Chicago Sun-Times Bitcoin Experiment (NOW OVER)

[Peter R]

UPDATE:  The Chicaga Sun-Times is the 9th largest newspaper in the US (circulation = 470,000).  Today and only today they are conducting an experiment with the bitcoin startup "BitWalls" paywall service.  

***Please donate 25 cents (or more!!) to show your support for bitcoin and the concept of micropayments!***

This will be a story in the MSM.  Would you rather the story read "there was little interest in bitcoin micro-payments" or would you rather it read "10,000 people donated using bitcoin--Bitcoin-based micro-paywalls may resuscitate the dying newspaper industry!"

As a pre-emptive strike against the "8-cent-miner's-fee-for-a-25-cent-payment" argument--BitWalls uses Coinbase and if you pay using a Coinbase wallet, there is zero transaction fee.  Anyone can very easily set-up a Coinbase wallet and then fund it with your regular bitcoin client/wallet.

INSTRUCTIONS:  

1.  Go to http://www.suntimes.com.

2.  You should see a pop-up that looks like this (you may have to click/scroll around for a bit--if not, reset your browser):



3.  Click "donate bitcoin: $0.25"

4.  You should see a new pop-up that looks like this:



5.  Pay the requested amount (if you use Coinbase you will not be charged a miner's fee, as the receiving address is also Coinbase--pretty slick I think).  



ORIGINAL POST:  I just found this article: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/01/31/read-all-about-it-sun-times-experiments-with-bitcoin-paywall-on-saturday/

It says that the Chicago Sun-Times is conducting a 24 hr experiment tomorrow with bitcoin payments to bypass their paywall.  This seems interesting, and a good application for bitcoin micro-payments, but I question how well it will work if only "tested" for 24 hours.  

Has anyone heard anything about this?


EDIT: $0.03 for 24 hr pass and $0.01 for a single article.  They're also talking about this on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1wozjt/suntimes_experiments_with_bitcoin_paywall_on/

[Bobsurplus]

I read about it an hour or two ago. Seems like a nice idea, I don't know if the Chicago Sun Times is the right platform to try it on, but you never know.

[Peter R]

I'm thinking that it's so cheap, that we all might as well pay the 3 cents!  LOL   

Imagine if they got 10,000 bitcoin readers!  The news would go viral!!

[Bobsurplus]

I'm thinking that it's so cheap, that we all might as well pay the 3 cents!  LOL   

Imagine if they got 10,000 bitcoin readers!  The news would go viral!!

I'm down, I'll throw a few cents at this tomorrow.

Lets get this thread seen so more people take part... you gotta change the title to something banana shit crazy thast going to make everyone take a look.

Good luck!

[Peter R]

It seems it's not a really paywall, but rather a "donation box" to see if people pay a few pennies: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/237981/sun-times-to-test-bitcoin-paywall-thats-really-just-an-optional-donation-box/

It is now Saturday in Chicago, and I can't see any way to contribute...

[Sonny]

I'm thinking that it's so cheap, that we all might as well pay the 3 cents!  LOL   

Imagine if they got 10,000 bitcoin readers!  The news would go viral!!

Sounds like a plan

[BTCisthefuture]

I remember reading about this the other week, I thought it had already passed though.  I'll be watching with a cloes eye tomorrow to see how it plays out, very interesting indeed.  I'll probably view some stuff with bitcoin as well to support it.  If this goes well it could really open the eyes of others in the media industry and the benefits bitcoin brings to microtransactions.  

It's true that a lot of newspapers/magazines have had a hard time making money online. Either needing to try to make money off ads which doesn't always work or to charge people for their entire service which often times people find to be too expensive. Being able to charge people pennies or less to view their content has great potential IMO.

Try to help out and view some articles with bitcoin tomorrow!

[BTCisthefuture]

Something I just thought about...... aren't the fee's higher than the actual cost if you pay 1-3 cents ?  I was thinking of paying 1cent an article to view more than 3 articles , but then i got to think each transaction is like 8cents.

how realistic is it you can do 0 fee transaction on something like this without any holdups/problems

[Peter R]

Something I just thought about...... aren't the fee's higher than the actual cost if you pay 1-3 cents ?  I was thinking of paying 1cent an article to view more than 3 articles , but then i got to think each transaction is like 8cents.

how realistic is it you can do 0 fee transaction on something like this without any holdups/problems

The article says that BitWalls is their payment processor http://www.bitwall.io.  I just signed up for a BitWalls account and I see that it links to your Coinbase account (which I also had to set up--but that was easy too [you can then get your Coinbase account to send an email invoice to "you" in order to fund it]).  This allows you to make the micro-payment without worrying about the miner's fee.  

So it seems to make sense for micro-payments.  

I'm still annoyed that it looks like its not a *real* paywall tomorrow, but more of a "donation" instead.  

[FoodForThePoor]

Good move all around.

Added publicity for Bitcoin as a means of payment versus just a speculative volatile short term investment and the Chicago Sun-Times will suck in 1000's of people anxious to spend a mbtc on something, temporarily increasing their readership base, knowing at least X% will stay on after the experiment.

Nice job.

[BTCisthefuture]

Something I just thought about...... aren't the fee's higher than the actual cost if you pay 1-3 cents ?  I was thinking of paying 1cent an article to view more than 3 articles , but then i got to think each transaction is like 8cents.

how realistic is it you can do 0 fee transaction on something like this without any holdups/problems

The article says that BitWalls is their payment processor http://www.bitwall.io.  I just signed up for a BitWalls account and I see that it links to your Coinbase account (which I also had to set up--but that was easy too [you can then get your Coinbase account to send an email invoice to "you" in order to fund it]).  This allows you to make the micro-payment without worrying about the miner's fee.  

So it seems to make sense for micro-payments.  

I'm still annoyed that it looks like its not a *real* paywall tomorrow, but more of a "donation" instead.  

Maybe it hasn't gone into affect yet. People are sleeping in Chicago right now, I would think it goes into affect at the start of business hours. I hope so anyways because youre right that right now there is nothing on their site about it.

I also hope you dont need to sign up to both bitwall and coinbase to do this, those type of extra steps are annoying for most people.  I guess we will see in the next 5-8 hours or so.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

https://twitter.com/Bitcoin100/status/429449952620601344

@LizHamburg Bitcoin 100 will endow Taproot Foundation $1,000 via #Bitcoin if they start accepting them. No strings! http://www.thedomains.com/2014/01/14/chicago-sun-times-to-test-bitcoin-and-twitter-paywall-with-startup-bitwall/ …

[grue]

guys, please remember that bitcoin is NOT for micropayments. I'm all for supporting adoption of bitcoin, but spamming the network with dust is not the way to do it.

[Peter R]

guys, please remember that bitcoin is NOT for micropayments. I'm all for supporting adoption of bitcoin, but spamming the network with dust is not the way to do it.

And that's exactly why I posted my pre-emptive strike against this argument in the OP: BitWalls integrates with Coinbase, so if you pay from a Coinbase wallet, it auto-recognizes the receiving address as another Coinbase wallet and conducts the transactions off chain and with 0 transaction fee.  

So you are not spamming the network with dust.  You are supporting one of the killer-apps for off-chain transactions.  

[Prolifik]

Donated $5 couldn't click the confirm button because my adblock is aggressive as fuck.

I've done my part here...

[BTCisthefuture]

Suprised to only see $50 on 24 donations so far.  That's not much at all 

[Peter R]

Suprised to only see $50 on 24 donations so far.  That's not much at all  

It is a lot more than this.  The BitWalls/Coinbase system generates a new receiving address for each payment.  My partner and I both donated, and both addresses were different.  

[BTCisthefuture]

Suprised to only see $50 on 24 donations so far.  That's not much at all  

It is a lot more than this.  The BitWalls/Coinbase system generates a new receiving address for each payment.  My partner and I both donated, and both addresses were different.  

Sorry I don't follow. When I went to the site I saw a address and sent to that one. Same address other people are seeing ?  Am I missing something ?

If there's other addresses do you know much they've received ?

[BittBurger]

Why would you recommend donating 25 cents?

If you want this experiment to work, you better hope the total donations they receive is *BIG*.

That means everyone needs to donate $25.00.  Not 25 cents.

If 400 people donate 25 cents and their grand total is $100, they'll consider bitcoin a total joke, with a bunch of poor teenagers promoting it.

If 400 people donate 25 dollars and their grand total is $10,000 .... they'll announce that from a mountaintop and Bitcoin will get yet another boost in legitimacy.

Suprised to only see $50 on 24 donations so far.  That's not much at all

Thats exactly the attitude theyll have.  Stop being cheap people. 

$20 of that $50 is from me.   Sad.

[Peter R]

Suprised to only see $50 on 24 donations so far.  That's not much at all  

It is a lot more than this.  The BitWalls/Coinbase system generates a new receiving address for each payment.  My partner and I both donated, and both addresses were different.  

Sorry I don't follow. When I went to the site I saw a address and sent to that one. Same address other people are seeing ?  Am I missing something ?

If there's other addresses do you know much they've received ?

I just played around a bit more.  I've now made 4 different 25 cent payments, and each time I was given a different receiving address to pay.  

But when I look at any of the receiving addresses on blockchain.info, I see that they each have received 20 - 40 payments (and most of them look like $0.25 and $5.00 payments from today).  So, obviously, BitWalls/Coinbase is recycling addresses to some extent, but we still don't know how many unique address have been used for the Sun-Times today.