Show HN: Yumcoin - Share and sell your digital creations for Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Yumcoin - Share and sell your digital creations for Bitcoin

yumcoin.com

37 pointsyumcoin30 comments

We built Yumcoin because we think existing solutions for accepting Bitcoin are too complicated. A few people have to built custom sites to accept Bitcoin for their products (eg. Knife Party, James Altucher), but we think the process can be a lot simpler. We host your product, give you a short link you can share with your audience, and manage the Bitcoin payments for you.

There's lots of new features we're working on, but it's already useful and fun.

Here's an example Yumcoin link: https://yumcoin.com/p/osZO

Check it out, and let us know what you think.

Here's the way to build your own online store for $0 and pay $0 + 0% on every sale:

1. Install self-hosted wordpress - usually few clicks via your hosting company's CPanel.

2. Install WooCommerce wordpress plugin to make online store: http://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/

3. Install BitcoinWay plugin to make sales in Bitcoins as well as in any other currency: http://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoin-payments-for-woocommerc...

NOTE: Your bitcoins are completely safe as above setup sends bitcoins directly into your personal Electrum wallet without relying on middleman and it does not need to store your bitcoin private keys anywhere whatsoever.

PS: to the one who downvoted my post - we all know who you are :)

A lot more effort and predicates you already have hosting.

One-time, few clicks effort to build your own business, earn residual value and avoid paying percentage of your hard earned sales to middleman.

Your mileage may vary.

> Yumcoin takes just 1% + .0025 BTC from each sale.

A fixed component of the commission for a deflationary currency? The only people putting that into their critical path were not paying attention in economics classes.

I'd like to know more about the security measures you guys take. I've been working on a personal project, and haven't found any good guides to securing bitcoin transactions and managing private keys properly (assuming you host the bitcoin client on some server somewhere).

as someone in the space i can assure you they aren't taking the appropriate measures. best practices are known, but aren't being shared publicly b/c the info is an aspect of competitive business intelligence.

Obviously, the security and scalability of our platform is a big part of the value we provide to buyers and sellers.

For now, know that there are a number of measures we take to ensure that the site and users' bitcoins are secure: The site runs entirely over SSL (HTTPS). We protect against CSRF and XSS attacks. The addresses used for purchases are generated offline. Withdrawals are handled separately from the application server. Importantly, sellers can withdraw their balances quickly to the Bitcoin address of their choice. As we scale up, we'll store the majority of sellers' funds offline, keeping enough for transaction fees and withdrawals.

We'll be writing a more detailed overview of how we handle security here: https://yumcoin.com/security

Thanks for the overview. It's refreshing to get straight answers.

Which wallet are you guys using? I've heard good things about armory which make it easier to do hot / cold storage. Keeping withdrawals separate from the application server makes a lot of sense; is this using the SSL protocol for JSON-RPC on a non-standard port, and then closing off internet facing ports for that computer/server?

Are you doing any sort of 2 factor authentication to limit hacked accounts getting emptied?

I'd be happy to email or something if you're up for it.

The absolutely best way to avoid any problem with stolen bitcoins is to use Master Public Key (MPK) to generate bitcoin addresses for customers to send money to. Electrum wallet (electrum.org) supports MPK. MPK allows generation of bitcoin addresses programmatically in a "receive only" way, without private keys. This way - even if hackers totally break into your server and online store database and steal everything - not a single bitcoin can possibly be stolen.

Real life implementation of this concept: http://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoin-payments-for-woocommerc...

Your email validation is too strict, my perfectly valid email (.me TLD) was denied.

We'll fix that soon and let you know.

Email validation has been fixed. The .me TLD is working fine now.

So this is quite much like Gumroad but with bitcoin. I think that it is perfect for ebooks.

As there is now a bitcoin-gumroad, is there anyone planning a bitcoin-kickstarter?

Music, video, and ebooks are three of the most popular types of products you'll find on Yumcoin.

I was just reading another thread and remarked to myself how negative people can be on this site, yet here I go. Sorry - Absolutely terrible logo, guys. Completely awful.

Is there a list of of examples somewhere?

Here's what the product page looks like:

https://yumcoin.com/p/osZO

Thanks, the service looks pretty cool, you should maybe consider a categorised catalog of items.

Glad you think it's cool! We have big plans for launching online stores and catalogs through the site, but this is the "MVP". Right now we're focused on making it fast and easy for creators to share products with their audience and accept Bitcoin.

I'm impressed and excited to see where this is going.

Are all creations previewed?

Thanks! The product preview is optional, but it makes the page look better and can help to sell the product.

The preview media link is provided by the seller in addition to their product's file. For example, it could be a YouTube link to the trailer for an independent film, or a SoundCloud link to the preview for a full album.

I've just purchased the Atlantis Lemuria track and it worked great. I got the file a few seconds after I transmitted the funds.

One suggestion: as a customer, the landing page could display the items that I've bought.

That's a great idea and we'll add it soon. Really glad you like Yumcoin!

Nice site design. Is that a freely available Bootstrap theme?

Thanks. It's a custom design based on Bootstrap.

Could this be changed to also accept other cryptocurrencies?

I'm not going to create an account just to browse a catalog.

There's no catalog yet, and you only need an account to sell products. Buying a product is easy and does not require an account. You just need some Bitcoin... here's an example: https://yumcoin.com/p/osZO

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