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Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

tip4commit.com

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Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#41

Post by tinco »

I hate to be a party pooper here, but if this project would ever take off, and the project would receive serious amounts of bitcoin that would mean that serious amount of bitcoin would have to be managed and secured by whoever runs that project.

The past has shown that everyone, even persons who run e-wallets and currency exchanges, severely underestimates the amount of security such an endeavour requires.

There's a hundred questions you should ask anyone who asks you to keep care of bitcoin. How large is the hot wallet? How is the offline wallet stored? Where's the source code? What hardware does the service run on? Who are you? What will you do when someone steals your hot wallet? What monitors do you run to make sure the books add up?

So, nice idea, but please make sure this is actually going to be safe.

(BTW there seems to be a way to escrow bitcoin where a third party decides if the transaction should pass, but that third party never gains access to the bitcoin themselves, I haven't read the details of it, but that would seem perfect for this sort of thing)

Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#43

Post by agravier »

gamegoblin wrote: post #37
edavis wrote: post #35

Projects like these is where Bitcoin can really shine. Maybe Bitcoin will conquer the world, maybe it won't. I have no idea. What I do know is there is real utility in being "electronic petty cash" which Bitcoin can easily become. Imagine: Alice sends Bob a few bitcoins after Bob writes a particularly insightful comment on HN. Bob then comes across a great blog post by Charlie and sends him a few bitcoins. Charlie th…

What you describe kind of sounds like a universal karma system (yay internet points!). As stackoverflow and similar sites have shown, people will do quite a lot to accumulate internet points.

Not really. You can't purchase karma. Or rather: karma that you could purchase with dollars and use to gratify someone or incentives a task would be akin to a specialised currency.

Or: money is tradable karma.

Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#45

Post by olalonde »

slg wrote: post #38
edavis wrote: post #35

Projects like these is where Bitcoin can really shine. Maybe Bitcoin will conquer the world, maybe it won't. I have no idea. What I do know is there is real utility in being "electronic petty cash" which Bitcoin can easily become. Imagine: Alice sends Bob a few bitcoins after Bob writes a particularly insightful comment on HN. Bob then comes across a great blog post by Charlie and sends him a few bitcoins. Charlie th…

What is preventing USD from being used in this way? It seems to me to only stumbling block are regulatory and security restrictions. If that is the case, wouldn't future bitcoin regulation put an end to this type of use case? Or is the real benefit of your proposed use case the distance of bitcoin value from perceived financial value (ie you are willing to tip X bitcoin but have second thoughts when looking it as X c…

It's fairly easy to send USD online if you own a credit card and bank account, but receiving money is a whole lot harder. It's also harder to do it with the degree of anonymity that Bitcoin provides and without the risk of your payment provider freezing your funds or banning you from using their service.

Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#46

Post by Smirnoff »

slg wrote: post #38
edavis wrote: post #35

Projects like these is where Bitcoin can really shine. Maybe Bitcoin will conquer the world, maybe it won't. I have no idea. What I do know is there is real utility in being "electronic petty cash" which Bitcoin can easily become. Imagine: Alice sends Bob a few bitcoins after Bob writes a particularly insightful comment on HN. Bob then comes across a great blog post by Charlie and sends him a few bitcoins. Charlie th…

What is preventing USD from being used in this way? It seems to me to only stumbling block are regulatory and security restrictions. If that is the case, wouldn't future bitcoin regulation put an end to this type of use case? Or is the real benefit of your proposed use case the distance of bitcoin value from perceived financial value (ie you are willing to tip X bitcoin but have second thoughts when looking it as X c…

Micropayments is a really tough business. Basically it's too risky. Chargebacks are often anywhere between $15 to $35 per transaction.

When you earn a small percentage of a $5 transaction, which a sender claims to have sent by mistake (or he/she requests the money back due to different reasons) 2 things happen:

A. You lose your % of $5

B. You get charged $35.

Not a pretty situation to be in when you are scaling and about 15-30% of your sales get charged back.

Bitcoins are irreversible, so at least they mitigate your risk as a micropayment provider (or as a seller).

Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#47

Post by FBT »

arsenische wrote: post #39
unreal37 wrote: post #15

I assume it's not affiliated with the projects at all. This is an independently-run tip system for open source projects. Cool idea. Key disclaimer though, is that only 95% of donations for tips go to the coders. And if every commit donates 1% of the balance to the commit, that means that the project almost never donates it's full balance. So if this ever really takes off, the original developer of tip4commit will be…

That's right. We made this project as a part of Rails Rumble contest and are using a limited-time free server offered by them. So we need to collect money to move to a new server, to cover transaction fees and to continue development of this service if it is demanded. Maybe we should remove the fees, go opensource and crowdfund ourselves. We were discussing it but haven't made such decision yet. We don't expect to ho…

I am glad you have thought about it it to this extent. It is always reassuring to see that the relevant point have been thought of, and that there is at least a provisional plan to deal with them. This gives me a fair amount more confidence in what you are doing.

Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#48

Post by slg »

tinco wrote: post #41

I hate to be a party pooper here, but if this project would ever take off, and the project would receive serious amounts of bitcoin that would mean that serious amount of bitcoin would have to be managed and secured by whoever runs that project. The past has shown that everyone, even persons who run e-wallets and currency exchanges, severely underestimates the amount of security such an endeavour requires. There's a…

If only there was some party out there that could protect us from things like this. Possibly even insuring us in the case of something going really wrong and the person holding our money loses it all. They could also establish rules that anyone holding money would have to comply with in order to be certified as safe. Wouldn't that be grand...

Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#49

Post by Smirnoff »

olalonde wrote: post #45
slg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is preventing USD from being used in this way? It seems to me to only stumbling block are regulatory and security restrictions. If that is the case, wouldn't future bitcoin regulation put an end to this type of use case? Or is the real benefit of your proposed use case the distance of bitcoin value from perceived financial value (ie you are willing to tip X bitcoin but have second thoughts when looking it as X c…

It's fairly easy to send USD online if you own a credit card and bank account, but receiving money is a whole lot harder. It's also harder to do it with the degree of anonymity that Bitcoin provides and without the risk of your payment provider freezing your funds or banning you from using their service.

bitcoins don't provide anonymity.

Re: Earn $4 in bitcoins for any commit to sferik/t, a command-line Twitter tool

#50

Post by olalonde »

Smirnoff wrote: post #49
olalonde wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly easy to send USD online if you own a credit card and bank account, but receiving money is a whole lot harder. It's also harder to do it with the degree of anonymity that Bitcoin provides and without the risk of your payment provider freezing your funds or banning you from using their service.

bitcoins don't provide anonymity.

Anonymity is not a binary variable which is why I worded it "degree of anonymity". I think it should be obvious that credit cards and bank accounts are vastly less anonymous than Bitcoin.
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