BCTIP - Printable Bitcoin Tips

[norn]

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. 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!

https://www.bctip.org/static/img/bctip.jpg

[Stephen Gornick]

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.

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?)

[lebing]

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

[toffoo]

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?

[elebit]

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.

[ragmondo]

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 ?

[ragmondo]

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.

[Global BTC]

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?

[camdoo]

slim shadey

[norn]

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:

https://www.bctip.org/static/img/bctip2.jpg

[elebit]

"Activation success rate" is broken.

[1Pakis]

Thaks for the tip

[bittick]

this is bloody wonderful!

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

[norn]

"Activation success rate" is broken.

thx! fixed

[norn]

this is bloody wonderful!

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

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

[bittick]

could I be the first to get it? lol

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!

[Transisto]

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.

[Xenophis]

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!

[norn]

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.

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

[kuzko]

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 ^^