Bitcoin Forum

Hi Guys,

My name is Brian and I am one of the founders of Youtipit, the Bitcoin based online tipping service. I'm pretty sure some of you guys have seen our site at some stage so you may be aware of what we are about. We initially set out to create a platform that allowed people to tip others small amounts of cash with the minimum effort and at the lowest cost. It is a simple idea but one that was exceedingly difficult to get off the ground, largely due to legal matters surrounding the holding and transferring of money. We discovered Bitcoin and decided to use it as our base tipping currency: it was an almost perfect solution to our problems. It has very low transaction costs,  its a truly distributed currency with and of course it has a small but growing user base. We embraced it fully and built our platform around the currency.

Unfortunately, we have been unable to turn Youtipit into a self sustaining product and are considering to halt further development.
Mainly for two reasons:
-          Legal problems selling Bitcoins in Germany. We actually got threatened by the BaFin (German Finance Regulator) that what we where doing is likely to be illegal
-          We’ve run out of money and therefore time. We are all back in full-time jobs and don’t see ourselves continuing anywhere in the near future

The reason I am writing this is to ask if there is anyone out there interested in taking over the project. Youtipit has been running for almost a year and a half now with some degree of success. We were actually making some money when we where still allowed to sell Bitcoin so the possibility remains possibly to transfer it to a more Bitcoin friendly jurisdiction and continue with the project. During this time we have built up a strong active user base and managed to maintain the security of the site through out and have gained extensive knowledge of Bitcoin. The site  remains fully operational in the short term but we are currently reviewing our options.

We would like to hear from anyone who has any (wild) or interesting ideas on where to take Youtipit.

Kind regards,

Brian(and the other members of the Youtipit team)

That is such a shame that selling Bitcoin's is legally changing with Germany's draconian financial laws.

I must comment that your site looks great, and has a great business case!

Unfortunately I'm not in the position to invest in any websites.  >:(  However I can at-least wish you-guys great success.

btw, your utip.it link isn't working.

I used Youtipit in its earliest days, and would like to see it succeed. However, it's a difficult business to bootstrap. It's hard to get critical mass: to get to the point where enough content providers participate to persuade people to become tippers. Even Flattr, which had strong early growth, seems to be struggling to keep up the momentum.

Hi Guys,

Thank you for your kind comments. Yes indeed what we were trying to do requires a critical mass that we never reached. By far the biggest hindrance to us though was the legal requirements here in Germany. According to the authorities here we are effectively an online bank (either with or without Bitcoin) and we have to abide by banking rules. This would require us to get a highly expensive banking license which is not achievable by us. This is the law however and none of us wish to run into any issues in the future.

Still if someone wished to move the operation to a more favorably country perhaps they could make a success of it.

I would be interested to see how flattr are doing these days. We were amazed to see how well funded and resourced they were but I think ultimately they are coming up against some pretty cold realities. Still its a great site and I hope they can turn it into a viable success.

If anyone out there has any questions/suggestion feel free to drop me a message.

Thanks again,

Brian.

PS: Ill look into the url issue :)

E-mail message received today:


The blog post has further information:

 - http://blog.youtipit.org

Thanks Brian for being a Bitcoin pioneer with this service.

Hello Brian,

My name is Boris, and I am the developer of websites https://propster.me and https://booster.io, which are similar to Youtipit and Flattr.  I would be interested to know on what terms would you like to pass on this project. Please contact me here:

https://forms.hush.com/boris

Sorry this one didn't work out - I tried it out a bit when it launched and liked it, a very nice interface. Really hope it can get taken forward somehow.

It feels like Flattr is struggling to really "take off" as well, but something in me likes the idea of tipping and wonders why it's so difficult to get going. Maybe people are just used to the free model these days, or maybe it is just about critical mass and ubiquity.

Flatter started really well, but gradually they made everything more and more complicated.

How do you know that Flattr is not doing as well as before ? Is there some credible article about this?

Just reading the vibes - and there's a suspicious lack of "credible articles" to the contrary.

Thanks Stephen I appreciate to good wishes.

As someone who designs websites himself, that looks really good, and the idea seems solid, however i am not in a position to invest in anything at the moment, otherwise i would :)

Thanks sylkyx, its actually really good to hear that. Its funny after so many months spent trying to deal with legal/technical problems its easy to forget what we achieved and the good parts to the project.

I think the site did look well and did what it was designed to do. In the end it wasnt enough to make it fly but overall we have no regrets.

Out of interest, what kind of sites do you work on?

I think your site would mesh well with propster.me fwiw.

Maybe a community buyout be releasing shares on a site like glbse for a "kickstarter" type funding would work.
What are the running costs ?
What income does the site make ?