Title: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 12, 2012, 02:13:12 AM I'm pleased to announce the beta release of http://www.btctip.com, a service that allows you to send any Twitter user bitcoins with a tweet.
You can log in to the website with your Twitter account, no other sign up necessary. Through the site interface, you can see your account history, and withdraw and deposit bitcoins. Green address deposits Currently you can deposit from a MtGox green address to have your deposit registered with zero-confirmations, in about 30 seconds. Non-green-address deposits take three confirmations, or about 30 minutes, to be registered by the site. Sending bitcoins The format for sending bitcoins is: #btctip [recipient] [amount] [unit] For example: #btctip @BobOnTwitter 10 centcoins The permitted units are bitcoins, centcoins (0.01 BTC), and millicoins (0.001 BTC). The variations and aliases of each that are recognized by btctip.com are: bitcoin: bitcoin(s) and btc centcoin: centcoin(s), bitcent(s), cbtc, and internet(s) millicoin: millicoin(s), millibit(s), mbtc, and woolong(s) Note that , (comma) is treated the same as . (decimal mark), so for example, 10,2 bitcents will be interpreted as 10.2 bitcents. Your tweet can contain other text as well, as long as some segment of it contains the tipping command. For example, this would be valid: Great post! #btctip @BobOnTwitter 10 centcoins! After btctip.com has registered your tweet, the Twitter account @btctip will post a tweet verifying the transaction, in the following format: @Recipient, you received a [Amount] BTC tip from @Sender! Log in with Twitter to btctip.com to claim your bitcoin! Unclaimed tips If the tip recipient doesn't become a BTCTip user (which happens automatically when they log in) within 5 days of the tip being sent, then the tip will be returned to you. If they are already BTCTip users, their tip is considered claimed whether they log in or not. 1 day before the tip is returned, @btctip will post a tweet alerting the tip recipient that they have 1 more day to log in before their tip is returned. Inspiration I got the idea for the site in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5382.0 The site is very new and has had very little testing in a live environment, so please don't store more than small amounts of bitcoin on it. If you have any questions send me a PM or post it here. Tip for sending: Occasionally a #btctip command will fail to be read by the BTCTip bot and will not illicit a tip transaction through btctip.com. To maximize the chances of your tip command working, we advise you make the tweet containing the #btctip command a normal tweet rather than a reply tweet. This is because the BTCTip bot scans through Twitter's search results stream to find a tweet containing a #btctip command, and reply tweets show up in Twitter's search results less reliably than normal tweets Happy Tweeting Updates: **May 5th 2012** Added 'unclaimed tips' section **December 23rd 2012** Added 'internet(s)' as an alias of the 'bitcent' unit, and 'woolong(s)' as an alias of the 'millibit' unit, and added note recommending tips be regular tweets rather than reply tweets **May 16th 2013** Added 'centcoin(s)' as an alias for 'bitcent' and 'millicoin(s)' as an alias for 'millibit'. These new aliases are featured as the primary ways to refer to the cBTC and mBTC denominations, respectively, on btctip.com. A new BTCTip Tweet Box has been released, that website owners can customize on http://btctip.com and embed in their websites to receive BTC microdonations. It's been set up on http://kianoo.com as a test case. **May 22nd 2013** Reduced minimum tip amount from 1 centcoin (1 cBTC) to 1 millicoin (1 mBTC). Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on March 12, 2012, 03:53:17 AM Great idea and I wish you luck. This could be great for Bitcoin.
Can I ask your reasoning for the following new people and update your profile permissions? This application will be able to: Read Tweets from your timeline. See who you follow, and follow new people. Update your profile. Post Tweets for you. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 12, 2012, 04:07:16 AM Glad you like the idea!
Quote This application will be able to: Read Tweets from your timeline. See who you follow, and follow new people. Update your profile. Post Tweets for you. Good question. These were probably the default permissions. I'll ask the guy who developed the site for me if we can eliminate: "See who you follow, and follow new people. Update your profile. Post Tweets for you." As I see no need for them. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: cunicula on March 12, 2012, 04:44:25 AM Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/ (http://www.paybitback.com/)"? They have been around for a while providing an extremely similar service, but have not attracted a meaningful use volume.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on March 12, 2012, 04:57:30 AM Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/ (http://www.paybitback.com/)"? They have been around for a while providing an extremely similar service, but have not attracted a meaningful use volume. That site appears to have been launched in a fire-and-forget manner. Ease of use has to be part of the solution and from their intro thread, I didn't see much promise. Just because an idea is cool and potentially beneficial for its users doesn't mean people will seek it out. That does bring up a couple other good questions though. Amincd, how do you plan to keep the lights on(i.e. make enough to be sustainable) for this service? Have thought about what you're going to do for marketing (outside this forum post/reddit)? Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: cunicula on March 12, 2012, 05:02:47 AM Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/ (http://www.paybitback.com/)"? They have been around for a while providing an extremely similar service, but have not attracted a meaningful use volume. That site appears to have been launched in a fire-and-forget manner. That's 100% true. What I really want to know is how they are going to position/market themselves. I didn't mean that it was a stupid service. One idea is to package an advertisement from tweet for bitcoins with each tweet. This would seem to be a nicely targeted advertising. Though again, tweet for bitcoins hasn't attracted that much use. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 12, 2012, 05:13:43 AM Quote from: cunicula Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/"? From what I understand, paybitback allows any one to create a bitcoin address for any one else on Twitter, that the latter can 'claim' by posting their bitcoin address in a tweet to @paybitback. Btctip is different in that you don't need to publicize your bitcoin address to withdraw the tips you receive, which protects your privacy, and all tips are publicized in tweets, which helps promote both bitcoin and the #btctip service. Quote from: weex Amincd, how do you plan to keep the lights on(i.e. make enough to be sustainable) for this service? My current plan is to sell advertising space on the site once it has enough to traffic to be worth the trouble. I imagine the ad space would be particularly attractive for bitcoin exchanges and merchants, as the site, if popular, will have a lot of visitors who will be receiving bitcoins for the first time and would want to sell/spend them. Quote Have thought about what you're going to do for marketing (outside this forum post/reddit)? No, I haven't thought about that yet. I've been mostly betting on word of mouth. *Edit, although that's a good point, I should start thinking about other advertising channels, perhaps a 'promoted' tweet would be a good idea Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: cunicula on March 12, 2012, 06:56:49 AM Quote from: cunicula Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/"? From what I understand, paybitback allows any one to create a bitcoin address for any one else on Twitter, that the latter can 'claim' by posting their bitcoin address in a tweet to @paybitback. Btctip is different in that you don't need to publicize your bitcoin address to withdraw the tips you receive, which protects your privacy, and all tips are publicized in tweets, which helps promote both bitcoin and the #btctip service. Quote from: weex Amincd, how do you plan to keep the lights on(i.e. make enough to be sustainable) for this service? My current plan is to sell advertising space on the site once it has enough to traffic to be worth the trouble. I imagine the ad space would be particularly attractive for bitcoin exchanges and merchants, as the site, if popular, will have a lot of visitors who will be receiving bitcoins for the first time and would want to sell/spend them. Quote Have thought about what you're going to do for marketing (outside this forum post/reddit)? No, I haven't thought about that yet. I've been mostly betting on word of mouth. *Edit, although that's a good point, I should start thinking about other advertising channels, perhaps a 'promoted' tweet would be a good idea I was wondering about that issue. Forced publication of addresses never made sense to me in paybitback. Good thinking! Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on March 13, 2012, 04:40:26 AM Any update on the permissions?
In what I could find ( https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model ), you probably have the minimum permissions that Twitter will let you have and still be able to send tweets on behalf of your users. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: John (John K.) on March 13, 2012, 07:20:04 AM This seems to be a viable approach of twitter-based bitcoin tweeting, so keep it up!
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 13, 2012, 09:11:03 AM Quote from: weex Any update on the permissions? Yes, it's being fixed, but it requires re-writing some code as we need the site's status-posting function to use a separate Twitter application from the site users so that we can post tweets, while regular accounts aren't required to grant status-posting permissions to the site. Right now the whole site uses one Twitter application. Quote from: Johnthedong This seems to be a viable approach of twitter-based bitcoin tweeting, so keep it up! Quote from: cunicula Good thinking! Thanks for the words of encouragement. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: HostFat on March 13, 2012, 09:25:54 AM My current plan is to sell advertising space on the site once it has enough to traffic to be worth the trouble. I imagine the ad space would be particularly attractive for bitcoin exchanges and merchants, as the site, if popular, will have a lot of visitors who will be receiving bitcoins for the first time and would want to sell/spend them. Can you add something like this?http://dailybitcoins.org https://coinad.com the main difference ( with your service ) is that people will be able to send Bitcoin to others ( just by tweeting ) without the need of the Bitcoin address. ( and without owning anything :) ) It's a good way to spread the Bitcoin verb to people that don't know it. Moreover, in reality there won't be any bitcoin sent if no one will come to claim them :) ( they will also spam your service ;D ) Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: finway on March 13, 2012, 12:39:56 PM Cool.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 14, 2012, 07:12:44 AM Quote from: HostFat Can you add something like this? http://dailybitcoins.org https://coinad.com Thanks for your suggestion. If it's more profitable than other options, then quite possibly. I also have to take into account how it affects the site's overall look. An ad for an exchange for example would look more professional than something like this so I might opt for it even if it has a slightly lower cpm. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 21, 2012, 05:30:35 PM UPDATE:
The permissions have been changed so that the application can no longer: Update your profile. Post Tweets for you. Looking forward to your feedback. Weex, if you give me your Twitter account name, I'd like to send you 1 BTC for finding the permission problem. If you'd prefer to be sent the coin directly just pm me your bitcoin address. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 24, 2012, 10:06:10 PM Some good news. A btctip tweet was retweeted by Matthew Bishop, NY Bureau Chief of The Economist and co-author of Philanthrocapitalism & www.philanthrocapitalism.net, to his 29,017 followers:
https://twitter.com/btctip/status/183252330655911936 Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on March 25, 2012, 05:48:11 AM Thanks, I got it. Will be looking to tip others when appropriate.
Edit: One issue I see is that I had literally no indication that I have been tipped. Twitter sends emails when one gets a direct message so perhaps that is why you would want to use DMs. Otherwise, someone would have to have some sort of alert setup on their account or login regularly and look through all their newest "Interactions". Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 25, 2012, 08:42:45 PM Unfortunately you can't send a DM to someone unless they follow you.
Luckily the default notification setting for Twitter users is to receive emails when they get mentioned in a tweet so most people should be notified when they get a tip tweet. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: bbit on March 26, 2012, 02:40:40 AM Cool ;D
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: LiteBit on March 26, 2012, 01:19:12 PM Added to my reading list.
I'd like to incorporate this service into our "Support This Project" section on our community projects. Sounds cool. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: molecular on March 27, 2012, 09:10:28 PM I'm a bit confused. Just saw this:
Quote from: @jonmatonis @AminCad Thanks! You can also tweet bitcoins to any one with a Twitter account: #btctip @jonmatonis 1 bitcoin @mrtruli who's tipping who here? Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: molecular on March 27, 2012, 09:16:40 PM Hmm, I just sent this tweet:
Quote from: @cotta3 #btctip @maxkeiser 2 mBTC hey max, just sent you 2 millibits via twitter, cool, aye? Nothing shows up under "Activity History". What did I do wrong? Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 27, 2012, 11:23:37 PM Quote from: molecular I'm a bit confused. Just saw this: Quote from: @jonmatonis @AminCad Thanks! You can also tweet bitcoins to any one with a Twitter account: #btctip @jonmatonis 1 bitcoin @mrtruli who's tipping who here? I tipped @jonmatonis, and then he retweeted my tip tweet. He can't tip himself so it's safe to do. Quote Hmm, I just sent this tweet: Quote from: @cotta3 #btctip @maxkeiser 2 mBTC hey max, just sent you 2 millibits via twitter, cool, aye? Nothing shows up under "Activity History". What did I do wrong? BTCTIP posted: Quote <em>@cotta3</em>'s balance isn't enough to finish transaction. Do you have any BTC in your btctip account? In any case, tips have to be at least 1 bitcent (10 millibits), so that wouldn't have worked. *Edit, sorry, there seems to be a bug in btctip's reading of the "mBTC" variation of the millibit unit. It's reading it as "BTC". Please try using 'millibits' until this is fixed. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 28, 2012, 08:46:57 AM Update:
The 'mBTC' bug has been fixed. 'mBTC' is read as millibits now, not bitcoins. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: molecular on March 28, 2012, 07:43:16 PM Update: The 'mBTC' bug has been fixed. 'mBTC' is read as millibits now, not bitcoins. thanks, awesome. thanks for the generous tip, too. I finally managed to tip someone (stacyherbert). I think this is a great way to "infect" people. now what happens if I send a tweet to two people like Quote hey @maxkeiser and @stacyherbert have some #btctip 100 mBTC what would happen? does the "#btctip" have to be directly after the @[user]? Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 28, 2012, 10:59:12 PM Great, I'm glad it worked for you and you're welcome.
Quote now what happens if I send a tweet to two people like Quote hey @maxkeiser and @stacyherbert have some #btctip 100 mBTC what would happen? does the "#btctip" have to be directly after the @[user]? You need to put the #btctip directly before @[user]. The ordering of the terms in the tipping command has to be: #btctip @[user] [amount] [unit]. The tipping command can be put any where in the tweet (e.g. beginning, middle, end). Also, note that you can only tip one person per tweet, so if you include two tipping commands in one tweet, it won't work. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on April 15, 2012, 08:22:09 PM Hey amincd,
One question is what happens if someone doesn't claim their tips? It might be good to display a message or list of past tips that are past some number of days and haven't been claimed (where claiming means logging in once since they were sent). Then it would be up to the tipper to ping the recipient again or you could offer a way to reclaim them. -weex Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on April 16, 2012, 02:29:54 AM This is a great suggestion and is actually going to be implemented. What's going to happen is that if someone is not a member and doesn't sign in to claim their tip within 30 days of it being sent, they're sent another message informing them that their tip will be returned to the tipper unless they log in to claim it within the subsequent 10 days.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on April 25, 2012, 07:21:28 PM I'm pleased to announce that at 6:00 PM PST today, btctip.com will be implementing a new feature which returns unclaimed tips after 30 days to the tip sender.
What this means is that if you send a tip to another Twitter user, and they don't become a BTCTip user (which happens automatically when they log in) within 30 days of the tip being sent, then the tip will be returned to you. If they are already BTCTip users, their tip is considered claimed whether they log in or not. 10 days before the tip is returned, @btctip will post a tweet alerting the tip recipient that they have 10 more days to log in before their tip is returned. Please note, if you have received a tip 30 or more days ago through BTCTip, and have not yet become a BTCTip member, the tip will be returned to the tipper, effective 6:00 PM PST. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Stephen Gornick on April 26, 2012, 03:58:34 PM After seeing what Chirpify is doing (providing a way for people with twitter accounts to sell stuff through tweets and then have chirpify take care of collecting the payment), I wonder if there is anything that BTCTip could do along the same lines.
(Incidentally, Chirpify just got $1.3 million in its first round of funding ) So right now, the primary use case for BTCTip is where a person with bitcoins gives bitcoins through Twitter to another person -- someone who might not even know what a Bitcoin is. If the Chirpify concept were driectly adopted, here's what a solicitation might look like:: "Selling used ATI 5870, for ~$145 worth of bitcoins. Reply "bitcoinrocks" to buy for 29 BTC via @BTCTip http://pic.twitter.com/xxxxxx" I'm not sure what Chirpify is doing to be able to monitor each @reply back to that user -- maybe they filter a feed from the Twitter firehose to monitor replies and take care of the transaction from there. So to do what Chirpify is doing might be something a lot more complicated than it might seem. But the take-away is that there is ecommerce that can happen through Twitter and BTCTip can help some of the ecommerce be paid for using Bitcoins. So instead of just the BTCTip user sending out bitcoins, the user can request money as well. Especially for digital delivery items: "Today's market update podcast reviews AAPL's quarterly results. Send 0.1 BTC via @BTCTip and we'll send it to you." Or for real-world situations as well: "Our shipment of the new widget has arrived. Send 1 BTC via @BTCTip to reserve yours! #widgets" That way the seller doesn't need to run any website, mess with any shopping cart software, upload to any third party site, etc. And with the transaction the identity of the sender is known. Anyone have any other ideas on how else Twitter and Bitcoin might intersect? Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on April 30, 2012, 01:33:15 AM Quote Especially for digital delivery items: "Today's market update podcast reviews AAPL's quarterly results. Send 0.1 BTC via @BTCTip and we'll send it to you." Or for real-world situations as well: "Our shipment of the new widget has arrived. Send 1 BTC via @BTCTip to reserve yours! #widgets" This is a great idea. I'm going to look into it more closely. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Xenland on May 02, 2012, 01:51:39 PM Excellent Idea, This should help with the Network effect! :D
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on June 02, 2012, 11:16:14 PM Just wanted to let people know that I got some of my tips back after 1 month since the recipient didn't claim it. amincd, you still working on this?
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Vernon715 on June 03, 2012, 04:09:24 PM One problem that I see is that it is not anonymous.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Stephen Gornick on June 03, 2012, 09:22:01 PM One problem that I see is that it is not anonymous. There's another thread for BTCTip and I just suggested the feature to address that: Thanks! If you have any recommendations on making the syntax clearer, please let me know. Well, there's one other method. Simply giving me the option to instead send a tip using a form on your site. So I login, enter the amount and to which Twitter username to send the funds, you BTCTip takes it from there. You could even give a checkbox -- Tip anonymously That way the recipient gets your @mention and I never had to post any #btctip message that my followers had to read. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 04, 2012, 06:39:00 AM Just wanted to let people know that I got some of my tips back after 1 month since the recipient didn't claim it. amincd, you still working on this? Thanks for reporting this. I haven't been working on it lately as I've been preoccupied with other things but I'm planning on doing another push soon. Quote from: Vernon15 One problem that I see is that it is not anonymous. It's a problem if you want your donation to be anonymous. If you want some public recognition for your donation though, I think it's the best way available, since it gives it without giving away your bitcoin address. Quote from: Stephen Gornick Well, there's one other method. Simply giving me the option to instead send a tip using a form on your site. So I login, enter the amount and to which Twitter username to send the funds, you BTCTip takes it from there. You could even give a checkbox -- Tip anonymously That's a great idea, thanks for the suggestion. Quote from: Andrew Bitcoiner Great idea, good luck! Thanks! Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Stephen Gornick on June 29, 2012, 05:35:39 PM There's a problem where if I'm retweeting, that doesn't mean I want to send payment too!
Here using @BitcoinNews I clicked the Retweet: - https://twitter.com/bitcoinmoney/status/218756094795857920 And BTCTip interpreted that as a request to tip. - https://twitter.com/btctip/status/218756622057619460 If I had sufficient funds in that account, they would have been taken and sent out as a tip. That's probably not desired behavior. I believe the Twitter API allows you to know that what you saw is a native retweet and for BTCTip to ignore those. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Xenland on June 29, 2012, 05:42:53 PM I wrote down in my "List of things to do with Cheaper In Bitcoins dot com (http://cheaperinbitcoins.com)" to accept payments from twitter/BTCtip.com
Does this sound like a useful feature? I imagine one would tweet the following #btctip @[payee's Twitter username] [amount] [unit] [cib order id #] Then cheaperinbitcoins.com would check by some means and approve of the transaction. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on July 10, 2012, 05:43:01 AM Quote from: Stephen If I had sufficient funds in that account, they would have been taken and sent out as a tip. That's probably not desired behavior. I believe the Twitter API allows you to know that what you saw is a native retweet and for BTCTip to ignore those. You're right, this is not a desired behavior. Thanks for the tip regarding the Twitter API and retweets, I'll look into it. Quote from: Xenland #btctip @[payee's Twitter username] [amount] [unit] [cib order id #] Then cheaperinbitcoins.com would check by some means and approve of the transaction. Noted.. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Xenland on July 10, 2012, 05:48:23 AM Quote from: Stephen If I had sufficient funds in that account, they would have been taken and sent out as a tip. That's probably not desired behavior. I believe the Twitter API allows you to know that what you saw is a native retweet and for BTCTip to ignore those. You're right, this is not a desired behavior. Thanks for the tip regarding the Twitter API and retweets, I'll look into it. Quote from: Xenland #btctip @[payee's Twitter username] [amount] [unit] [cib order id #] Then cheaperinbitcoins.com would check by some means and approve of the transaction. Noted.. Well looks like you had nothing to disagree with which give me more confidence of my understanding of your service to integrate to CIB Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on July 10, 2012, 07:36:47 AM Quote Well looks like you had nothing to disagree with which give me more confidence of my understanding of your service to integrate to CIB I think it's a great idea, but it might only be easy enough to integrate if an API is built for BTCTip that could notify third party sites like yours of payment receipts as well as the product #. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Stephen Gornick on August 25, 2012, 06:48:54 PM Quote hey @maxkeiser and @stacyherbert have some #btctip 100 mBTC what would happen? does the "#btctip" have to be directly after the @[user]? You need to put the #btctip directly before @[user]. The ordering of the terms in the tipping command has to be: #btctip @[user] [amount] [unit]. The tipping command can be put any where in the tweet (e.g. beginning, middle, end). Also, note that you can only tip one person per tweet, so if you include two tipping commands in one tweet, it won't work. I think I see a problem. If I am doing an @reply to someone, BTCTip didn't catch it. Here's the one that this happened on. BTCTip has not yet sent out the tweet to notify the recipient: - https://twitter.com/bitcoindia/status/239272879458504706 Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Stephen Gornick on August 28, 2012, 07:02:53 AM I think I see a problem. If I am doing an @reply to someone, BTCTip didn't catch it. Hm ... another one that didn't get send out, and it wasn't an @reply -- but did have two @names in the tweet: - https://twitter.com/bitcoinmoney/status/240252850570133504 Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on September 28, 2012, 11:26:21 AM Sorry for not responding sooner:
Quote Hm ... another one that didn't get send out, and it wasn't an @reply -- but did have two @names in the tweet: BTCTip relies on Twitter's search results stream to retrieve messages with #btctip in it. Twitter search is not always reliable, so some tip messages won't be picked up, especially if they're from less important users, or if they're replies. Most #btctip tweets are detected by BTCTip though. Thanks for bringing problems with the service to my attention. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on December 22, 2012, 01:47:58 AM I think I see a problem. If I am doing an @reply to someone, BTCTip didn't catch it. Try adding a dot in the first place when replying to a tweet. This way Twitter treat the reply as a normal tweet and let everyone read it (so BTCtip could). Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Phinnaeus Gage on December 22, 2012, 05:32:58 AM (the following is not meant as humor)
I like this service, albeit I've yet to use it. I see potential here. Imagine a user named TweetaGoat. Their sole purpose is to garner enough micro donations to send to some charitable organization that has a "Give a Goat" program in place. I'm only using goat as an example because it's currently trending on BitconTalk, but any worthwhile cause would work. The main drawback is that there currently isn't enough Tweeps using Bitcoin to make it work, but givin' time some notable is going to come along and bring this service awareness via some viral event. Surely people would have no problem learning the easy system, for many of them already know how to text a five digit code to send to non-profits via SMS. Virtually the same principal here, but with a twist--it's done with all to see. A lot of people our hooked on themselves and would love the fact that they can share with the world what they did, oppose to via SMS where the transfer is private for all practical concerns. I just realized that I'm penning this from a charitable standpoint oppose from a tipping service standpoint, but the process applies nonetheless. It sure would be nice if all the transactions were continuously tallied. Imagine the impact once a million US dollars were sent via Twitter, all with virtually no fees. That would be awesome! ~Bruno K~ Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on December 22, 2012, 10:53:06 AM Have deposited into my BTCtip account, 2 confirmations and the balance grew up.
Sent 1 twit... Confirmation in minutes! Sent another 7 hours ago (a few minutes after the first one)... no response. Sent again 1 hour ago the twit with a little change in text (Twitter didn't let me just twit again the same)... no response. Conclusion: #btctip command and search is not working properly (Twitter's search for # never has). What about this: Mention + Command? @btctip #btctip @exampleuser 0.10 BTC And look at Mentions (which work better than search #), ignore @btctip mention in twit and run the command #btctip. Could it be possible? Isn't that a better way? I can't imaging Erik Voorhees (or ME!) sending hundreds of #btctips and then all of his recipients not receiving their tips... Would be harmful for the BTCtip service. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on December 23, 2012, 03:26:55 PM Have deposited into my BTCtip account, 2 confirmations and the balance grew up. Sent 1 twit... Confirmation in minutes! Sent another 7 hours ago (a few minutes after the first one)... no response. Sent again 1 hour ago the twit with a little change in text (Twitter didn't let me just twit again the same)... no response. Conclusion: #btctip command and search is not working properly (Twitter's search for # never has). What about this: Mention + Command? @btctip #btctip @exampleuser 0.10 BTC And look at Mentions (which work better than search #), ignore @btctip mention in twit and run the command #btctip. Could it be possible? Isn't that a better way? I can't imaging Erik Voorhees (or ME!) sending hundreds of #btctips and then all of his recipients not receiving their tips... Would be harmful for the BTCtip service. This is a good suggestion, though I've justed tested 10 tweets, and all 10 of them worked. One thing that's important for forming commands that work is making sure they are not replies. Replies have a low success rate, as they often don't show up in Twitter's search results. I'm going to add a note in the www.btctip.com instructions stating that #btctip commands need to be normal status tweets rather than replies to work reliably. I think using mentions instead of searching for hashtags has merit if it allows reply commands that work. That would be a significant improvement over the current protocol, as I think it's quite common to want to reply to a tweet with a tip. If I were to change it, I think the best syntax would be: @btctip @example_user 0.1 bitcoin The #btctip can just be removed. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on December 23, 2012, 04:00:46 PM @btctip @example_user 0.1 bitcoin This sounds good and maybe would work better. As I said I tested the service with one very first twit and worked, but I won't use it again after sending a twit twice (with a +7 hours gap) and never getting the confirmation. BTW what about using Tweetbot / Twitter for iPhone / Tweetdeck... I know this doesn't mean anything, but would it affect the way the twit is written? I checked the #btctip search results and the failed twit appeared there for hours but never received the @btctip confirmation. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on December 23, 2012, 04:34:20 PM I don't know why it didn't work. I tried to replicate the bug but couldn't. Are you sure the tweet wasn't made in reply to another tweet? In any case, thanks for your report. Honest feedback can be very helpful. It might be necessary to switch over to using mentions.
Quote BTW what about using Tweetbot / Twitter for iPhone / Tweetdeck... I know this doesn't mean anything, but would it affect the way the twit is written? I don't think it affects the way the tweet is written. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on December 24, 2012, 12:29:18 AM Well a few hours ago I tried again cuz I feltl I should after you quick response here in the forum. It worked! The. Tried again with the same priblematic account which failed twice and WORKED TOO! Have just sent two more and have been confirmed in seconds...
Maybe all the problem was lag in the Twitter search results so that affected the crawl. But I can now confirm that BTCTIP is really fast to confirm. Let's see if recipients know what to do then :) (Still thinking about the mentions method as a better way, no search results problems). Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on December 24, 2012, 12:39:37 AM Awesome! That's great. Thanks for giving it another chance :)
Also note every one, 'internet' and 'internets' have been added as aliases of the 'bitcent' unit, and 'woolong' and 'woolongs' added as aliases of the 'millibit' unit. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on December 24, 2012, 11:51:25 PM Is there any way to know when a tip has been claimed? Displaying that information on the "Recent activity" table would be awesome.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on December 25, 2012, 11:22:13 PM I'm concerned about the privacy implications of notifying when a tip is claimed. It would mean a tipper knows when the person they tipped logged into the site for the first time. This has been the second request for this feature though, so I'll take that into account.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: Stephen Gornick on December 25, 2012, 11:53:15 PM I'm concerned about the privacy implications of notifying when a tip is claimed. It would mean a tipper knows when the person they tipped logged into the site for the first time. This has been the second request for this feature though, so I'll take that into account. The tip is eventually returned if it is not claimed, so that's one way of knowing. I don't know how much time lapses before this occurs though ... pretty short (i.e., couple of days) if I remember correctly. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on December 26, 2012, 10:05:24 AM Yea, the tip is returned after 5 days (it was originally 30 days), and one day before the expiry (so 4 days after the tip is sent), if the recipient has still not claimed the tip, the @btctip account posts a tweets telling the recipient the tip will be returned if they don't claim it, so this does reveal some of the recipient's activity information to the public.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on January 17, 2013, 09:21:48 AM I'm pleased to announce a fix to a minor bug: you can now re-tweet other people's #btctip tweets without it triggering a transaction from your BTCTip account.
I'd like to thank Stephen Gornick for pushing me to look at the Twitter API and fix this. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on February 28, 2013, 10:00:16 AM Looks like the site is down.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: symbot on March 11, 2013, 11:27:24 PM Looks like the site is down. Does anybody know what happened to this service? Have they absconded with our coins that were on btctip accounts? I only had about 0.1 BTC there, but that's $5 these days! Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on March 15, 2013, 01:32:34 AM Looks like the site is down. Have been down for days now. They even has competitors now http://bitcointipper.com/ (Don't like it, charge for each transfer you make in Twitter). Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: weex on March 15, 2013, 05:45:43 AM I had slightly more BTC there and corresponded with amincd a number of times. amincd, what happened? Do you have an ETA on the site being back up?
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 19, 2013, 03:23:47 AM Hi weex,
My Dynamic DNS client failed, and I only found out a couple of days ago because I was able to still access it on my LAN, so didn't realize it was inaccessible from external IPs. The site is now up, and you can log in, but the #btctip tweets are not being registered at the moment due to an unidentified bug. I will be investigating this and update every one as soon as the problem has been resolved. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: symbot on March 21, 2013, 03:56:58 AM Hi weex, My Dynamic DNS client failed, and I only found out a couple of days ago. The site is now up, and you can log in, but the #btctip tweets are not being registered at the moment due to an unidentified bug. I will be investigating this and update every one as soon as the problem has been resolved. Thanks for coming back and saving the service! Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 26, 2013, 07:50:03 AM I am pleased to announce the site is working again. The problem was with a corrupted file, so it was difficult to pin down. I simply needed to save the file to reformat the data to get it working.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: HowGudAmI on March 26, 2013, 12:34:15 PM I am pleased to announce the site is working again. The problem was with a corrupted file, so it was difficult to pin down. I simply needed to save the file to reformat the data to get it working. The site is down from where I am... when attempting to visit http://btctip.com/ it hangs for a while and then redirects me to an address like https://secure.btctip.com:9000/ but it still does not work, and eventually goes to the standard 'page cannot be displayed' screen on chrome. Shame because I was looking forward to a look around. Ill check back later ;D Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on March 26, 2013, 06:49:20 PM Thank you for the notice. The site is up from my end. Can you confirm if it's still inaccessible for you?
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: HowGudAmI on March 27, 2013, 12:22:31 PM Thank you for the notice. The site is up from my end. Can you confirm if it's still inaccessible for you? It is working now... will have a look around soon!. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on April 05, 2013, 04:43:30 PM The website is down again o.o
Sad, I do like this service Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on May 16, 2013, 05:21:37 AM I'm happy to announce that BTCTip is operational again.
A few changes have been made to the site since it was last running: 'centcoin(s)' has been added as an alias for cBTC and 'millicoin(s)' has been added as an alias for mBTC. In fact, these two new aliases are featured on btctip.com as the primary way to refer to their respective denominations. Also, I'm happy to introduce a new BTCTip Tweet Box, that website owners can embed in their websites to receive BTC microdonations. The tweet box can be customized for your website on http://btctip.com. Some advantages to embedding a BTCTip Tweet Box are:
I've set it up on http://kianoo.com, one of my websites, as a test example. Please let me know if you have any problems with it. Important: if you have a BTCTip account, you will need to log in at least once with your Twitter account to re-connect it with your BTCTip account before you can send tips using the BTC in your BTCTip account. This is a result of an upgrade to a new Drupal Twitter module. Edit I just found out the site is not accessible for non-local connections. Sorry about that, I'm trying to fix it now. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on May 16, 2013, 11:09:47 AM Ok site can now be accessed by the rest of the world, please check it out and let me know if you have any feedback or questions.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: bittick on May 16, 2013, 02:11:07 PM cant access it...still
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on May 16, 2013, 09:31:32 PM cant access it...still I'm testing now and it resolves for me. Could you please check again? Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on May 16, 2013, 11:20:33 PM finally, thanks for your work. just in time!
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on May 22, 2013, 08:40:21 AM finally, thanks for your work. You're welcome :) Update: BTCTip now allows tips as small as 1 millicoin (1 mBTC), from the previous minimum of 10 mBTC, to permit small value tips with the higher value of bitcoin. Also, for those interested, Nassim Taleb responded to a #btctip tweet: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/336807894005714944 Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 03, 2013, 02:04:13 AM Update:
Roseanne favorited a tweet from @btctip: https://twitter.com/btctip/status/340730373447241729 Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 13, 2013, 02:50:18 AM So I noticed your service before but kind of avoid hosted wallets regardless of their reputation (MtGox sees my coins for less than 24h if possible), but now I tried it out and am a bit disappointed as I mind firing up my bitcoinqt and you have no qr code. I could use 3rd party services including some command line tools but that's a barrier you should avoid (just as bitcoin.org should avoid promoting a client that is too heavy to fire up).
Anyway, in 19.5h from now I will be at Valparaíso Radio life on air talking about bitcoin on their show Twitter Café (http://www.twittercafe.cl/) and as you might guess, they are active on Twitter as @twittcafechile. If he asks me about bittip (cause somebody tipped him) I will do my best to explain that. 10,000 people would hear about not only bitcoin but also this service. Just wanted to let you know as I don't feel to inclined to further embrace your service and show it off myself but you may do of it what you want. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 14, 2013, 09:13:19 PM Thank you very much for your feedback and for the notice about the radio show you'll be doing. I would of course appreciate any mention of my service.
Regarding hosted wallets, you're right to be concerned about storing bitcoin on them, particularly, if like BTCTip, they don't store private keys as encrypted files. Regarding QR codes, that's a good suggestion, I'll look into adding it. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 14, 2013, 11:33:03 PM Thank you very much for your feedback and for the notice about the radio show you'll be doing. I would of course appreciate any mention of my service. Regarding hosted wallets, you're right to be concerned about storing bitcoin on them, particularly, if like BTCTip, they don't store private keys as encrypted files. Regarding QR codes, that's a good suggestion, I'll look into adding it. Uhm, pardon? Not that I would care much but what are you trying to imply with "particularly, if like BTCTip, they don't store private keys as encrypted files"? On a server you are never able to lock away the money that people should be able to cash out but you can lock away a high percentage in a trade-off between daily work to manually refill and risk to loose what's on the server. How is your cold-storage ratio? What is the bounty for hacking your server? Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 15, 2013, 01:46:21 AM BTCTip doesn't encrypt private keys. Some e-wallets, like blockchain.info, serve code that generates the private-key, encrypts it, and decrypts it, client-side, which means the server never sees the unencrypted private key. These e-wallets are more secure than one like BTCTip.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 15, 2013, 04:00:37 AM BTCTip doesn't encrypt private keys. Some e-wallets, like blockchain.info, serve code that generates the private-key, encrypts it, and decrypts it, client-side, which means the server never sees the unencrypted private key. These e-wallets are more secure than one like BTCTip. I understand that. That was not the question. I assume you are interfacing to the bitcoind and thus don't send tips through the blockchain but only on your server, saving tons of fees, allowing smaller tips in return. This can not work with you not touching the private keys like some other wallets do it. Still you are not in the position to "get hacked" and loose 100% of the funds in one hack without having everybody rightfully after you. You may "loose" 5% or maybe even 10% if you can make plausible that you need 10% reserve on the server at any given time (like when you have only 5 customers) but loosing more would mean you lost money on purpose. I'm 100% sure any user would understand that withdrawing coins from your server takes up to 24h if he wants to withdraw more than 5% of your total holdings.Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 15, 2013, 04:34:23 AM Quote This can not work with you not touching the private keys like some other wallets do it. Yes that's correct. Quote You may "loose" 5% or maybe even 10% if you can make plausible that you need 10% reserve on the server at any given time (like when you have only 5 customers) but loosing more would mean you lost money on purpose. I'm 100% sure any user would understand that withdrawing coins from your server takes up to 24h if he wants to withdraw more than 5% of your total holdings. I don't have enough BTC on my server to make cold-storage worthwhile. I have no interest in losing BTC on purpose, but I clearly state on the site that it shouldn't be trusted to store more than small amounts of BTC. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 15, 2013, 05:49:06 AM Quote This can not work with you not touching the private keys like some other wallets do it. Yes that's correct. Quote You may "loose" 5% or maybe even 10% if you can make plausible that you need 10% reserve on the server at any given time (like when you have only 5 customers) but loosing more would mean you lost money on purpose. I'm 100% sure any user would understand that withdrawing coins from your server takes up to 24h if he wants to withdraw more than 5% of your total holdings. I don't have enough BTC on my server to make cold-storage worthwhile. I have no interest in losing BTC on purpose, but I clearly state on the site that it shouldn't be trusted to store more than small amounts of BTC. So there is no cold storage? "Guy tipps random stranger thousands of dollars" was a news at some point, so I assume you have tens of thousands if not more worth of bitcoin on your server and consider it "not worthwhile" to put parts in cold storage. What a joke. And I seriously had considered trusting you with some dollars. What a joke. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 15, 2013, 06:15:11 AM No it doesn't use cold storage and there aren't thousands of dollars of bitcoin on my server. The guy tipping thousands of dollars was using the Reddit tipping service, which is different from mine. You're right to be concerned and not trust your money on my site if security is a major concern.
Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: btcven on June 15, 2013, 11:08:20 PM I see btctip for twitter like a TipJar. Why would you put thousands of dollars in a TipJar in a bar? Why would you do the same on btctip?
btctip it's a twitter tipper with a TipJar, not an e-wallet to store your precious tons of bitcoins, but to tip people randomly using tweets instead of bitcoins addresses. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 16, 2013, 12:05:17 AM I see btctip for twitter like a TipJar. Why would you put thousands of dollars in a TipJar in a bar? Why would you do the same on btctip? btctip it's a twitter tipper with a TipJar, not an e-wallet to store your precious tons of bitcoins, but to tip people randomly using tweets instead of bitcoins addresses. Hargnah! This is a service and it's planning to run with the money, preparing the excuse if they don't take precautions to not have more money on the server than they need to run business for a day or two. Any hosted wallet - and btctip is a hosted wallet - has to make sure there is only a fraction of the money on the server at any given time. Anything else is just not serious. I programmed a Facebook-"Tipping"-Wallet but didn't bring it public, because you have to take security precautions I was not ready to take. Bringing it life and loosing just one BTC would be just one more of these Bitcoin scammers Bitcoin is full of. I would feel obliged to replace any single coin lost to a hack or data loss and so should you. Thanks to plausible deniability, you running with the money is indistinguishable from you getting hacked and thus risking to get hacked equals to preparing to run with the money. tbctip is designed to store moderate amounts of money to tip small amounts of money to many people of which some might end up receiving considerable amounts of money. The senders will have money to tip from for weeks as they don't want to charge it twice a day and the receivers might delay thinking about how to withdraw this strange … what was its name again? … money to some day in the future and will take action only when they can't sleep well at night knowing there is a fortune on some obscure server. Not taking aforementioned security precautions means the operator not only does not care about his users loosing their money but also that he almost begs the hackers to come to his server. Edit: You made it on my signature. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 02, 2014, 09:21:16 AM ^ This is your chance to say I told you so.
=== Unfortunately, the BTCTip service was hacked on March 12th, 2014, through a simultaneous withdrawal attack. A statement on the hack has been posted here: http://btctip.com === To Giszmo, I don't regret launching the service, and I don't believe you're right that it's better to not launch anything, than to launch an amateur service that stands a high chance of getting hacked. I believe that as long as the risks are disclosed, more can be gained from giving people the option of using the service, than to deny them that option for their own good. The reason I didn't challenge your post when you made it, was because I thought there was in fact a high likelihood of a hack occurring, and user deposits being lost, and I thought that your post could serve to warn people away from storing BTC on btctip.com. 13.96160671 BTC was lost in total, despite the service having run for two years. Your allegation that this could have been a long con by me to steal user funds is preposterous, given I could have sold the site for far more than this amount, or I could have encouraged users to deposit more BTC, by not having this warning on the site since the day it was launched: Quote Note this is a beta release and its security has not been extensively tested, so please do not store more than small amounts of bitcoin on here. The amount of time and money I put into the site is much much more than the user funds lost. If I were trying to steal people's funds, I would have found a better way to do it. Moving on, what was gained from the experience is worth more than what was lost in my opinion. BTCTip was the first Bitcoin-based social tipping service that I'm aware of. Tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of Twitter users first learned about Bitcoin through the service. Given it never purported to be a secure Bitcoin exchange, or somewhere people could otherwise trust to securely store their BTC funds, I don't think the reputational damage from the hack is much at all. The service never claimed to be a bank, so there was never any expectation for it to be used as one. === User funds I will not be personally reimbursing the stolen funds, because users were duly warned that the site was not a secure place to store bitcoin. However, I am selling the service, which includes the http://btctip.com domain, and I will use any proceeds I receive to try to cover user deposits throughout a three month claims process. Since I have the Twitter handles of users, I will contact all users through Twitter to try to notify them of the reimbursement, and will manually handle withdrawals. btctip.com for sale Regarding the sale, copy-pasting from the notice on the site: The BTCTip service is being sold as one package, and includes:
If a buyer is willing to cover the 13.96160671 BTC in user deposits, to continue running the service, the BTCTip service package will also come with all of the user profiles in the user database. Also, I will need to ensure that any buyer of the service is not likely to use the site to spread malware, so only credible candidates (have a reputation in the Bitcoin community or have some kind of verifiable public profile) will be considered. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 02, 2014, 03:43:30 PM Told you so.
Running this service for two years without a cold storage strategy is the profile of a scammer. If you intend to buy from him, make sure to get his real identity and better make sure the compensation of his victims works out as you are buying a huge liability. Your customers will go after you if you can't identify the former owner of the service beyond any doubt with. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 02, 2014, 05:33:39 PM I think you throw the term 'scammer' out too easily. Claiming to be a Bitcoin bank, and not having a cold wallet strategy, is different than warning people that their deposits are not secure, and not having a cold wallet strategy.
Anyway, I have no problem giving my full ID, phone number, etc, to anyone interested in buying. These are prudent steps to take in any business transaction. I would also be open to using an escrow. If a buyer wants to co-administer and/or supervise the compensation process, I would also be more than happy to do that. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 02, 2014, 07:04:34 PM I think you throw the term 'scammer' out too easily. Claiming to be a Bitcoin bank, and not having a cold wallet strategy, is different than warning people that their deposits are not secure, and not having a cold wallet strategy. Anyway, I have no problem giving my full ID, phone number, etc, to anyone interested in buying. These are prudent steps to take in any business transaction. I would also be open to using an escrow. If a buyer wants to co-administer and/or supervise the compensation process, I would also be more than happy to do that. Ok, look, so you only accumulated 14BTC and from the start told your users that you will not take responsability for the money you collected from them. You refused to take the bare minimum of security measures which is cold storage. If you have any stats, you will notice that never ever did your bot need to touch more than 10% of its respective peak funds, so sending 90% to cold storage is not only a trivial change of 3 lines of code, it is therefore also an obligation to any bitcoin business like yours. If your users don't get compensated, you did more harm than good as all those who got messages reading "you received money" actually did not receive money at all. How many are affected? I still find it shocking how you can take it so lightly stealing $8800US from thousands of people. Your claim that you were obviously not involved in the event you call a hack due to 14BTC not being worth all the hassle you went through is also quite halfhearted. Maybe you are just a stupid scammer who failed to do what pirateat40 did? But the pattern is the same: influx - withdraws = 0 -> cash out. I find it likely that your balance stalled around now, as a price rally usually is where people care about their bitcoins and might bother moving them out. I don't have any proof of this and basically only play advocatus diaboli but if I had lost BTC to you I would go after you. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 03, 2014, 02:59:00 AM Quote Ok, look, so you only accumulated 14BTC and from the start told your users that you will not take responsability for the money you collected from them. You refused to take the bare minimum of security measures which is cold storage. 14 BTC over a course of two years is not a lot for an online wallet. Most users didn't hold their money on BTCTip, because they were fully warned it was not guaranteed to be secure. I refused to take those security measures because they would have required a very large commitment of my time and/or money, and I was not interested in taking on a large project. As I explained in the notice, the choice was between launching the site as it was, or not launching anything. Quote If you have any stats, you will notice that never ever did your bot need to touch more than 10% of its respective peak funds, so sending 90% to cold storage is not only a trivial change of 3 lines of code, it is therefore also an obligation to any bitcoin business like yours. If I had known there was a cold storage system that be could be implemented just by adding three lines of code, I would have done it, but from what I understand, it's much more involved in that. It also requires manually accessing the offline wallet every time the hot wallet is depleted, and transferring the coins over. I assume it would be more than three lines of code to handle the two separate wallets, and automatically shut off withdrawals when the hot wallet is depleted. Maybe you are aware of some very easy way to implement it, but I am not. It's not reasonable to assume someone is a defrauding others because they don't do what you would have done. Quote If your users don't get compensated, you did more harm than good as all those who got messages reading "you received money" actually did not receive money at all. Most of the deposits lost in the hack were BTC that had been stored on the site for a very long time. Anyone who wanted to ensure their tip wasn't lost could have easily withdrawn soon after receiving it. Leaving it on the site for months means they were aware of the risk it could be lost in a hack, and that they accepted the risk. Launching the site did much more good than harm, because it helped tens of thousands of people, at minimum, learn about Bitcoin, beginning in 2012, when the technology was less well known. It also propagated the idea of social tipping, and could have inspired the creation of the Bitcointip bot on Reddit. Many of the new people brought into the Bitcoin community because they saw a Bitcoin tip on Twitter have undoubtedly gone on to create their own services, meaning the ripple effect of launching the tipping service is immense. Quote I still find it shocking how you can take it so lightly stealing $8800US from thousands of people. You're mischaracterizing my reaction to demonize me. Quote Your claim that you were obviously not involved in the event you call a hack due to 14BTC not being worth all the hassle you went through is also quite halfhearted. Maybe you are just a stupid scammer who failed to do what pirateat40 did? But the pattern is the same: influx - withdraws = 0 -> cash out. I would have to be an extremely stupid scammer to run a site for two years, spend countless hours updating it to stay compatible with the Twitter API, warn users to not store their BTC on my site, and come out of it with less than 14 BTC. I would not have been able to launch a Bitcoin-based service if I were that stupid. Your theory is ridiculous. Quote I find it likely that your balance stalled around now, as a price rally usually is where people care about their bitcoins and might bother moving them out. That's not what happened. As I explained in the notice, I was notified that withdrawals weren't being processed on March 20th. I discovered the March 12th hack at that time, and immediately shut down the service. Here is the Tweet where I announce the shutdown: https://twitter.com/btctip/status/446725764289789952 Quote I don't have any proof of this and basically only play advocatus diaboli but if I had lost BTC to you I would go after you. That's because you're a prick. Every user was warned that the site was not guaranteed to be secure. If you had stored your BTC on the site, and it had been lost in the hack, you would have no grounds for holding me responsible for your decision. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: giszmo on June 03, 2014, 04:05:05 AM Whatever you say. I guess I made my point and as I have not lost anything to your failure I will leave it to others to sue you.
Edit: I programmed a sloppy facebook tipping bot and did not bring it live because I neither would have taken the responsibility to secure shit and would definitely have gotten hacked. Assuming you did not profit from that hack, maybe we still both did it wrong and the solution would have been to release it as open source and have it have taken care of by some bigger player that knows both how to secure a server and how to implement cold storage. Regarding the "3 lines change": Instead of having sendBitcoin() you would have try-catch and for the case of insufficien funds, you would have an error message "please be patient while my master refills the hot wallet"; mailMaster(). The other change would be to query your database for sum(balance) and compare it to what bitcoind reports as total balance and eventually send extra funds home to master. Sure it would not be 3 lines but most likely less than 20 or less than a day of work. I guess you will have more work with the lost funds than that. Refunding the hot wallet would be a trivial job until that day you actually get hacked and have to refill twice in one hour. Title: Re: [ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet Post by: amincd on June 03, 2014, 04:47:36 AM And no one will sue me, because there's no case here for a lawsuit.
With the benefit of hindsight, the right way to do it would have been to sell BTCTip after I had made it compatible with the latest update to the Twitter API. A group with more resources could have developed it into a professionally run tipping service, with features like cold wallet storage. Open sourcing it without launching anything would have been a gift to the Bitcoin ecosystem, but I personally wouldn't have done that, because I wouldn't have been able to justify the investment. You however should have open sourced the Facebook tipper, since you went to the trouble of writing it, and ended up not launching it. Quote Refunding the hot wallet would be a trivial job until that day you actually get hacked and have to refill twice in one hour. I guess neither of us know if it would have been trivial, as neither of us have run a cold wallet storage system before. For a one-man operation that I wanted to keep as a low-maintenance side-project, it seemed like taking on too much. Maybe the claims process, assuming the site finds a buyer, will end up being just as much work, so maybe it was a mistake to not go to the trouble. We'll see. |