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.

[alex]

Please don't do this, I know that I, and many others, don't take bitcoin very seriously, and projects that use it are similarly often not taken seriously.

[chadwhitacre]

Seems like ideally people would be free to deposit and withdraw in the currency of their choosing. So if someone wants to deposit bitcoin you could still withdraw USD transparently (you'd never know they paid in bitcoin).

That said, bitcoin isn't a top priority for me personally.

[thiloplanz]

+1 for developing the code to support bitcoin (in a branch), but agree that it should not be integrated right now

[thiloplanz]

Actually, just having the option to accept payments and withdraw money via Bitcoin (provided by a payment gateway) should be sufficient. No need to have deep Bitcoin integration throughout the system (i.e. account balances can still be exclusively in USD).

In addition to that, there could be an option to display your bitcoin receiving address on your profile page in gittip. That way, people can directly send bitcoin donations (peer-to-peer, outside of gittip).

[kiba]

Yes, please. I will only use this service if it support bitcoin.

[chadwhitacre]

Seems like there's strong opinion around this question. Here's a contra argument that goes into some detail:

http://www.quora.com/Bitcoin/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea/answer/Adam-Cohen-2

[chadwhitacre]

Somewhat vigorous discussion here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4200574

[olalonde]

Whether Bitcoin is "not serious"/"a scam"/"not a currency" is irrelevant. People who receive bitcoins are free to convert them to USD as soon as they receive them.

[colindean]

I support this and I'd happily devote a portion of my monthly mining to it developers via it.

[thiloplanz]

I think the only practical way to support Bitcoin is in the same way we support all other payments: Team up with a payment gateway that supports Bitcoin. The money would be transferred to Gittip as USD, and would show up as USD with the recipient of the donation. But thanks to the payment processor, deposits and withdrawals could be made as Bitcoins, or Pound Sterling or whatever. No need to bring in multi-currency support into the system itself.

So this comes down to finding a payment processor that likes bitcoin. This would probably need to be an additional payment processor, as it is unlikely to be one that can also handle "mainstream" credit-card transactions.

Also note that Bitcoin payments will have to be pre-paid payments (see #113), I don't think it is possible to set up a recurring charge.

[colindean]

bitpay is probably the most trusted bitcoin payment processor I know of. I've used it for several transactions. While it's not the most beautiful experience, it sure is quicker than some other checkout processes!

mtgox was working on one, but I've not heard any progress on it and it's definitely not up on their site yet.

[singpolyma]

+1 for BTC through a reliable payment processor. No reason gittip should have to handle any currency directly :)

[thiloplanz]

+10 USD for BTC through a reliable payment processor.

Just started a bounty for this on FreedomSponsors: http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/16/pre-pay-gittip-with-bitcoin

Anyone who also wants this, feel free to chip in.

[chadwhitacre]

+1 for www.bit-pay.com from @lyndsysimon at PyOhio.

[ghost]

+1 mt gox payment system plus they are an exchange so they would make it easy to convert, for bitcoin in general, the bitcoin community is worth ~$9 million, it is being seen more and more people everyday. Even highly respected VC's in silicon valley have invested in a company that is targeting paypal in the mobile/online currency area. I think bitcoin would be a great fit for gittip.

[lyndsysimon]

The primary issue that we identified at PyOhio is that there is no way that we could think of to allow for recurring payments with Bitcoin, through Bit-Pay or another mechanism. I'm going to keep thinking this through, but I thought I would document the concern here in case someone else knows of a solution.

[colindean]

there is no way that we could think of to allow for recurring payments with Bitcoin

The Bitcoin proponent in me says "That's a feature!" but the developer side of me agrees with the problem.

An implementation I see would require a user to fund the account held by gittip, from which weekly amounts are pulled. Gittip sends warnings when the next weekly amount exceeds the balance of the account, requesting that the user fund the account more.

It's just a one-time payment thing through and through. Tip yourself? And then tip others from your own tip jar, I guess.

[ghost]

I agree with @colindean you could send a good amount of bitcoins and just pull from that, the only other way I thinking of doing it is maybe implementing BIP 16? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_16

[colindean]

Possibly, but I say that for now it's best to keep it simple.

[osmosis79]

My vote for bitcoins as well.

[kiba]

Remember, bitcoin is just software. Theoretically, a bitcoin user can setup recurring payment on his end.

[chadwhitacre]

I expect to support one-off payments (#5) and/or pre-payments (#113) once the basic recurring system is humming. Once those are in place presumably bitcoin makes more sense.

[gasteve]

Hi, I'm the CTO of BitPay.com …we are heavy users of Git and I would certainly support this project. It should be easy to integrate and you can accept Bitcoin payment and get a direct deposit of USD the next business day (or a handful of other currencies). We don't yet support recurring billing as we'll have to add some support for it on the wallet side first (and even then, it will be more of the nature of a reminder to send a payment as bitcoin functions more like cash than like an account that merchants can pull money out of). The main advantage I see for gittip is that you can receive payments securely (no risk of fraud or chargebacks) from anywhere in the world. With traditional payment systems, the risk of fraud can be so high from certain regions that you end up paying huge fees, or you simply can't accept payment. And yes, bitpay.com is somewhat ugly right now, but we'll be launching bitpay.com soon. If anyone from gittip has any questions about us or Bitcoin in general, I'd be happy to speak with you. Contrary to much of the internet chatter about Bitcoin, it's a real innovation and I can elaborate on all aspects of that.

[gasteve]

Oh, I should add one more thing…I'm a big fan of crowd funding and think it has a lot of promise when it comes to funding projects in the common interest without resorting to coercive means. You should be particularly interested to know that Bitcoin has technology in it that can directly support Assurance Contracts (and Dominant Assurance Contracts). They can be enforced mathematically. The software to use it isn't there yet and the features needed to support it haven't been activated yet, but the protocol and core Bitcoin client does have the necessary support for it.

[thiloplanz]

There are apparently plans to offer "regular" debit cards powered by Bitcoin:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/bitcoin-company-says-debit-cards-coming-in-two-months/

I don't know how debit cards work (can they be linked to gittip?) and if they will be available to non-US citizens, but this could be a way, too.

[lyndsysimon]

The debit cards are supposed to work as regular reloadables, which get USD (or other local currency) added to them when BTC hits an address. They spend as USD, and are not subject to price fluctuations.

They also have low limits ($1000 USD?), and require the same identification flow as a traditional bank account.

I really think the best thing to do here is wait for support for gifts/one-offs and prepayment, then integrate Bit-Pay as just another payment processor, but one that does not support recurrence.

[campadrenalin]

There's an update coming to Bitcoin itself, where you can publish a request that Person A pay Person B in the amount of X BTC. Once support rolls out widely in the Bitcoin network itself, and third party services start to make use of it, you could simply work out a way to regularly issue payment requests based on the current value of Bitcoin.

This doesn't solve the "abstracting away exchanges" problem - you are still limited to BTC -> BTC transfers here, so that may not be the "ideal" solution. But I'm starting to think that it's better than holding out indefinitely for a perfect solution that may never happen. Payment requests may not be ready yet, but they're actually in the development pipeline of reputable people, whereas a transparent exchange system is total vaporware (something like Ripple might someday solve that, but Ripple itself has a lot of serious issues, and I would not invest any serious trust or effort into supporting it).

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @Jauny on Twitter.

[knocte]

+1

[andychase]

Coinbase has a recurring payment system now, but only for people with Coinbase accounts.

Still, that might be good enough for gittip:

https://coinbase.com/docs/merchant_tools/recurring_payments

Note you don't need a bank account to use Coinbase, you can simply make an account and send Bitcoins there from other wallets.

[colindean]

I think it would suffice, but would this integration limit us to US Bitcoiners only?

[andychase]

@colindean

It's true Coinbase only works with US-Based bank accounts for trading for USD, but you can still make an account and load it with Bitcoins from anywhere in the world for free.

[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//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 gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#201 (comment) for an explanation.