I'd imagine a forum credit would be more worth 0.4 or so given the limited uses for forum credit, and the risks associated with exchanging.

I also would not want to see the currency pair "BTC/BTT".

People have had addresses in their signatures since the forum first started. Almost no one uses them for donations. Donations are popular on Reddit only because:
- Being able to send money quickly and easily is a novelty to the people there.
- People use donations as a tool to advertise Bitcoin.

Here, people are used to Bitcoin and there's no need to advertise. If a donation system was added, I predict only a small increase in donations compared to the current situation with bare addresses.


Could be, but it doesn't really matter. They can be used as a medium of exchange as long as they have some value.

You can use the bitcoinj micropayment channel, so you don't need to hold a huge amount of BTC in hot wallet

Haven't you heard of cadmium (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201018.0)?

+cointip monkeybars 0.01 uBTC

Lol thanks!

Cointip Bot (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201018.0)

Beat me to it!

"Failed to withdraw: cannot withdraw more than transaction fee which is 10000 satoshi BTC "

Bummer :(