Twitter launches Bitcoin tips, NFTs, recorded Spaces, creator fund and more | Hacker News Reader

Twitter launches Bitcoin tips, NFTs, recorded Spaces, creator fund and more

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71 pointshidden-spyder37 comments

What would be mind-blowing is if Twitter comes full-circle and adds a podcast player to their service, using this lighting/tip functionality as part of the Podcasting 2.0 value block. For people with long memories, Twitter grew from the ashes of Odeo which was supposed to be a Podcasting company with an industry-leading interface written in Flash (ah.. the memories!).

My favorite thing about podcasting is that it's largely non-mediated. With the exception of the insertion of ads in some podcasts, what I hear is what the podcaster intended to say and there is largely no algorithmic timeline style sorting or other mediation. Podcasts win by having content that interests someone, not by gaming algorithms.

I sincerely hope that these "podcasting 2.0" efforts fail. It's one of the few remaining parts of the Internet ecosystem that has not been ruined by gamified social media.

100% with you on this. People forget that podcasts are a syndicated medium, and even more people forget the days when you had to set up an RSS catcher if you wanted to be notified about the latest podcast episodes. The glory of that system was the simplicity in it's federation, it was no different than expecting the paperboy to throw you a bundle of mail in the morning. If you add more layers that I don't care about, I'm probably not going to participate. I can only speak for myself, but I doubt many people are interested in making podcasts more complicated.

The thing gloriously absent in podcasts is a tight optimization feedback loop. Whenever you introduce a tight loop, content goes to shit. Everything is flattened down to memes using superficial cliches, rage baiting, cheap humor, etc. to get attention so as to be forwarded, liked, or shared.

The feedback loop is a specific goal of podcasting 2.0. One goal in particular is cross-app commenting such that if you leave a comment on a podcast with Podverse you'll see it in Fountain, Hypercatcher, PodcastAddict, Overcast, Castomatic, etc. The "big players" (Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify) have little or no interest in this as it would break down their walled gardens that they think is their key to making money (except for Google -- I don't think they see podcasting as a revenue thing for them beyond expanding the psychographic/marketing profile of a user).

For more info: https://podcastindex.org/

If they want to break their walled gardens, they should just outright build a better protocol. The reason why Apple and Spotify have a monopoly over the money-making side of podcasts is because they pay for hosting and make aggregation simple. The average user (and many developers such as myself) have no interest in adding Bitcoin transactions to our podcast experience, or unifying our commenting experience. I just want my podcast on my doorstep every morning, and unfortunately Spotify still is (and likely will be) the best place for me to get them for the foreseeable future.

I used the term without defining it but podcasting 2.0 is exactly what you are hoping podcasting remains: https://podcastindex.org/

from my understanding, "Podcasting 2.0" is "just" a series of extensions to the feed format that optionally allow additional functionality. your podcast app doesn't have to do anything with these if it doesn't want to. it's not a Microsoft EEE-type approach, there's no intent (or even means, really) to render "non-Podcasting 2.0-compliant" apps nonfunctional, to prevent new ones from being made, or to otherwise splinter podcasting into different strata. quite the opposite in fact—it's just extensions on top of a format that was designed to be extensible anyway, with the intent of keeping podcasting "open" in a world where the Apples and Spotifys of the world seem to want to lock it down. what's to dislike about this?

> My favorite thing about podcasting is that it's largely non-mediated

Don’t worry, it’s just a matter of time before “growth and engagement” scum jumps on this opportunity. Hell, Spotify is already trying.

The most exciting part of this, to me, is that Twitter is using the Lightning network for "tips" (personally I hate calling it a tip: kudos, boost, or almost any other word would have been better). The folks at Podcasting 2.0 have been using the Lightning network for the last year as a way of monetizing podcasts real-time (sats/minute) and through "boosts" (like Twitter's tip concept but with a far better name) and has been a rousing success for those who have gotten on board.

Source that it is a success vs. Other payment methods?

Edit: for all downvoters. All sources since 2017 mention that crypto is a marginal % in comparison with other payment methods. If something changed as he indicates ( a rousing success), I'm really curious, but the op hasn't provided a source for that statement and i couldn't find anything in my search.

The big change is second-tier chains like Lightning which is very fast (hence the name) and a fraction of cost overhead for transactions (compared to BTC -- which is a tiny fraction of traditional payment clearing systems). I don't pretend to fully understand lightning but the idea that one would move their BTC holdings to a second tier chain to conduct transaction makes sense. Eventually BTC will be like a central bank and the second-tier chains will be more akin to accounts at your local bank. Heck, if you're sufficiently skilled/intrepid you could BE your own bank and move all of your holdings to a Lightning or Hive node that you run yourself.

I thought with rousing success you meant popular, not just that they implemented it.

The popular part has been the problem since 2017/ever. Not many people are willing to spend their crypto.

Tipping apps already appeared on Facebook in 2014: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2014/06/06/facebook-approve...

I think calling them tips has taken on legal slash CYA purposes, makes it harder to refund than a "donation" (the former internet name for it, not quoting you) which has its own legal meaning regarding registered charities making it easily chargeback-able

If I buy a boost from Twitter than decide I prefer the money, I can't ethically say that I didn't get what I paid for but I'd probably win a chargeback if I did.

Calling it a tip everyone, including the dinosaurs at Visa Mastercard and Paypal, knows what it means

Crypto handouts have been called "tips" for several years, long before Twitter was involved. There's of course even a crypto called TIPS[1] dating back to 2014. During that time Bitcoin and Dogecoin tips were common on Reddit crypto communities (and even other subreddits).

[1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/fedoracoin/

Regular money handouts have been called tips for a few years longer

Will you be able to tip the ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, etc twitter profiles?

I know this is a tongue-in-cheek comment but I’ll respond. Currently, no. To receive bitcoin tips you must have a kyc’d strike account.

Oh, what a buzzword fest. Can anyone summarize the new features in plain language?

As someone sensitive to buzzwords from the “cloud” and the ongoing “serverless” days, I don’t see any buzzwords here

I’m familiar with all of the technologies mentioned here though, its just a combination of things already seen before

This enlarges Twitter from a social platform to a payment gateway. I didn't get it until I watched this video that shows a near-instant money transfer from Chicago to El Salvador, calling it a "Western Union killer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SByPewKAiZA

Beyond huge for the diaspora sending money back home. Bitcoin's volatility is a problem, but widespread adoption (or adding a stablecoin/altcoin) would mitigate that issue.

> Bitcoin's volatility is a problem, but widespread adoption (or adding a stablecoin/altcoin) would mitigate that issue.

There is an extremely large audience within the crypto space that uses stablecoins (as you mentioned) and treats the base currency as inventory to be used as fuel to process transactions. It is currently a $100bn market with high daily volume. Our entire society is familiar with volatile prices of fuel and we don't transact directly in it.

It is strange to me that - 12 years into this - people are still leaning on the base units as being the payment method itself and worried about how the volatility could work in economic theory.

Its not an argument. If you want it to be an argument, then add the theoretical hedging capabilities with some kind of micro-futures contract that neutralizes volatility for the user. Merchants already hedge or autoliquidate via their own crypto payment processor. But volatility as an issue is simply not an argument. The technology is waaaaay past that.

The zenith of the base unit's scarcity and use comes from the small fractions of it used in each layer1 transaction.

Western union has no protections for the buyer, just like crypto.

But since Western Union only has a market cap of 8 B $, i guess the value of crypto is firmly overestimated.

Isn't this entirely unrelated to twitter though? This is just Strike's value proposition right? What does twitter add to this?

Also, is the claim about fees really true? If you look at Strike's FAQ on fees it says it passes all on-chain fees (and lightning fees) through to the user.

Essentially I'm very sceptical at the moment simply because I don't understand what it is about Strike that is saving you anything.

> What does twitter add to this?

It will (hopefully) provide an easy UX for normies to send funds. Not adding functionality but removing friction.

What I didn't understand about this though was the demo was like "Oh I've already got funds in my magic unicorn lighting non conformance wallet" which sounded a lot like he just waved away all the complexity which is actually buying bitcoin with cash and withdrawing it.

The process was like "I send $10 of btc here, and it turns up here" but not "I deposited $72 bucks into my account to purchase btc through strike here, which bought $65 worht of bitcoin, which was worth $120 by the time I opened the twitter app and sent the $10 worth of btc, which was worth $9.80 when it arrived and then the guy who received it in his wallet went to withdraw in USD at one of the new cash points by which point the currency had fluctuated again and it was worth $5"

Is there any way to get lighting wallets on iOS?

Gave up after first attempt: https://breez.technology/

Leads to empty TestFlight

Second attempt:

https://bitcoin.strike.me/download

"Cannot Connect to the App Store"

Try blue wallet or muun

Please keep in mind that this video shows a transfer from one Strike account to another. Is the value backed by Bitcoin? Sure, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt (though the temptation has got to be there to maintain a fractional reserve). But Strike owned the coins before and after the transaction, so it's hard for me to be impressed. How is this different from Venmo, apart from being denominated in BTC?

> This enlarges Twitter from a social platform to a payment gateway.

So, what LINE/Naver has been providing since 2014, except it's not using real money and thus adding one more level of friction?

Think I'll stick to LINE, thanks.

It's a pretty amazing thing, but man, was that video hard to watch. It's like I'm having an averse reaction to the man's mannerisms and expressions.

What I didn't see, though, was how he got that $10 on to the platform in the first place. Is that explained somewhere else? Moving money from one account to another on the same platform is rarely an issue, the real challenge is moving it between companies/custodians.

Previous discussion with 160+ comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28632373

Pretty stupid self-serving "move". Nobody tips in Bitcoin as it's too expensive, unlike with credit cards, where you get cashback, with Bitcoin, you pay ridiculously high fees.

They’re using the BTC lightning network. There are no practically no fees (sometimes a few sats).

Consumers get cash back on credit cards while merchants have to pay ridiculously high fees.

[dupe] from last week

plenty of discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28632373

Reply on news.ycombinator.com