pay in with bitcoin

[chadwhitacre]

Status: We need someone to join Team Gittip and take ownership of our bitcoin integration. Is it you?!

The essence of Gittip is recurring gifts, and there is (I gather) no way to do recurring bitcoin payments. Gittip will likely add explicit support for one-off (#5) and pre-paid (#113) gifts once the core recurring feature has matured. At that point we'll be ready for funding with bitcoin.

I (@whit537) am going to let someone else contribute the bulk of this work. On the pattern of Balanced contributing integration with their system (#78), my ideal would be to see a bitcoin processor such as Bit-Pay step forward and contribute integration with their service. A lesser option would be for a non-Bit-Pay member of the Gittip community to contribute the integration.

[alex]

Please don't do this, I know that I, and many others, don't take bitcoin very seriously, and projects that use it are similarly often not taken seriously.

[chadwhitacre]

Seems like ideally people would be free to deposit and withdraw in the currency of their choosing. So if someone wants to deposit bitcoin you could still withdraw USD transparently (you'd never know they paid in bitcoin).

That said, bitcoin isn't a top priority for me personally.

[thiloplanz]

+1 for developing the code to support bitcoin (in a branch), but agree that it should not be integrated right now

[thiloplanz]

Actually, just having the option to accept payments and withdraw money via Bitcoin (provided by a payment gateway) should be sufficient. No need to have deep Bitcoin integration throughout the system (i.e. account balances can still be exclusively in USD).

In addition to that, there could be an option to display your bitcoin receiving address on your profile page in gittip. That way, people can directly send bitcoin donations (peer-to-peer, outside of gittip).

[NakedMoleRatScientist]

Yes, please. I will only use this service if it support bitcoin.

[chadwhitacre]

Seems like there's strong opinion around this question. Here's a contra argument that goes into some detail:

http://www.quora.com/Bitcoin/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea/answer/Adam-Cohen-2

[chadwhitacre]

Somewhat vigorous discussion here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4200574

[olalonde]

Whether Bitcoin is "not serious"/"a scam"/"not a currency" is irrelevant. People who receive bitcoins are free to convert them to USD as soon as they receive them.

[colindean]

I support this and I'd happily devote a portion of my monthly mining to it developers via it.

[thiloplanz]

I think the only practical way to support Bitcoin is in the same way we support all other payments: Team up with a payment gateway that supports Bitcoin. The money would be transferred to Gittip as USD, and would show up as USD with the recipient of the donation. But thanks to the payment processor, deposits and withdrawals could be made as Bitcoins, or Pound Sterling or whatever. No need to bring in multi-currency support into the system itself.

So this comes down to finding a payment processor that likes bitcoin. This would probably need to be an additional payment processor, as it is unlikely to be one that can also handle "mainstream" credit-card transactions.

Also note that Bitcoin payments will have to be pre-paid payments (see #113), I don't think it is possible to set up a recurring charge.

[colindean]

bitpay is probably the most trusted bitcoin payment processor I know of. I've used it for several transactions. While it's not the most beautiful experience, it sure is quicker than some other checkout processes!

mtgox was working on one, but I've not heard any progress on it and it's definitely not up on their site yet.

[singpolyma]

+1 for BTC through a reliable payment processor. No reason gittip should have to handle any currency directly :)

[thiloplanz]

+10 USD for BTC through a reliable payment processor.

Just started a bounty for this on FreedomSponsors: http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/16/pre-pay-gittip-with-bitcoin

Anyone who also wants this, feel free to chip in.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 for www.bit-pay.com from @lyndsysimon at PyOhio.

[ghost]

+1 mt gox payment system plus they are an exchange so they would make it easy to convert, for bitcoin in general, the bitcoin community is worth ~$9 million, it is being seen more and more people everyday. Even highly respected VC's in silicon valley have invested in a company that is targeting paypal in the mobile/online currency area. I think bitcoin would be a great fit for gittip.

[lyndsysimon]

The primary issue that we identified at PyOhio is that there is no way that we could think of to allow for recurring payments with Bitcoin, through Bit-Pay or another mechanism. I'm going to keep thinking this through, but I thought I would document the concern here in case someone else knows of a solution.

[colindean]

there is no way that we could think of to allow for recurring payments with Bitcoin

The Bitcoin proponent in me says "That's a feature!" but the developer side of me agrees with the problem.

An implementation I see would require a user to fund the account held by gittip, from which weekly amounts are pulled. Gittip sends warnings when the next weekly amount exceeds the balance of the account, requesting that the user fund the account more.

It's just a one-time payment thing through and through. Tip yourself? And then tip others from your own tip jar, I guess.

[ghost]

I agree with @colindean you could send a good amount of bitcoins and just pull from that, the only other way I thinking of doing it is maybe implementing BIP 16? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_16

[colindean]

Possibly, but I say that for now it's best to keep it simple.

[osmosis79]

My vote for bitcoins as well.

[NakedMoleRatScientist]

Remember, bitcoin is just software. Theoretically, a bitcoin user can setup recurring payment on his end.

[chadwhitacre]

I expect to support one-off payments (#5) and/or pre-payments (#113) once the basic recurring system is humming. Once those are in place presumably bitcoin makes more sense.

[gasteve]

Hi, I'm the CTO of BitPay.com …we are heavy users of Git and I would certainly support this project. It should be easy to integrate and you can accept Bitcoin payment and get a direct deposit of USD the next business day (or a handful of other currencies). We don't yet support recurring billing as we'll have to add some support for it on the wallet side first (and even then, it will be more of the nature of a reminder to send a payment as bitcoin functions more like cash than like an account that merchants can pull money out of). The main advantage I see for gittip is that you can receive payments securely (no risk of fraud or chargebacks) from anywhere in the world. With traditional payment systems, the risk of fraud can be so high from certain regions that you end up paying huge fees, or you simply can't accept payment. And yes, bitpay.com is somewhat ugly right now, but we'll be launching bitpay.com soon. If anyone from gittip has any questions about us or Bitcoin in general, I'd be happy to speak with you. Contrary to much of the internet chatter about Bitcoin, it's a real innovation and I can elaborate on all aspects of that.

[gasteve]

Oh, I should add one more thing…I'm a big fan of crowd funding and think it has a lot of promise when it comes to funding projects in the common interest without resorting to coercive means. You should be particularly interested to know that Bitcoin has technology in it that can directly support Assurance Contracts (and Dominant Assurance Contracts). They can be enforced mathematically. The software to use it isn't there yet and the features needed to support it haven't been activated yet, but the protocol and core Bitcoin client does have the necessary support for it.

[thiloplanz]

There are apparently plans to offer "regular" debit cards powered by Bitcoin:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/bitcoin-company-says-debit-cards-coming-in-two-months/

I don't know how debit cards work (can they be linked to gittip?) and if they will be available to non-US citizens, but this could be a way, too.

[lyndsysimon]

The debit cards are supposed to work as regular reloadables, which get USD (or other local currency) added to them when BTC hits an address. They spend as USD, and are not subject to price fluctuations.

They also have low limits ($1000 USD?), and require the same identification flow as a traditional bank account.

I really think the best thing to do here is wait for support for gifts/one-offs and prepayment, then integrate Bit-Pay as just another payment processor, but one that does not support recurrence.

[chadwhitacre]

@thiloplanz I use a debit card with Gittip, so this would probably work for some people at least. As @lyndsysimon says you lose the privacy benefits of bitcoin, so a first-class option should still be on the table.

@gasteve Would you be interested in contributing BitPay integration to Gittip? That's the pattern we've established with Balanced Payments (our credit card and ACH processor). After discussion, they forked www.gittip.com, implemented the integration with their service, and then submitted a pull request. Now we have a close partnership going. Would you be interested in a similar partnership?

[Grix]

I would be much more inclined to donate if bitcoin was a payment method.

The reasons:

• I find it much faster and smoother to use than traditional payment systems such as credit cards.
• The fees, especially for small donations, are small to non-existent.

[chadwhitacre]

From @gasteve on #126:

Let me see if I can find one of our integration partners to take on this project. I personally have very little time available.

Sweet! Thank you. :-)

[thiloplanz]

Richard Stallman is apparently pushing for bitcoin integration in the similar (to gittip) FreedomSponsors service:

http://blog.freedomsponsors.org/notable-feedback-richard-stallman/

[martindale]

+1 for simple BTC deposit / withdrawal.

[ghost]

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4743954

Bitcoins looking pretty good right now just saying.

[tuananh]

you can use other e-currency like Liberty reserve, etc... the rate is more much more stable in comparison to bitcoin.

[ghost]

Can you explain how bitcoin isn't stable? It has been steady raising and is actually quite stable. Also better suited then any other since it was designed with mirco transactions in mind.

[Grix]

@tuananh The point of bitcoin (imo) is it's ease (once you learn it), speed and cost of use. There is nothing else that offers the same experience, comparing bitcoin to liberty reserve is like comparing teleportation to airplanes. The stability of bitcoin will increase over time, but it's definitely useable even right now.

[cavebeat]

+1 for bitcoin integration or funding/withdrawal function via BitPay or a similar processor. even Wordpress is now officially accepting Bitcoin's (via BitPay)

[MaddieM4]

Total bounty's up to $60 now...

http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/16/pre-pay-gittip-with-bitcoin

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @passy via Twitter.

[chadwhitacre]

Have heard from the CEO of Coinbase via Twitter and private email. I've invited him to pitch us here if he wants to take this on. :)

[karmaon]

I support accepting Bitcoin, but please don't include the additional bundle of copycat coins (Litecoin, Namecoin). These offer no value and are most likely a hinderance to the withdrawal of such donations into usable funds.

[lyndsysimon]

I partially concur with @karmaon. I don't think it would hurt to allow the forks, but it wouldn't add substantial value to the product, and would cost far more development resources that it would justify.

[MaddieM4]

@lyndsysimon It depends on how we do it. I'm pretty sure you could set up OpenTransactions to automatically convert all sorts of currencies, and then basically leave that complexity to the OT side, and never have to update the code on your end when a new currency comes out.

The other side of that is learning and hooking into the OT library, which isn't necessarily a simple proposition. You might just want to hook up with a Bitcoin-specific partner and just be done with it.

[abnor]

Email sent out to these fellas too~ Let's see what happens!

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @elliottcable via Twitter.

[abnor]

I am now following Bitcoin.

MAYBE IF I STALK THEM LONG ENOUGH THEY WILL WANT TO TALK TO ME

http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/

[chadwhitacre]

@abnor It sounds like @pjz has some interest in working on this, integrating with www.coinbase.com.

[pjz]

Chad and I had a long chat about this via a google hangout (video at http://youtu.be/ck8MLj7ChdY?t=30m starting around 0:30:00 with resolution around 0:41:00 ) and it sounds like the bulk of the issue is adding support for escrow in multiple currencies ; after that integrating with bitcoin (or adding a euro-bank or etc) becomes much simpler.

[ghost]

@pjz @whit537 I think the best way is to automated this so your doing the exchange so when someone wants a bitcoin, the USD or EURO gets sent to an exchange, then exchanged for bitcoins then withdrew to their bitcoin address. Now if they want only USD or EURO, the bitcoin should be exchanged at the withdraw time and it should be explicitly known. Also coinbase is having a lot of issues with those exchanges and people getting trusted so until that is worked out I don't think it is a good idea. Bitpay has been for a while and I think they would work the best for this project. Even hacking this together on your own or you need is an exchange account from either Mt Gox (Euro)/CoinLab(USD/CAD), Bitstamp or any other exchange.

[crimeminister]

+1 from me.

[pjz]

@italiano40 our basic take is that 1) gittip should avoid doing automatic currency exchanges 2) gifts should stay in the currency they're given in unless and until the receiver wants gittip to do a currency exchange 3) gittip will, therefore, have to have escrow accounts for every currency that it allows to be directly gifted. After that, bitcoin is easy - it's just another currency. Consider gifting in euros, or AUD or CAD... same issues.