I see that it supports credit cards, but it doesn't support bitcoin.
Weigh in here if you'd like to see that: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/14
Thanks. I commented that I will use only this service if it accepts bitcoin.
Is personal funding viable?
21–30 of 67 posts
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that could be related to the fact that bitcoin isn't something anyone with any familiarity with economics should take seriously. (For the purposes of this comment "familiarity with economics" should be understood to mean: has so much as shopped in a grocery store).
Mind saying more or linking? I keep hearing strong opinions against bitcoin but haven't heard details.
The most clear-cut argument against Bitcoin is that it is a ridiculous waste of energy. The nature of mining in the protocol implies that if Bitcoin takes off on any significant scale, there is a dichotomy going on: either there are so few miners that single large actors can dominate the total hashing power of the network, making it vulnerable; or, a significant fraction of the total world computing power goes towards mining - which means that the electricity used up by the Bitcoin network would be much larger on any reasonable measure than what you need to maintain other currencies. Wasting energy is not exactly a good plan for the future.
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#23Re: Is personal funding viable?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, that could be related to the fact that bitcoin isn't something anyone with any familiarity with economics should take seriously. You justify with . This is a total non-starter. (For the purposes of this comment "familiarity with economics" should be understood to mean: has so much as shopped in a grocery store). Very low standard it seems. I shopped in a grocery store.
Then you'll know that you can't spend Bitcoin at a grocery store because it's some crap that people made up and not actual currency. Edit: My comment isn't US-centric, obviously, since I don't know where any of you hail from. Trolls.
You're right, the fact that "it's some crap that people made up" made these dozen Krugerrands that I traded my bitcoins for stupid and worthless.
Oh, wait, I can't spend those at the grocery store either. I guess those aren't actual currency either. Silly me!
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mind saying more or linking? I keep hearing strong opinions against bitcoin but haven't heard details.
The most clear-cut argument against Bitcoin is that it is a ridiculous waste of energy. The nature of mining in the protocol implies that if Bitcoin takes off on any significant scale, there is a dichotomy going on: either there are so few miners that single large actors can dominate the total hashing power of the network, making it vulnerable; or, a significant fraction of the total world computing power goes toward…
Miners will generally operate when their revenue is greater than their loss in term of electricity bill(if they're not being parasites).
Let calculate the revenue a miner would get if they win all the blocks:
50 bitcoin every 10 minutes mean 300 bitcoin, which mean 7200 bitcoin a day. The price of a bitcoin at the time I am writing this is 6.54 USD, so the total revenue is 47,088 USD per day.
That mean, assuming a miner can win all blocks at 50 bitcoin forever assuming the price and difficulty stay the same, he can afford to pay an electric bill of 47,088 per day assuming that the price hold stable. This equals to 17,187,120 USD in revenue every year.
The market cap of bitcoin is only 60,951,475 USD, which mean miner revenue equals 28% of the market cap. However, most economic activities are certainly not miners, but actually trading bots and speculators across exchanges. In the MtGox USD alone, about 8.7 million dollars worth of bitcoin were exchanged in 30 days. You can also add in the various economic activities other than trading currencies, such as virtual goods, hosting, ice creams, t-shirts, porn, illegal drugs, etc.
You can conclude that the miners are guaranteeing more than just revenues for themselves, as the various activities in the bitcoin economy which actually probably dwarf what the miners are making in term of revenues. As far as being actually efficient method of security for a currency? Probably not right now, assuming that security measures actually scale economically. It could be that the actual electricity cost grows slower as more and more efficient method of hashing are found.
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#26What's wrong with them getting jobs?
I'm 99% sure that everyone receiving tips has a job. Many of these people probably also love what they're doing. I also know that a lot of them are very self motivated and build things on their own time in order to solve common problems in an elegant way. But isn't that what they're also trying to do at a "job"?
I've been building products based on open source technology for the past 10 years. However, I've seen a HUGE increase int the diversity and the amount of open code I've used over the past 3 years! I feel personally indebted to a number of people that I've never met, because I'm using their work! Therefore, I'm happy to tip them a modest amount weekly (what little I can afford)
I love the idea of gittip, and I think it could make "open source developer" a viable job... BUT I don't think it's going to happen overnight. And it may not even happen while individuals are the only ones tipping.
So, what if companies could (or would) tip? There are probably a number of small companies that use open source tech, who can't afford the salary of a mid-level silicon valley engineer, but could afford to pool their resources to support great open source projects (side note: $160k/year is a very comfortable living in the Southeastern US, and probably elsewhere not right on East/West Coast).
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#27I think that it will be quite difficult to make this possible exclusively from individuals. Unless there were a threat that the projects will stop, or an offer of doing more that's pretty clear, most don't have a strong incentive to give. Something like kick starter helps to solve this in a way tipping doesn't.
What about a sponsorship component? Facilitating companies sponsoring a programmer? Their github page gets a logo or something, and they get a bit check each month. It's not a new model. Skateboarding, for example, which has no practical use aside from entertainment, often works this way I think. Many skaters earn their living from sponsorship and make next to nothing from competitions or whatever else.
If there were a major github competitor (maybe there is, I'm not so much in a position to know), the rivals might also pay these figures to work on the projects they control on their platforms. It helps Github immensely to have all these projects on its platform.
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem I have with bitcoin is that the fixed bitcoin supply and decreased rate at which coins can be mined rewards hoarding behaviors. If you know that the bitcoins you have in your account today will be worth more in the future, you have a powerful disincentive to spend.
If you know that the bitcoins you have in your account today will be worth more in the future, you have a powerful disincentive to spend. That's only if you're a scrooge and don't like spending anything. Since bitcoin started, I spent bitcoin on hosting and domain, t-shirt, musics, development bounties, writers, and other things that I forgot to mention. I never spent a bitcent on mining hardware, though. You have to…
"We don't exists to horde money, but to spend it doing things that we like."
Deflation increases the incentive to hoard cash. People respond to incentives. Economies based on deflationary currencies end up suffering from problems caused by this. You may not agree, but pretty much every economist does.
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#29This seems really strange, to me. Isn't it basically working around an arbitrary, self-imposed restriction to give code away?
As a developer, if I want to make money from one of my projects, I'll charge people to use it or to buy a copy. If I can't sell enough copies to fund development, I don't see how I would ever be able to fund development with "tips."
As a user, I don't mind paying for software, and I don't think many people do. Most people realize that it takes time and skill to create a piece of software, and that the people creating it could have spent that time doing something else.
Re: Is personal funding viable?
#30What's wrong with them getting jobs?
I'm 99% sure that everyone receiving tips has a job. Many of these people probably also love what they're doing. I also know that a lot of them are very self motivated and build things on their own time in order to solve common problems in an elegant way. But isn't that what they're also trying to do at a "job"? I've been building products based on open source technology for the past 10 years. However, I've seen a HU…
We have a ticket for providing invoices, with the use case of making Gittip more friendly to companies wanting to give.