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.

[colindean]

With that in mind, it seems like a good first step!

[chadwhitacre]

I like Coinbase.

[andychase]

Here's how I'd imagine it'd work:

(end-user perspective):

1. On Recipient's Gittip profile page, Sender clicks "subscribe with Bitcoin" (or "Pay with Coinbase") (Sender wouldn't necessarily need a Gittip account for this to work, force one anyway?)
2. Sender is prompted to login or sign up for a Coinbase account
3. 1. Have Coinbase Account
      1. Sender selects amount.
      2. Done.
   2. Need Coinbase Account
      1. Sign up for one.
      2. Account created... fill account with BTC (takes about a minute to process)
      3. Return to Recipient page
      4. Click Button -> Select amount
      5. Done.

(back-end perspective):

You will need:

• A table of Coinbase buttons keyed with accounts
• A table of Coinbase transactions
• A Coinbase account

How to do it:

1. On Recipient page generation, check to see if a button exists and display it, if not use the Coinbase api to make one programmatically (could be done ahead of time I suppose, or on a queue) (might need multiple buttons to enforce Gittip pay scale rules-- or try "suggested amounts" and disable "let user change price") (use button[custom] to record recipient id)).
2. Add an endpoint for the Coinbase callbacks, recording transactions which can be configured to instantly deposit into the gittip bank account. (takes 2 business days to process [source]). (One callback for subscription, another for actual payout).
3. Transfer money as usual on payout day.

Other notes:

• Bank accounts from outside the US are planned (estimate.. early 2013(?)) [source]
• Currently, making a Coinbase account without linking it to an account (for non US-users) will be a confusing process. Since you will be prompted to do so and you'll be told US-only which will be confusing for some. You also have to find your deposit Bitcoin address under Account Settings -> Bitcoin Addresses which isn't intuitive. This is made less of an issue by virtue of the fact that currently it may be that many Bitcoin users are "Tech-Savvy".
• Button creation api documentation is missing docs for {"button[repeat]": "weekly"}, but it should work. Might not be ready for prime time? See: [this comment]

I'll admit this isn't as smooth as butter, but I could see it working. Anyway you'd get the attention of "early Bitcoin adopters" as well as maybe some more global users.

[pyalot]

Surely you realize that you don't need to be in control of the funds in order for tipping with bitcoin to work right? All that's required is that you display the address of the recepient and maybe a barcode somebody can scan and that's it.

[andychase]

@pylot

I know, it's dumb that we're not all on Bitcoin yet. But this system is for people who want to send weekly money to people on Gittip without the receivers having to worry about conversion.

Surely someone could make a Bitcoin-only SuperLegitBitGitTip.

[pyalot]

@asperous

Then don't worry about conversion. Those who want to receive bitcoin get to display their address, and those who want to send need to do so with their bitcoin wallet, problem solved.

[janearc]

I've mostly been keeping out of the discussion, but suggesting that this effort bifurcate specifically on the bitcoin-as-currency issue is harmful. There is no need to create a SuperLegitBitGitTip; a bit-tip already exists:

http://bittip.it/get-a-button/

the issue with this is that gittip already has the users that people who have requested this feature want to donate to. BitTip does not.

Jane

jane avriette jane@cpan.org http://innenin.blogspot.com/p/contact.html 858-367-7293

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 1:22 AM, Andy Chase notifications@github.comwrote:

@pylot https://github.com/pylot

I know, it's dumb that we're not all on Bitcoin yet. But this system is for people who want to send weekly money to people on Gittip without the receivers having to worry about conversion.

Surely someone could make a Bitcoin-only SuperLegitBitGitTip.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/14#issuecomment-30991217 .

[knocte]

Also bittip is not recurrent. The bittip page itself says it: bittip is like flattr but with bitcoin.

Flattr is not like gittip! I guess the closest gittip-like in the bitcoin world is http://coingiving.com/

[ehmatthes]

I'd love to see btc integrated with gittip, if it's not a major distraction to the team to implement it well.

Good, clean btc integration -> awesome for gittip. Messy, high-maintenance integration -> sandpit for gittip team.

It's not as simple as having gittip display someone's address, because gittip is about automating the tipping process. If I have to go send someone a tip manually every week, I can do that without gittip. It seems like a btc integration for gittip would involve people depositing some btc, and then gittip would redistribute those btc. That doesn't seem entirely trivial, but I am not fully up to date on what that would involve.

TL; DR: way +1 on this, but don't want to see the team too distracted by this until they are ready to focus on it.

[andychase]

Pros:

1. Sender wouldn't need a Gittip account, only a Coinbase account (free and easy to set up).
2. Receiver wouldn't need to worry about holding Bitcoins, would receive donations in USD (like their other donations if they have any). <- This makes the burden of complexity on the person trying to use Bitcoins, which is where I think it should be.
3. Recurring/One-time
   1. Recurring weekly payments instead of one-time Bitcoin tips are more conducive to encouraging continued contribution and continued generosity than a one-time tip. (Citation needed: isn't this the idea of gittip anyway?)
   2. Since you can't set up a recurring Bitcoin personal tip (anywhere?), this would be the first of it's kind.

Cons:

1. Complexity involving having to make a Coinbase account. (Again, burden of complexity on the sender so it wouldn't impact normal users).
2. Development time. Because of the Coinbase callback/webhook system, it shouldn't be too complicated, but I couldn't know for sure without trying it. (I really think because it's "hip" it would increase traffic/donations to Gittip, at least temporarily.) Isn't there a bounty on this issue anyway? Yeah: $80.
3. Angering people who think it's against the Bitcoin way. Since Bitcoin's scripting system doesn't support Oracles yet (and thus, no time based transactions), recurring payments can't be done in any other way currently. Once that feature is implemented in the mainline clients, then this kind of service wouldn't be needed anymore (assuming receivers all have Bitcoin addresses) and I'd understand this point further. However it might be a long time until that feature gets implemented, and even longer before it's accessible to the average person.

Other ideas:

"Payouts with Bitcoins" would also be trivial once Coinbase integration is set-up. The payout recipient wouldn't need a Coinbase account, could stay anonymous, and wouldn't need a US-based bank account. Transaction fees are usually about 5 cents, much lower than wire-transfers. Payout recipients would get their local currency through a state-regulated marketplace (in Countries that allow it).

I think this issue is about Debiting a Gittip account using Bitcoin. This could also be done through recurring transactions, however my method doesn't require a Gittip account.

[chadwhitacre]

The time has come to close this venerable issue. The fact is that we do support paying in with bitcoin. From our FAQ:

The next step will be to automate this process, which we'll look at further when we see regular demand for bitcoin payins (cf. payouts, #1960).

Thanks to everyone who participated in this thread! :-)

[knocte]

The next step will be to automate this process, which we'll look at further when we see regular demand for bitcoin payins

Is there no github issue open for automating the process? I think there should be one, and linking to this bounty: http://freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/16/pre-pay-gittip-with-bitcoin

[sim6]

@knocte I created it #1963

[dessalines]

I like the project, but it seems pointless without bitcoin integration. Or you could just use stripe which already has bitcoin baked in.

[mattbk]

+1 from https://gratipay.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/3417.

[mattbk]

+1 from https://gratipay.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/tickets/5056.

Unfortunately, this does not seem likely to happen in the near future. See https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/201#issuecomment-102010517 for an explanation.