Introducing the Coinbase Tip Button | Hacker News Reader

Introducing the Coinbase Tip Button

blog.coinbase.com

89 pointsntomaino29 comments

The negative to this is similar to the negative of Flattr, you're giving a prominent position to a button/brand other than your own for less than the value of that space. On Adam Corolla's site, he's got it in the top banner, a very prominent position. It's only gotten him $3.30* in exchange, a very cheap ad buy.

It will be interesting to see how these perform after a week and a month vs just placing a small ad there. Especially after the $2,000 they gave away to spur usage is used up. I'd wager these will only bring in a small fraction of what an ad would.

One positive over Flattr, though, is at least you can see how much that ad position is paying out as a visitor. 1 Flattr doesn't have a direct connection to dollars.

* - I'd originally forgotten the default tip is 10 cents, not $1. Updated with the 1/10th value appropriately.

This is really good point -- these buttons really ARE advertisements. Personally, I've had a hard time figuring out how to get any ads on my personal blog. The costs of hosting are very low (about $75 including AWS, a cheap SSL cert, and DNS). It should be easy to break even However, because my blog has so few impressions and is hosted on a subdomain (bryce.fisher-fleig.org) I can't use Google Adsense. Flattr or Coinbase could be great for hard-monetize situations.

Does AdSense really not allow ads on subdomains?

Note that I was off by a factor of ten and the site has made under 4 bucks for a sitewide banner ad.

Do ad blockers typically remove things like Flattr or potentially this Coinbase tip button? You're right about this being a cheap ad by but if there is a high correlation between bitcoin and the use of ad blockers and these tip buttons aren't blocked this could be an acceptable alternative.

It depends on the ads and the blocker. Many adblockers make allowances for non-intrusive text-based ads now. If users are more concerned with privacy, they'll block not only ads but social media widgets and buttons like these, since they can all be used to track users across various sites.

The space needed however is miniscule. You would be lucky to get any ad dollars whatever for a 1 inch by 1 inch web space.

There are web ads specifically for this type of size. They're called buttons (120x60 and similar) and micro-buttons (88x31). They generally pay better than any of these micro-donation widgets I've seen.

As a followup, two days later, Adam Corolla's site only has ~30,000 bits tipped. Around $10. For 2 days as a sitewide (micro)button banner ad.

I had the pleasure of being one of the pilot test cases with Crypto 101:

https://www.crypto101.io/ https://crypto101.github.io/

Much easier for folks who happen to already have a Coinbase account! Same functionality for everyone else (cards, straight LTC/BTC).

This is excellent.

Any chance we'll see an API? It would be cool to be able to use it as a micropay button on top of a microdonation button.

Also a nitpick, the implication that things like this

    > aren’t possible with traditional payment networks

is obviously untrue. Flattr had the same functionality without bitcoin.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes an API is definitely on the roadmap.

The difference with bitcoin enabled micropayments and every other attempt at micropayments in the history of the internet is that Bitcoin is an open, interoperable network. Flattr, Beenz, Flooz, TipJoy, and others that have come before have been closed loop networks where there was significant friction and fees associated with getting onto and off of the network. When on the network, these has also only been one behavior possible-- tipping.

Bitcoin is an open, interoperable network where any amount of money can be sent frictionlessly anywhere on the internet. Perfect for micropayments, we think!

I've not used coinbase yet so forgive the question, from what I remember the smallest bitcoin transaction fee is 5430 satoshis, or about 2 USD cents today. That's 20% of a 10c tip, who "pays" it? (the tipper, coinbase, or the recipient?)

Trades internal to Coinbase don't have to happen on the blockchain.

Source: http://blog.coinbase.com/post/57483182558/you-can-now-send-m...

If decentralized microtransactions could be done at sufficiently-negligible (sub $0.01? ) cost, I think it could have a major impact on the web. Nobody's yet figured out how to make it effortless, though. This implementation from Coinbase doesn't appear to be different from Flattr, which hasn't yet taken off.

Edit: With further thought, Coinbase may have more users than Flattr, and they already have real money in their accounts. Those differences alone could be significant.

So if I understand correctly, coinbase creates a private internal "wallet" for you, "hidden" from the public ledger, and owns the private key to it?

Thank you, it's funny how GP talks about an "open, interoperable network" then...

Yes. As I understand things, Coinbase provides at least two major services. They're a major US USD<-->BTC exchange, and they also host wallets.

Those things are separable, as you can make a USD->BTC exchange, then transfer to another wallet for safekeeping, or do the reverse to get back to more-traditional currency.

For what its worth, this is only for convenience purposes for those who want to use Bitcoin without having to handle managing their own keys (ie. grandma and grandpa) or want to avoid transaction time/costs that come with operating on the blockchain.

Coinbase offers multi-sig support which puts control back into the user's hands in the event Coinbase went down or was compromised.

Coinbase is a great service for acquiring coin but I generally move it out to my preferred wallet after I purchase it.

Flattr doesn't seem to be getting much traction unfortunately. I think there might be some growth potential for Coinbase to popularise bitcoin and micropayments (one can hope anyway)

> Nobody's yet figured out how to make it effortless, though.

I'm working on it; the insight that I and others before me have had is that:

1. It needs to happen without having to think about it,

2. I shouldn't have to decide whether to pay in advance, and

3. I should be able to cap to total.

That requires a model based on tracking usage then dividing out payments at the end of the month. It's rather more difficult to do this securely, which is what I've worked on.

We're one of the launch partners (themorningnews.org), and we're excited to be a part of this. Super-easy to implement. Thanks!

Very nice. I hope GitHub will integrate it.

ChangeTip [1], which I've seen on reddit for some time, does this already (among other social services).

1. https://www.changetip.com/

What does the Coinbase service offer over something like a browser plugin that enables one-click dispensation of tips from a small wallet to a bitcoin address on a site?

A lot of Americans use Coinbase, but not everyone has a Coinbase account....

I'm guessing it's primary benefit is for existing Coinbase users - offering them the extension of their accounts.

This is great! I was using the donate button on www.gitignore.io but this is what I was actually looking for when I implemented the donate button. Thanks for launching this.

good stuff joe! looking forward to seeing the tip button on your site :)

It's up! https://www.gitignore.io/docs

press my brand new coinbase tip button at http://mm-studios.com ; )

nice!

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