Bitcoin Forum

Check it out: http://www.reddit.com/r/test/comments/11iby2/bitcointip_tip_redditors_with_bitcoin/

Also check out: http://www.reddit.com/r/paypal
Its funny as hell to tip those paypal victims with Bitcoin!  ;D ;D ;D

Disclaimer: The tipping bot is an independent project by bitcointalk.org user SuperP (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=15240) (NerdfighterSean (http://www.reddit.com/user/NerdfighterSean) on reddit). It is not officially endorsed by reddit.com. Reddit.com is a mostly open scource platform.


-edit- Update (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=119187.msg1309853#msg1309853) from the developer:

Holy crap.  This is huge news!

http://www.reddit.com/r/paypal/comments/11ja6g/from_now_on_money_you_receive_will_be_temporarily/

LMAO

This is actually a very very cool idea. Is this

• a reddit product?
• a user bot with the blessing of reddit?
• an independent bot like anybody could write a bot?

Who are the people behind this bot? What is their measure in case reddit cancels this? Whom can I slap if the hot wallet password "accidentally" gets too accessible?

Edit: This should just as well work on twitter!?! and if done by the same people, transactions between twitter and reddit could be free.

Edit: So for $5 I may get my money back in case the service is terminated?
With my money in my own priv key the service makes a more reliable impression to the whereabouts of my money (no fractional reserve) but it's ultimately less secure (100% hot wallet) and costs fees to send between reddit users.

Conclusion: I am not at all convinced.

lol so cool some of the people are huh HAHAHA

Yes, it is: https://secure.btctip.com:9000/ (https://secure.btctip.com:9000/)

Epic  :D

And so it begins.

I still don't know what the hell a reddit is, but this looks like a good development.

Reddit.com's bot or btctip.com's bot ?

Now we just need to have reddit integrate it into the site itself, so we can have a button that does this.

Yeah, it doesn't look like an official reddit.com project to me... however the topic here suggests it is. Maybe change that.

Any official statement from either reddit or btctip.com on the matter?

If that works out, thats exactly what I'm going to do.

Give 2BTC to tip 200 Paypal victims? I will have so much fun.

... Have to prepare some mocking messages I send with the tip, suggestions welcome.

Just redeemed my existing Reddit karma with the bot for a grand total of ฿0.00202948 ;D

Note that it looks like the bot can currently take a while to respond to PMs. It took 15 minutes for it to respond to a "HELP" message, for instance.

Haha lol :)
Maybe the ""bot"" is in early development and responses are done manually by some non-programmer to gauge interest in a real bot?

This is great, will check it out right now ;D

*heading to reddit*

Awesome, will get some btc notice I think.

http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/11qoyg/morgan_stanley_banker_william_bryon_jennings_who/c6os4pn?context=3

That escalated quickly.

Developer here.


Not a reddit product, just a bot made by a reddit user.


If reddit cancels this I will probably make a new system for withdrawals only.  


 Yourself. Don't deposit more than you're willing to lose at this time.  There is no warranty, insurance, or guarantee of any kind.


This was inspired by the twitter version btctip.com.  I've used it and was impressed.  That is run by someone else.


Not so much if the service is terminated, more like in the event of downtime be it with the bot, blockchain.info, or reddit itself.

This system is really badass :)

I do have a suggestion for people though: when you send BTC tips within Reddit, try not to get all preachy or salesy. The best tactic might be to tip, then if a question is asked like "WTF is this?" One person should answer with a simple, straightforward sentence. Don't start talking about all the great features of Bitcoin, just be cool, and pique their curiosity.

Example:

Q: "WTF is this?"

A: "You were tipped with bitcoin which is a digital currency. The amount you got is worth about $0.50 at current market price."

Done.

^good advice, I learned that from experience though  :)

^ I can't even express how important that is.

And I know its hard, but there is no better way to scare away people by being preachy (ever talked to a serious religious person?)

Why did Reddit get a Bitcoin-tipping bot before this forum got one?

Because someone cared enough to volunteer to implement one, and because (evidently) the technology platform in question provided sufficient mechanisms to accommodate that without requiring an official blessing and/or any administrator effort. In other words, motivation and a low barrier to entry; always a winning combination.

Yes, exactly; that's what I meant by the underlying technology platform providing sufficient capabilities to permit ordinary users to innovate in this way.

reddit is a python based cool open source project hosted on github: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki

SMF (simplemachineforums) is rather lame ex closed source php project, run by a formal organization with a board of directors and proper bylaws and whatnot.

http://www.simplemachines.org/about/opensource.php

@ SuperP

This is uber cool. Thumbs up.
Seriously.

I think that when this makes inroads on non-"bitcoin" subreddits it will could expose 100k+ new potential users to bitcoin.
Best thing in weeks...

+1

Q1: Why cant I send BTC to just ANY address (outside of reddit), if you are using blockchain.info, that should be possible right?

Q2: Can you speed up the bot?

Q3: Is it possible to inflate ones karma with bots or hacks or whatnot? --> Danger to your redeeming function

Q4: Is your script open source?

So, uh, this is going to break BTC wide open to everyone who visits reddit!  We're talking a serious explosion.

That said, I'm betting Reddit outlaws this within a week.

Q1: You can.  That's how you get bitcoins out of the system, make a tip to one of your bitcoin addresses.  Here I tipped an address from a youtube video description: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/11qwvo/charlie_shrem_bitinstantcom_youtube/c6owofu

Q2: Yes, I'm working on minimizing wait times.

Q3: The faucet address only keeps a small amount in it, but creating a maximum allowed is a good idea.

Q4: Not right now.  May consider making it open source in the future.

.

Lets see how its goes.

This idea is epic! Props for the developer.

EPIC!

Giving some karma to Bitcointip bot <3

Finally some people get around to doing things with Bitcoin that it is actually suited for.

If this catches on and is allowed to exist it could draw a lot of new users into bitcoin. Lets hope!

Make sure you check out/subscribe to: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

The reply confirmation shouldn't be posted as a public comment, or else face reddit's collective wrath (and maybe the mods) as people get annoyed with all the extra comments. Best would be to let users put a link to a confirmation screen elsewhere and/or PM both parties. Then people would see that a tip was allegedly given, and they could click the link if there was any doubt.

Dude we need to hit up a IAMA! ;D

That would send this viral!

edit: Like toward a good cause http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11rd5c/iama_18_year_old_girl_who_has_been_working_with/

People could tip her some money toward down syndrome lets say...

+bitcointip reddit.com 1 BTC


(damn! it doesn't work!)

But seriously, this is legendary stuff. Getting this on reddit is huge, it's gonna be awesome!  ;D

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/11rp6n/now_that_bitmit_will_close_which_good_shopping/
http://i49.tinypic.com/i4r8lh.png
http://i49.tinypic.com/302a1cp.png

lol

Wooot  :o

Since when 100BTC ~120$?

Wow apparently a security flaw has now been found in Bitcoin after all... transactions can't be reversed or "pulled" unless you do it through a Reddit comment ;) Zero day!

How are you communicating with Blockchain.info? And since you are is scalability going to be an issue?

Like the idea though, was browsing around reddit and started seeing it places, was just like "bout time someone did this".

I was watching the bot evaluate comments and when that came up I panicked for a second.




I'm using the Bitcoind compatible JSON rpc.  Yes scalability will be an issue.  I'm unable to archive or label addresses at the moment, so the bot is down until I figure out why the wallet isn't saving.  Also, reddit only allows requests every 2 seconds.  With 1000 users, that's over 30 minutes to go through everyone's comments.  I'm looking into ways to make that more efficient.

I dunno, but I'll buy 50.000 at that price ;D

I don't have that much liquid, so you'll have to give me a couple of days. Especially because I would want to buy heavily leveraged.

The title is highly misleading, reddit.com is not testing any bitcoin bot, the bitcoin bot is run by a reddit user.

And a missleading title like that screams SCAM to me. Also the comments about no security at all sounds like someone planning to walk away with all the Ƀ put into this service some day with a lame excuse.

oh wow, that's disappointing.

Another big SNAFU for Bitcoin... ::)

Ok, thx for the input. I fixed it, also added a disclaimer to the OP.

@ security issue: This bot is still highly experimtental, so like SuperP has done in the past I repeat for everyone reading this, to give it a try but not to put anymore then SMALL amounts of BTC in it! Nevertheless SuperP is well aware of the potential insecure nature of this script. He has taken the service offline for the moment to do some more check ups on it (as I read him). I expect him to make it available for the reddit crowd as soon as he feels comfortable with it and hope everybody supports him.

@ SuperP: I believe with so much support already, people around this forum would love to contribute some time to your project. Have you considered to release to code for people to check?

Cheers,
Spekulatius

Well I feel silly...  Somehow I missed that blockchain.info wallets have a limit of 400 addresses.  At the rate the bot was growing, it's going to need a lot more than that.  I'm now looking to buy VPS hosting for a dedicated bitcoind server.  I was using the bitcoind JSON RPC API, so it will be trivial to move to another bitcoind server.

Does anyone have suggestions?  I'm wondering about http://bitvps.com/.  Do they still offer a VPS with a pre-installed and synced bitcoind?  The website seems to be down for updates so I'm not sure if this is what I want.

@Spekulatius yes I'm planning to release the code before it's out of beta.

One good option is http://www.cinfu.com/ - it's cheap, works well afaik and accepts Bitcoin.

You may wanna release it before 30st of October to enter the competition for "Bitcoin Project of the Month: November (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108803.msg1285326#msg1285326)" or any other month basically. Requirement is that it is open source by then.

I am very worried that bitcoind is hosted on a virtual private server managed by another company...

dumb question: can you create more than one account? i guess so, could even be scripted via selenium!
but it's probably breaking the TOS, maybe ask them via email.

I'm wary of this as well, which is one of the reasons I'm hesitant to ever make a guarantee to users unless I have insurance for all the funds.  Maybe BitVPS.com can convince us otherwise?


Technically possible, but that would require going through users in the order of which wallet they were associated with and more delays for unlocking/locking each wallet when switching.  I was able to get an api key to bypass the request limiter for things like getting a balance, but the wallet I'm using now might be too big at ~300 users and can't save any changes I make.  Asked about it in the blockchain.info thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40264.msg1285913#msg1285913

If this takes off you will be managing a lot of bitcoins.  Maybe you need to host it yourself which will take more security work but it might be worth it.

I checked out the Reddit API.  They only allow 30 requests per minute.  Seems like this reddit bot will not be scalable.  I think you should contact reddit and ask them on some advice.

I like the bot, I hope it's back up and running soon. At some point if it becomes really popular it might be a good idea to switch the bot's auto-replies to PMs to avoid spamming threads, but for now I think the viral factor of posting transaction confirmations is beneficial and helps show the tips are real.

This is an awesome idea.

However, please don't have the bot add an entire comment as confirmation.  Just a red star or something (might need a line or two of code from the people who run reddit.com).  If it keeps polluting the comment space like it's doing right now, there's likely to be some sort of backlash.

Again: awesome, awesome idea.

Did you break reddit? reddit was down all day today.

Instead of managing users' fund, just use your money. For example, if you could only risk 1 BTC, than only keep a cold wallet deposit of only 1 BTC. That way if the VPS get robbed, you lose your 1 BTC instead of the customers' money.

UPDATE on the bot:

I'm in the process of rewriting the bot in python to take advantage of the Python Reddit API Wrapper (praw) and make retrieving user comments and messages faster.  Parts of the code need updated now that a bitcoind server is being used instead of the blockchain.info API.  I'm new to Github and I'm not well versed in python, so please bear with me.  Every line there should be treated as pseudocode for now since it's a mess between PHP -> Python.  If you would like to help out, here it is on Github: https://github.com/NerdfighterSean/bitcointip

Some people suggested a subreddit specifically for the bot, so I've made that if you want to post stuff there: http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip