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ChangeTip Shutting Down (self.changetip)

Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder が 投稿 - announcement

When we started ChangeTip a little over 2 years ago, we had a vision for a company that would allow people to spread appreciation on the web for things they enjoyed. It feels good to be appreciated, and ChangeTip aimed to make that possible all over the web.

Since then, over 100,000 people have signed up for ChangeTip, and more than 350,000 tips have been sent. We gave the Bitcoin movement a good boost, and we’re honored to have been the ‘first bitcoin wallet’ for so many people.

In the spring of 2016, ChangeTip’s employees were acqui-hired by Airbnb, where most of us work today. Since then, we’ve been searching for the best outcome for ChangeTip, and unfortunately the only remaining option is to shut it down.

At the end of November 2016, all tipping functionality will be deactivated, and the site will be put into withdrawal-only mode for people to collect their funds. The site will remain up for a number of months to allow users to withdraw their funds, and we will be reaching out to users to notify them.

We recommend you close your ChangeTip account. You may withdraw any remaining funds via BTC withdrawal, or you can donate your funds to Charity when you close your account from the settings page.

FAQ

  1. Wait! Can’t you keep it running by doing x or y or z? We’ve explored dozens of options thoroughly over the past few months, and came up empty. It’s time. Among other complications, the monthly costs to maintain the servers, services, and customer support to keep the site running are not insignificant. Furthermore, the potential legal liabilities that may arise make a volunteer effort unappealing.
  2. What happens to my money? We want you to have it! The site will be up in a withdrawal-only mode for you to log in and withdraw the funds. If you don’t want it, you can donate it to charity when you close your account.
  3. How long do withdrawals take? We process withdrawals in batches, usually within 24 hours. If you’re still waiting after that, feel free to send us an email.
  4. What about my USD? Withdrawal as USD has been unavailable for a few months. However, you may convert your USD to bitcoin and withdraw it.
  5. What happens to my data? When you log-in, you will have the option of closing your account, at which point we will delete all the social data.
  6. Are you making money off this closure in any way? No. In fact, we have been working for free for quite some time to keep the site running.
  7. How long will you keep the site up? For a reasonable amount of time, probably a couple months. We have a lot of work to do to contact users to let them know to come to the site and get their money. If you have friends or family who use ChangeTip, please help spread us the word.
  8. What if I have another question? Ask below, and we will try to get it answered.

We want to extend a very special thanks to our entire community. We are truly humbled by your generosity and your philanthropic spirit. It was a great adventure, and we’re proud of what we built - we sincerely hope you enjoyed using ChangeTip. Please continue to spread the mission of generosity, gratitude, and appreciation all over the web.

全 121 件のコメント
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トップ新着論争中古い順Q&A

[–]cointastical 15ポイント16ポイント  (3子コメント)

So long, and thanks for all the bits!

[Edited]

[–]Leithm 12ポイント13ポイント  (0子コメント)

Good times, when bitcoin was really growing all sort of exciting stuff was being built.

Thanks guys.

[–]usrn 17ポイント18ポイント  (8子コメント)

had about 1500 bits (1-2USD), I tried to withdraw then I got an error saying that the amount is too low to withdraw, then my balance disappeared.

That's gregonomics and a crappy backend for you.

[–]AskChangeTip 8ポイント9ポイント  (4子コメント)

That looks like an old error message. Your withdrawal was processed. PMing you the transaction ID.

[–]usrn 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

thanks :)

[–]tokyopotato 11ポイント12ポイント  (2子コメント)

huh. blame somebody for something completely unrelated. and you probably wonder why r/bitcoin is moderated

[–]GeriGeriGeri 5ポイント6ポイント  (2子コメント)

+/u/dogetipbot 25 doge verify

[–]dogetipbot 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

[wow so verify]: /u/GeriGeriGeri -> /u/usrn Ð25 Dogecoins ($0.00492125) [help]

[–]loserkids 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Wow. Very money. So rich.

[–]bitofit 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Any postmortem or lessons learned for future entrepreneurs who want to take a stab at this space?

[–]hodlgentlemen 8ポイント9ポイント  (3子コメント)

That's a real pity. What will you guys do with the codebase? Open source it?

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 6ポイント7ポイント  (2子コメント)

Maybe.

[–]hodlgentlemen 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think many people would consider that a great gift to the Bitcoin space. Thanks for being an inspirational part of the community for so long.

[–]80558055 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Please do make this open source. I found this service very interesting and I think there is a future for it on the internet. Micropayments wise.

[–]tzimisce 7ポイント8ポイント  (8子コメント)

Eh, sad to see changetip go. I enjoyed using it very much.

/u/changetip $2

[–]changetip 2ポイント3ポイント  (7子コメント)

Nick_Changetip received a tip for 2,683 bits ($2.00).

what is ChangeTip?

[–]yooman 2ポイント3ポイント  (4子コメント)

/u/Nick_Changetip, you should probably note the closure on these wiki pages ("what is changetip" above has no mention of it)

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Will do, thank you for pointing that out. /u/changetip 1 taco

[–]yooman 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hey thanks for the taco! Dammit I am going to miss changetip...

[–]changetip 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

yooman received a tip for 1 taco (3,359 bits/$2.50).

what is ChangeTip?

[–]itsjoeco -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

ha.

[–]RenaKunisaki 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well that sucks.

[–]biosense 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

What are you guys doing at Airbnb? Boring stuff unrelated to bitcoin?

[–]FjorXD 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks for the water bottle, still using it. Anyway, ChangeTip was a great tool to welcome new people into the Bitcoin world since there was no need for a Bitcoin wallet beforehand. Made several hundred small transactions through it. But clearly not enough people were using it. Sad to see it go, but understandable

[–]BitcoinTR 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

We will miss you :(

[–]toriborealis 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

I pitched a few companies in the space about taking over ChangeTip as a fun, community-focused project that we could use to introduce people to the ease, convenience and fun of bitcoin. No one bit. Hard to sell people on taking something over "for the community" as everyone is focused on profit.

That makes me sad, because we had such a fun and robust community of bitcoiners in ChangeTip and many of us used it not only for "spreading gratitude" but for introducing people to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

It's been my dream for a few people to get together and rebuild the product in an open-source way that we feel good about using.

[–]gta350 3ポイント4ポイント  (4子コメント)

Trezor killed Telebit and now Airbnb kill Changetip. Great job guys. Hope you come with a replacement soon.

[–]stickac 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Trezor was not involved in killing Telebit. There was no partnership, except cross-marketing.

[–]gta350 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

I see....

[–]stickac 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

There are instructions how to use Bitstamp and other services with TREZOR. Does that mean that TREZOR acquired Bitstamp?

[–]gta350 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Actually not, it means that Trezor has signed a partnership with Bitstamp. I really don't know what happened in Czech Republic at that meetup or if that guy got busted or not, but time will tell.

[–]slush0 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hey, friend of me has locked substantial amount on Changetip in withdrawal process, for 4 days already. He also tried to contact your support yesterday, no response so far. Are you going to process these payouts anytime soon? I bet he's not going to donate $1000+...

Edit: He just clarify the support responded, with additional questions about his account. Not sure why, is there any AML on Bitcoin-only deposits/withdrawal?

[–]pinhead26 3ポイント4ポイント  (4子コメント)

So back to /u/bitcointip?

[–]vbenes 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Came here for this... It was a breeze to use here (just reddit PMs without additional logins).

[–]pinhead26 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Yeah and IIRC, the bot actually opened blockchain.info wallets for every new tipped user, and used their API to actually move bitcoins on the blockchain for each tip, so each micro-tx was actually on chain. The gold ole' days, huh?!

[–]vbenes 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

bot actually opened blockchain.info wallets

Oh, well. I didn't know that. I don't like BCI.

wallets for every new tipped user

One reddit PM and new user could send tipped BTC anywhere (e.g. own electrum address, charity, humble bundle, ...). That was nice.

move bitcoins on the blockchain for each tip, so each micro-tx was actually on chain

I liked that for educational purposes (transaction was visible in online block explorers).

[–]Borax 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That wouldn't work now though because fees for on chain are so much higher

[–]nter 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

5. What happens to my data? When you log-in, you will have the option of closing your account, at which point we will delete all the social data.

what about the financial data of users such as linked card, bank account, paypal?

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Good question.

For financial data, we made it an intentional point to not store credit card, bank account, etc. data (anything that could be used for a transaction). This is industry standard best practice. The way it works is that the credit card/bank account information is sent to a 3rd party credit card processor, and they give us a token back. We then charge with this token, and it's good for a 1 time use.

In short, we don't have your actual credit card data, we only have a token that references it, so there is nothing to delete.

[–]momslatin_dadsasian 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yes there is, you can and should delete the customer data on the 3rd party, which i assume is stripe, in which case you have an api for deleting their info

[–]Meg4Freedom 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks for providing an awesome service and knowing, like seasoned entrepreneurs, when it's time to peacefully close shop. Bravo.

[–]bitdoggy 9ポイント10ポイント  (4子コメント)

Nice job, Blockstream.

[–]BTCBadger 5ポイント6ポイント  (2子コメント)

What the fuck does Blockstream have to do with this? ChangeTip didn't find a viable business model. Too bad because it was a fun service.

I guess you are going to argue that a block size increase would have attracted more users, but I doubt ChangeTip would be viable even if there were 10x more users.

[–]giszmo 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

All the contrary. Changetip was an off-chain solution that the big-blockers claim blockstream to push for. Only that changetip bared third party risk that LN doesn't. If anything, chaingetip should flourish under fee pressure.

[–]mperklin 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks, Obama!

[–]ChickenThreePointer 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

We will miss you ChangeTip

[–]ecafyelims 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I wish you the best in whatever you do. I don't think the world was ready for changetip. Personally, I was turned off by the fact that tipees were required to create an account and agree to the TOS in order to receive a tip from me.

[–]jtnichol 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I love Changetip. Sad to see you go. It really did get people motivated to have some fun on social networks with Bitcoin. Thanks for the good times.

[–]Cryptolution 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Wow, this sucks so bad. I still actively tip and spread the love. I've sent dozens of tips over the past year, and I've actually maintained roughly 70% of my starting balance because other users would tip me as well.

That shows how successful this platform was, even if they cannot make investors happy and return a profit.

I was actually considering just recently using a circle account to fund my changetip so that I could tip more often and in larger amounts.

Does anyone know of any competitors in this space?

[–]helmex 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

you can use protip.is it is open source and very easy to use, just post a bitcoin addy on your webpage and people that use Protip will send you tips once a week automatically if your page was one they spend more time on.

[–]Cab000se 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Can I buy the rights to changetip?

[–]couchdive 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I was her for the beginning and the end. Good luck everyone and thank you!

[–]tesfox 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Not a single mention of /u/dogetipbot. I'm disappointed. Best of luck guys! And thanks for providing the service!

[–]xoxoreddit 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Holy crap, I wasn't sure if I even had a ChangeTip account. Turns out I deposited 0.1 BTC in it two years ago / $25 worth. I tripled my money!!

[–]helpergodd 7ポイント8ポイント  (0子コメント)

all because of bitcoin core!

[–]Zarutian 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Sad to see you go.

If anyone finds another as easy to use tipbbot for reddit then please let me know.

[–]kilorat 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I was just thinking about Changetip yesterday. I missed when tipping bitcoin was a thing. We all hoped we would break out of that stage where people resist being tipped, but it just lost momentum. Subreddits would ban tipping, and it always felt like handing out bibles. Oh well, we tried!

[–]cyber_numismatist 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I know of Protip and Brave. Are there any others working on BTC-related projects similar to Changetip?

[–]ShapeShift_io 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

So sad to see Changetip go. Thanks so much for the service!

[–]avapoet 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

This makes me sad. I'm sorry you couldn't find a way to make it work.

Right: off to withdraw, I guess!

[–]lightrider44 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

It won't let me withdraw the dust I have left in there. What is the minimum amount of money you will not steal from your users?

[–]SirEDCaLot 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Thanks for giving it a go! Unfortunately it's hard to make money from spreading tiny tips around, especially when the technology theoretically allows doing this without an intermediary :(

A question- What about the old bitcointip bot? Will it be reinstated?

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

To be clear, we had nothing to do with bitcointip. Separate effort.

[–]SirEDCaLot 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Ah yeah I know, bitcointip was some other dude who ran it as a hobby, but when your thing started he decided yours was much nicer and packed it in. I was just wondering if you'd been in contact with him or anything (as I forget his username...)

Now that I have a bit more time to comment- FWIW I am very sad to see you guys go. I think the idea behind changetip is a very good one- have a service-independent way to leave little tips for websites, posters on social media, etc.
I think your only flaw was timing. You were too early (before Bitcoin has widespread use, and there'd be a big market for initiating non-users), but also too late (I heard a lot of people say why use something with a withdrawal fee when they can just past a BTC address for donations). I also think the current block size issue didn't help things, I know a lot of people are reluctant to introduce Bitcoin to new uses until the scaling issue is solved one way or another.

Are you guys going to work for AirBnB now or do you have something else lined up? Either way, best of luck to all of you :)

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks for the kind words! I want to tip you...

I remember you being a big supporter. Thank you for helping spawn the effort.

Up next - not sure yet.

[–]dooglus 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

I got my withdrawal, thanks very much.

One issue I noticed is that you included a very small fee.

0.0001 BTC for a 700 byte transaction meant it took almost 2 hours to confirm.

Bitcoin Core is currently estimating that you need 0.00026835 BTC per 1000 bytes to have a 95% chance of confirming within 25 blocks.

[–]Voluntaryists_dude 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Who gets the coins that are never withdrawn??????????????????

Maybe I don't understand something, but at face value, it sounds like you're STEELING them, or you would of said. I hate to be presumptuous, BUT I bet I'm right.

AND the above is understated; some WILL NEVER FORGET.

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

We'll be making every attempt to get users back their funds, including:

  • This message (publicly announcing it), giving ample time for people to withdraw
  • Private messaging users on every platform that supports it, so we can notify them to come get their funds.
  • We will work through various methods of trying to contact users, for each connected social channel we have contact data for
  • Changing the tip response messages to tell people that the site is closed
  • A message on the home page that

Every reasonable attempt will be made to contact users and return their funds. After that, there is a legal protocol for us to follow for unclaimed founds, which we will be following. I think involves returning money to The State (but I'm not sure yet). Eww. It's really better for everyone, including me, if people withdraw their funds.

On a personal note - I have way more at stake here from a reputation perspective than the total amount of money that is left to be distributed. I have spent several months working for free to find a good home for ChangeTip. Yesterday, I added an option to make it easier for people to close their account and donate the money to ChangeTip. Believe it or not, there are good, reputable, trustworthy people in Bitcoin. :)

I appreciate the call-out. You'll see that we do the right thing. Keep me honest.

[–]Voluntaryists_dude 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

THANKS, I sincerely want ya'll to be right and honorable. It always bothers me when companies like ChangeTip don't state who is in control of the funds, etc. And I'd seen from the beginning, that ChangeTip didn't do that. To a much lesser extent, I don't think Coinbase is straight forward, and I think MtGox and BitInstant were crooked with their lack of openness alone. But maybe it's just that I don't understand somethings, cause save the obvious MtGox example, noone seems to mind. And I do so appreciate ya'll doing ChangeTip; your service is life-changing. I hope someone will take it over; I thought it could make good money. And I considered donating to ya'll, but the above made me decide no way. Thanks Nick for your hard work and service to all!

[–]yeh-nah-yeh 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

When is airbnb going to accept bitcoin as payments and offer bitcoin payments to hosts?

[–]momslatin_dadsasian 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

when they want to bankrupt themselves by the legal liabilities this will introduce (and all the SFYLs they'll have to refund)

[–]winlifeat 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

It's fucked up that you took over what was a free service, bitcointip, made it much more shitty and business-like, then you shut it down. Thanks for ruining what was a great simple service.

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

We didn't take over bitcointip. It was a completely separate service.

[–]gosgood 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Will CT still work for tomorrow's /r/millionairemakers drawing?

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

Yes.

[–]goodbtc 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

/r/millionairemakers is the best example why we need ChangeTip.

Thank you for your hard work!

[–]haight6716 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Syndicoin still works! It's costs are much lower, mainly because it never holds your funds.

https://www.syndicoin.co/

[–]riclas 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

looks cool. harder for non-bitcoin users though

[–]slaykdy 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Changetip is pretty good. Thanks for your contribution to Bitcoin World. And I wish you succeed in the future.

[–]123choji 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

This has been a nice service.

[–]xitize 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm sad for you, i have used alot changetip one year ago.

[–]Vegazer0 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

"Thanks for all the fish"

[–]elfof4sky 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

What I coincidence! I just posted 2 days ago about you refunding my tips back to who knows where they went or if those people even will collect back the tips they gave to me and you took upon yourself to give away. Crash and burn Changetip. Crash and burn!

[–]chinawat 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Trying to log in to my ChangeTip account at the website and getting this error:

Authentication failed: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='oauth.reddit.com', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /api/v1/me.json (Caused by ProxyError('Cannot connect to proxy.', error(111, 'Connection refused')))

Any help appreciated.

e: Worked just now. May have been a temporary issue.

[–]NeedHelpChangeTip 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I signed up for Changetip (along with 20+ coworkers) using Slack, but now its showing that Slack is no longer authorized.

Is there still a way to log in using email and password?

[–]whathappen34 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

/u/AskChangeTip do you have to have all accounts merged in order to withdraw funds? Or are all funds in your balance, even if one account is not merged anymore?

I want to make sure I don't have any tips from Twitter, but when I try to connect, it says "Sorry, the existing account cannot be automatically merged. Please contact support@changetip.com to merge it for you."

[–]Nick_ChangetipChangeTip Founder[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Yeah, contact support with the accounts that need to be merged and they will walk you through the process.

[–]rory2013 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

If you let a volunteer buy out the company at a small price to make it legal then really there's no legal liability in that.

[–]Not_dead_yet_fred 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

/u/changetip 326 bits

Don't spend it all in one place.

[–]changetip 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Nick_Changetip received a tip for 326 bits ($0.24).

what is ChangeTip?

[–]cypher437 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'll take it on!

[–]StaRkill3rZ 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Says my account is locked

[–]HitMePat 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Guess I should change tip myself the rest of my balance!

[–]aurele 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

"You are doing that too much. Please try again in an hour." when closing my account. Could you delete my data permanently?

Thanks for the service!

[–]Blawpaw 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

This very sad news indeed! Wish you all the best.

[–]TeranNotTerran 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Are you looking to sell changetip? What can you tell me about the tech stack?

[–]pietrod21 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Will you make public all actual transactions for study? It will be really interesting!

[–]vogelito 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Would you guys be willing to open-source your stack?

[–]kynek99 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Well... will Airbnb be doing something with bitcoin tips now ?

[–]SWt006hij 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

what caused your model to fail? was it the too high tx fees?

[–]HitMePat 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

They didn't have to do on chain transactions for tips. Just for withdrawals. So I doubt it.

[–]yogibreakdance -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

3.5 millions puffs

[–]bob_newhart -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Are you guys losing your jobs?