They should try putting the BTC address in a format which you can copy and paste.
There have been some high-profile donations made using BTC, but that's not the same thing. Rich people will give large donations regardless of the format. It wasn't because of BTC, but rather because they wanted to donate.
Some of the donation addresses received huge amounts of BTC. These obviously weren't from donations. Probably from the account holder shuffling their own money around.
I wouldn't be surprised if BTC donations were far less frequent than, say, "likes" on YouTube videos. For the average video with half a million views, ~20,000 likes isn't uncommon. And people only do that because it's free. So if, for any given "thing that half a million people look at," only about 200 of them actually donate, you can see how pitiful the returns are compared to ads. But putting up ads to profit from copyright infringement is blatantly illegal, whereas BTC donations aren't. Yet nobody will take BTC donations seriously for the same reason no one considers panhandling a sustainable living.
It probably sounds like I'm bashing Bitcoin, but I'm only trying to point out a surprising phenomenon. BTC donations seemed to have a lot of potential, yet fizzled. The reasons why are important to study.
And as you note, it's not like people are super eager to donate using other methods. (And while some might say that a site like TPB, which attracts "freeloaders", is even less likely to get donations, I'm not convinced -- folks might consider TPB both a service worth paying for as well as a cause worth supporting.)
Of course, the upsides remain. It costs you nothing to post a BTC address on a site, especially if you're already handling BTC. There is no interaction with payment providers and all that jazz. There are no immediate fees. Payments are "anonymous" for both sides, with the usual and serious caveats involved in BTC transactions[0].
[0] E.g. some dude being able to audit your total donation amount from the public ledger. :) Did you write up anything from that research? It's an interesting idea.
> in almost all cases I expect it's more difficult than entering PayPal or credit card details.
Best way to find out is to try! Generate and post an address here in the next 15-20 and I'd be happy to prove this wrong. (at least from the senders end)
we're talking micro tipping level amounts here, 100 Euros or less stored on any modern smartphone or laptop.
Lately it's even easier to justify as the price remains lower, spending a few Euro/Dollar's worth just for the novelty of sending such low amounts without any friction to someone I don't know anything about except I like their work.
<div class="key"><p>WeAreTPB</p></div>
<img src="/aes.png" class="pipe" />I'm getting quite fed up with people who abuse their negative karma privileges. I mean, at least justify your peer moderation with a follow up comment when the reason for the penalty is as ambiguous as it is in this instance.
I excepect I'll just get down voted again though, for daring to have a rant about people who do "hit and run" down voting...
It's not a penalty, it's just a downvote. Penalty would be flagging.
Honestly sometimes I wish people had to justify upvotes...
...and once again you've failed to specify why it was wrong. Simply stating something to be wrong is a worthless comment. Provide an reason; or citation if it's necessary. I'm open to correction if you can provide a counter argument.
Though on this occasion I can say with certainty that I'm right about Comic Sans being non-free (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FMID=35) and that @font-face allows you to include custom fonts into webpages (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face).
> It's not a penalty, it's just a downvote. Penalty would be flagging.
It deducts points from my karma; it's a penalty.
> Honestly sometimes I wish people had to justify upvotes...
I agree with that too. However that's not the issue here.
I'm not sure how to back that up, it's a basic fact.
Someone was being cheeky about ensuring comic sans. You replied by 'correcting' them with something that wouldn't in fact ensure comic sans. It was wrong and not particularly useful, and it had a good amount of missing-the-joke, so it got downvoted.
So basically what you are saying is you down voted me because you misread my post (and frankly, even if I did categorically state what you thought I said, I still think your reason would have been somewhat petty)
This is why people shouldn't down vote without leaving a reply first. :)
When you reply to 'ensures' then by default you are talking about ensuring. There are plenty of ways for hosted fonts to fail, even in supported browsers. And when you talk about fallbacks with 'at least' you have missed the point that an image format is comic sans or bust, never an inferior font.
>I did say that I wasn't sure if that was a joke or not
Being aware that you missed a joke doesn't make a joke-missing comment better.
>This is why people shouldn't down vote without leaving a reply first. :)
So you can pedantically argue about being right rather than accept that your comment wasn't as helpful as you thought? Seems like a net negative to me.
>somewhat petty
I suppose. It depends on whether you think downvotes are necessarily a rebuke.
>So basically what you are saying is you down voted me because you misread my post
I didn't downvote you. What an unfortunate misreading. ;)
1. I didn't say "ensures" and commenting that the context carries over from the previous comment while also arguing it's a joke that shouldn't be taken literally is just daft.
Plus, as I'd already said, images aren't 100% supported either, so the 100% figure you're pining for doesn't exist anyway.
2. My comments have at least been informative, unlike the kind of non-constructive arguing and hit-and-run moderation you seen keen on promoting.
Your compliant seems to just be that I did not replied to a joke with a joke. Personally I don't think that's enough for negative karma, but opinions obviously differ on this. :)
3. You are arguing about me being pedantic while basing your entire rebuttal on fringe cases. Does that not strike you as a little hypothetical?
4. Making the assumption that you down voted me isn't a misreading when I specifically requested those that did down vote me to discuss why. You were effectively confessing to the act. However I am grateful that someone has elelaborate on why I would have received negative reputation, even if that was from someone who was reasoning about another's motives :)
Image ensures that it's comic sans if it works at all.
Downvotes don't waste space, I don't see the issue. You're the one asking for meta comments.
You care way too much about karma for a single comment, you have plenty. And yes don't reply to a joke by correcting it to nobody's benefit.
"Browsers suck" is not a fringe case. And I don't think it's hypocritical to use pedantry in response to pedantry, which you started by 'correcting' a practice that works just fine here.
Eh? edit: oh, you think a sizeable market share of browsers don't support @font-face? Well you'd be wrong about that as well. Heck, even Google don't support browsers that pre-date @font-face.
> And I don't think it's hypocritical to use pedantry in response to pedantry
It is: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define:hypocacy#q=define:h...
> which you started by 'correcting' a practice that works just fine here.
It wasn't a correction, it was an expansion. I wasn't trying to disprove the original comment, just offer an alternative.
You seem to make a habit of misreading my comments - which is ironic when the whole reason you're kicking off is because you felt I misread a joke.
Anyway, your original comment was judged by the community to not be contributing to the conversation when you expanded or whatever you call it. So downvotes. No big deal.
There's a great many subjects I'm ignorant on, but I do know what I'm talking about here. So you're wasting your time trying to prove that I was wrong about @font-face.
The joke point you made at least makes some sense - even if I personally think it's a petty reason on its own. But everyones judgement will differ. :)