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Is ChangeTip the Viral Bitcoin Killer App?

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:41 PM
Giulio Prisco
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:41 PM

ChangeTipToday’s Reddit frontpage has several threads about a recent surge of popularity of Change Tip. One is titled “Changetip is causing bitcoin to go viral right now ,” and another was started by the ChangeTip team to say that they are working hard to keep up with the growing volume of tipping via their platform.

ChangeTip wants to be “a Love button for the Internet,” a fast and simple way to show appreciation with a micropayment in Bitcoin via the main social networks. You can send a tip to a Twitter user with a tweet that includes @changetip, the twitter-id of the user preceded by @, and the amount of the tip. The ChangeTip system will parse your tweet, take the tip from your ChangeTip wallet, and send it to the wallet of the recipient.

If the recipient is not a ChangeTip user, he will be notified and invited to open a ChangeTip wallet linked to his Twitter account.

For example, here is the first tip that I received via Twitter:

@giulioprisco Sending you 100 bits of #bitcoin over Twitter via @ChangeTip

Then I received a notification from ChangeTip:

@giulioprisco, to collect your tip from [sender] worth 100 bits, follow this link [link]

A High Potential to Spread in Viral Waves

After opening my ChangeTip wallet I linked it to other social profiles: Google+, Reddit, YouTube, and Github, so that now I can send and receive tips on all these networks. I also linked my Facebook profile, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to send and receive tips on Facebook yet. It’s easy to predict that the popularity of ChangeTip will be boosted further when full integration of Facebook is implemented.

ChangeTip is not the first Internet tipping system, but it’s easier and faster than its predecessors, which is a critical advantage. The system lives on the social networks that we all use every day, and therefore it has a high potential to spread in viral waves anytime. Last but not least, ChangeTip is socially useful: a tip of “a beer” ($3.50) doesn’t make too much of a difference to people in the affluent Western world, but it can feed a family for a day elsewhere. I can easily imagine that, someday, people who make great contributions to online communities may be able to make a living with tips.

What do you think of the recent surge of popularity of ChangeTip? Is it the first Bitcoin killer app? Comment below!

Images from ChangeTip and Shutterstock.