[ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet

[weex]

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?

[amincd]

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.

[symbot]

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!

[amincd]

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.

[HowGudAmI]

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 

[amincd]

Thank you for the notice. The site is up from my end. Can you confirm if it's still inaccessible for you?

[HowGudAmI]

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!.

[btcven]

The website is down again o.o

Sad, I do like this service

[amincd]

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:

• When people donate, it also advertises your site on Twitter via a status update.
• Your donors can receive public credit for their donations, as it's done in a publicly verifiable way.
• It promotes BTC as an internet microdonation currency

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.

[amincd]

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.

[bittick]

cant access it...still

[amincd]

cant access it...still

I'm testing now and it resolves for me. Could you please check again?

[btcven]

finally, thanks for your work. just in time!

[amincd]

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

[amincd]

Update:

Roseanne favorited a tweet from @btctip:

https://twitter.com/btctip/status/340730373447241729

[giszmo]

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 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.

[amincd]

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.

[giszmo]

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?

[amincd]

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.

[giszmo]

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.