UPDATED 13:59 EDT / NOVEMBER 26 2014

Bitcoin Weekly 2014 November 26: Bitcoin Black Friday and the tipping revolution are upon us

bitcoin-weekly-logo-11-2014It’s Thanksgiving week and most minds are turning to turkey and insane deals at the local retail store. In the Bitcoin world the turkey stays at home, but the deals will be represented by Bitcoin Black Friday—soon to be three years running, this Black Friday event tends to bring quite a following, read below on how not to miss it.

Also in the news, ChangeTip surpassed over 10,000 tips in one day and this is representative of a surge in Bitcoin tipping that has been working its way through the community.

The Mozilla Foundation has begun accepting bitcoins as donations, joining The Wikimedia Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

And, finally, for the video gamers amongst you: Far Cry 4 has an Easter egg nod to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Black Friday 2014

Today, Bitcoin Black Friday 2014 will announce the deals that will be available on Black Friday, November 28th. The event, founded by Jon Holmquist in 2012, will be seeing its third and most spectacular annual event this year.

This Bitcoin Black Friday represents a giant leap to 6,000 merchants participating, up from 600 in 2013, and 300 in 2012. Data from the 2013 Bitcoin Black Friday showed huge numbers of signups, bitcoin flow, and merchants

Mainstream media reaction to the upcoming Bitcoin Black Friday has been bigger than 2013: NBC put up an article and ABC ran with a six minute video on the subject.

ChangeTip reaches over 10,000 tips in one day

Last week, social media bitcoin tipping service ChangeTip announced that it had seen over 10,000 tips in one day. This comes on the heels of a surge in interest in using bitcoin tips as a way to bring broader adoption to the cryptocurrency.

Tipping in general found a foothold on social media sites such as Reddit and has begun to see greater appeal in spaces such as Twitter and YouTube. ChangeTip makes it easy to use bitcoins to tip individuals in both of these spaces (as well as a few others).

Advocates of tipping believe that it will show the potential broad appeal and power of bitcoin to be used to provide small amounts of money for everyday interactions. This should especially appeal to people who produce media for the Internet such as artists, authors, video makers, etc. who already take donations and/or use services such as Patreon.

The belief that tipping may be one of the killer apps of Bitcoin has been forwarded suggesting that tipping could become a replacement or strong augment for advertising on the Internet. While tipping certainly does not have the numbers (or adoption) currently, it has all the hallmarks of a technology that could be harnessed by indie artists and producers on the Internet to receive income and for indie consumers to support them.

Mozilla now accepts BTC donations

The Mozilla Foundation, the California-based non-profit responsible for the Firefox browser and other projects, recently announced that it will now accept bitcoin donations.

“For some time, Mozilla supporters have asked for the ability to donate using bitcoin,” Geoffrey MacDougall, Vice President of Engagement for Mozilla, writes on the Mozilla blog. ”We are finally able to fulfill that request.”

The donation page went up November 20th and provides a way for interested parties to donate BTC after submitting an e-mail address. The Foundation uses a secure Coinbase form for bitcoin submissions.

Individuals in the Bitcoin community have expressed concern about The Mozilla Foundation asking for an e-mail address before a donation can be made. The reason given by the Foundation is that it must provide for compliance with tax laws—and that donations that exceed $5,000 (even in bitcoins) would require even more hoops to jump through.

Far Cry 4 Bitcoin Easter egg

far-cry-4-cryptocurrency-screenshot

It looks like Ubisoft Montreal, the developer of the recently released Far Cry 4 in the long-running first person shooter series has a thing for Bitcoin. Hidden in the game players can obtain a piece of equipment called a “Cryptocurrency Drive.”

In a tongue-in-cheek joke about cryptocurrency the flavor text reads, “The label on this ruggedized hard drive indicates that it contains a large amount of virtual currency. Sell it before the market collapses.” The drive is worth 34,000 in in-game currency, which seems pretty rich.

Far Cry 4 was released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One and 360, and Playstation 3 and 4 on November 18th from publisher Ubisoft.

Tip credit goes to /u/kris33 on Reddit.

Image credit: Screenshot from Far Cry 4 (c) 2014 Ubisoft

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