Bitcoin tipping sees giant growth: ChangeTip exceeds 10,000 tips in one day
Yesterday, Bitcoin tipping service ChangeTip announced that it had exceed 10,000 user generated bitcoin tips in one day, marking a milestone in the phenomenon of microtransacted bitcoin tipping across the Internet.
As a currency that can be broken down into extremely tiny fractions and still traded, Bitcoin has always had an ephemeral edge when it comes to the potential for microtransactions. There may be potential problems with transaction fees (which are tiny) but it still stands out as an excellent method for remitting very small amounts. This makes Bitcoin perfect for tipping.
This led to the rise of tip bots—one of the most notable is the Reddit BitcoinTip bot, which has since been consumed by the ChangeTip bot.
The ChangeTip service enables users to tip others with bitcoin via many social media outlets by simply leaving a comment that triggers the service. The bot works on Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, GitHub, Google Plus, Tumblr, and StockTwits. Tipping actions can be customized as well allowing users to set tip amounts to symbols (or words) such as “@changetip 1 beer” if “beer” were set to 50 mBTC or something similar would then tip that amount.
There will be a 1% fee to withdraw tipped funds from ChangeTip beginning January 15, 2015.
Tipping has been a function of the Bitcoin community for some time now, but recently it’s gained a great deal of traction and ChangeTip has been reaping the benefits.
Aside from breaking the 10,000 tips per day milestone, ChangeTip also reported that it has built up a userbase of over 34,000 user accounts.
“Our community extends from San Francisco to New York, from Tokyo to Buenos Aires and it’s growing quickly,” says Nick Sullivan, ChangeTIp CEO. “ We are proud that this growth has come organically, primarily through word of mouth.”
Competition already mounting
Right on the cusp of this surge in bitcoin tipping, Bitcoin wallet Coinbase released its own tipping mechanism. However, instead of going the social media route, Coinbase offers a type of donate button that can be attached to web pages.
In the social media tipping market, ChangeTip is still leader—and fairly much the only show in town—but it likely won’t be long for others to catch up.
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