14 ms·

Twitter enables tipping with Bitcoin, plans to let users authenticate NFTs

180 points by jbegley 5y ago

seany 5y ago
Would love to see more of this stuff done with privacy coins instead.
chippy 5y ago
Anyone else not really suprised. It's like they were actively in search of sharks to jump over for years. The question we should be asking is, what's next or why? I think this is for Only Fans uber-for-porn competition. If only a massive corporation could think beyond their wallet which may people put next to their second favourite organs!
- seibelj 5y ago
  HN will never understand crypto / blockchain. Bitcoin and NFTs are amazing tools with huge potential for monetization of all sorts of digital goods. It has never been a better time to be a digital artist and earn a living. The lack of imagination and "get off my lawn" around here is absurd.
  - akgoel 5y ago
    The Diablo 3 real-money auction house was better implemented than most NFT schemes. At least that involved an actual transfer of virtual goods.
    - JCVI-syn10 5y ago
      What's an "actual" transfer of a "virtual" good? When an NFT is sold a unit of data stored on a digital ledger is transferred. When a D3 item was sold a unit of data stored on in the database was transferred. Why are those meaningfully different?
      - frazbin 5y ago
        Thanks for asking! The difference is that Diablo 3 represents 10E6~ dev hours invested into making a fun game, and items make it more fun. The items are a kind of 'share' in the total fun of the game. Now if we imagine NFTing the Diablo 3 item system, that's interesting. Mostly what's interesting about it is why it hasn't happened. I've noticed that actors in public blockchain ecosystems VERY strongly seek 'incentive wells' i.e. locally maximized extraction mechanisms. This might be a property of certain general public-ledger economic systems, because it sure comes up a lot. Basically the law is: as long as a blockchain/Dapp/pattern makes money, the people writing it won't improvements to it outside the core extractive mechanic; at least not without some rare external inputs, which inputs are surprisingly rare in practice. So if your application is on an incentive hill from this perspective, you know it will never get written. The Diablo 3 Dapp won't get written by Blizzard because it lies on an incentive hill from blizzard's perspective, simply because: assets would (1) increase item prices due to fees and (2) Blizzard would be cut out as a middleman for at least some transactions. Only once you find public-ledger tech that fixes those incentives (and probably other incentives I've missed) will you start to see interesting and complex distributed applications
      - almostkorean 5y ago
        I don't understand OPs point, but the meaningful difference is that the digital ledger is decentralized. If Blizzard shuts down D3, your virtual goods are gone forever. NFTs and ownership of NFTs live as long as the blockchain lives
  - clpm4j 5y ago
    It's a spectrum of course. Some people thoroughly understand it and still think it's rather boring or dumb. Some people thoroughly understand it and, like yourself, think it's a revolutionary game changer. And most people don't understand it and either (a) think it's dumb and downvote it, or (b) think it's awesome and are fanatical about it. (edit: spelling)
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    NFTs solve the problem of digital theft. It's just...that's not really an issue with the sort of digital goods that can use NFTs. Nor do most people want to download a whole blockchain for every marketplace they want to participate in (and then continue participating in to facilitate transactions).
  - corobo 5y ago
    How's the eco status on NFTs these days? I know Bitcoin is still trying to cook the Earth but have they fixed NFTs yet? My only "get off my lawn" take on it Also it all seems to be digitally drawn portrait templates with different accessories on (eg robot heads). I have no idea if they sell but someone's giving Twitter a bunch of money to shove those in my face haha. I'll put that one down to not getting it, I never got into pokemon cards etc either
    - DennisP 5y ago
      Most NFTs are on Ethereum. That has pretty high energy usage for now, but is on track to eliminate it almost entirely in Q1 next year.
      - corobo 5y ago
        Oh nice I didn't know it had a timeline rather than just "we want to.. one day"! That's good to hear thank you :)
        DennisP 5y ago
        The production proof-of-stake system has actually been running in parallel since last December, staking real ETH, with over 200K full nodes. What's left is just to repoint the main clients, so instead of choosing blocks by the most work, they let the staking network choose blocks.
  - BTBurke 5y ago
    Here's my question - NYT could charge me $5 and then deduct from my balance on a per-article basis. Do we need crypto to enable those transactions? If micropayments made sense, why haven't they caught on already with the payment infrastructure 99% of people already have? Micropayments via crypto are just payment with extra steps. I'm not for/against either one. I'd just like to see a coherent argument against the idea that crypto is a solution looking for a problem.
    - wskinner 5y ago
      Most of the world does not have access to cheap and easy dollar-denominated payments. Using Bitcoin for this simplifies the implementation for Twitter, and reduces fees.
      - mdoms 5y ago
        Most of the world has credit and debit cards. Or, at least, most of the world where people have enough disposable income to shell out for NYT articles. I don't live in a country that deals in USD but I have a debit card and very often buy services denominated in USD.
    - DylanBohlender 5y ago
      Fees and chargebacks are the ones that usually come to mind. Oftentimes major credit card provider networks set a "minimum" interchange fee to disincentivize small transactions (a chargeback on a ten-cent transaction is often not worth the squeeze from a support/processing perspective). Basically all major payment networks are facilitated by a middleman of some sort, and that middleman entity usually has operational costs that disincentivize them from offering micropayments. Your point about a "balance" lands though - nothing stops NYT from making one "big" charge and then deducting from it other than consumer psychology (paying $10 up front can feel different than paying $0.05 at a time, for example).
    - orf 5y ago
      Imagine a world where not everyone used the dollar. Then imagine having to support different currencies and ensuring that your price per article stayed in line with currency fluctuations.
  - markkat 5y ago
    It's really consistent and strange considering the ostensive nature of the site.
  - astoor 5y ago
    The problem is that HN actually does understand crypto and blockchain. The layperson might believe the myth that NFTs, for example, are "amazing tools with huge potential for monetization of all sorts of digital goods", but most of HN will know the reality - you are "buying" nothing more than a URL in a JSON file (i.e. no legal ownership of anything), almost all artists will lose money (there are over 20M listings on OpenSea and almost every one of those will not sell or sell at a loss to the artist given all the costs in making a listing), and most "investors" will too (unless they are one of the rings of anonymous bidders who collaborate to artificially inflate the price of their selected "artists").
    - PretzelPirate 5y ago
      Art is one application of NFTs, but NFTs are not specifically made to represent digital art. Gods Unchained cards are a much better use case since there is built-in utility. Artists can also mint on ImmutableX without paying any fee at all.
    - lottin 5y ago
      Indeed, the mainstream media talks about NFTs as if they were property titles, completely misleading the public into thinking NFTs are something they are not. A lot of people also think Bitcoin spends a lot of electricity because it needs to do super complicated calculations. When you explain them how bitcoin actually works they usually can't believe it. The misinformation floating around with regards to cryptocurrencies is staggering.
    - rjknight 5y ago
      > you are "buying" nothing more than a URL in a JSON file (i.e. no legal ownership of anything), This is wrong. I can see why you think it, but it is wrong. The URL in the JSON file is free, as is the artwork that it points to. It's very hard to restrict the copying of digital artworks anyway, so why bother trying to? The person buying the NFT is not "buying a URL". This phrase doesn't even mean anything! What they are buying is control of a record on the blockchain, which (with some slight hand-waving) contains a list of the signatures of the previous owners, including the original creator or their agent. While it is trivial to copy a JPEG, it is not at all trivial to copy the list of signatures from one part of a blockchain to another, unless you happen to have the private keys of all of the previous owners. As such, the JPEG is abundant but the record is scarce. This mirrors the physical world, in which Picasso prints are abundant but signed originals are rare and hard to copy. What you're paying for is the uniqueness of the signature, not the ability to look at the content of the artwork, which you can probably already do for free on the internet. "No legal ownership of anything" is not really true. You do legally own the blockchain record! You can decide whether to sell it or keep it, and you can generally dispose of it as you would with any other property. You don't legally own the copyright of the artwork, but as we've already established, that copyright probably isn't worth very much. Your other statements may be perfectly accurate - I can't imagine 20M artists on OpenSea all turning a profit, and I imagine that a lot of the investors are likely to lose some money too. I just don't think that this has anything to do with faulty assumptions about how NFTs work.
  - joelbondurant 5y ago
    HN is for communist betacuck soy bois.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive defensive stuff about the community. I realize it's frustrating to hold a minority view (believe me, I understand) but all a comment like this does is add bile, which helps nothing. Two productive choices are: (1) take up the cross of patiently and respectfully explaining what you believe to be the better information; or (2) chalk it up to people being wrong on the internet and just don't post. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - seibelj 5y ago
      Sorry dang I have patiently defended crypto / blockchain for years and taken all the downvotes. Twitter announces full integration and it’s still all negativity. Not sure what success would be anymore to convince the HN community.
      - dang 5y ago
        In that case you could always go with option 2. I know it's frustrating, but the internet is to a first approximation wrong about everything, so it's a frustration we all have to live with.
- pcbro141 5y ago
  Plenty of people tip creators on YouTube (SuperChats) and Patreon for things that have nothing to do with porn or sex at all.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  onlyfans for SFW stuff actually sounds a much better way to monetize twitter. There's a reason why onlyfans looks like a twitter feed. Might even possibly help them to change their perception of being politically onesided
em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
microtransactions via the Lightning network is wonderful part of the bitcoin vision. But I don't think this sentence at the bottom of the "Strike" app page is holding up to the promise: "Custody of your funds and bitcoin trading are offered through Prime Trust, LLC." [1] [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/strike-send-and-spend-bitcoin/id1488724463 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/strike-send-and-spend-bitcoin/...
- m348e912 5y ago
  Thanks for bringing this up. While the idea of blockchain payments hitting a mainstream app is kind of exciting, adding Strike support to twitter isn't much different than adding something like Venmo support. Both require a banking style intermediary that require KYC from their users.
  - bmking 5y ago
    I don't agree. This way it is a) easier to onboard _receivers_, and b) stays open in the sense that _senders_ can send bitcoins by any app they want (including non-custodial of course).
    - em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
      Ok, I understand (a). Regarding (b) I guess I don't fully understand their implementation, but are you suggesting that any 3rd party app could implement the payments? I guess if any app or user can pull the twitter user's lightning address one can tip then yeah I guess so. So I guess they are just using "Strike" as an officially-supported app?
    - m348e912 5y ago
      >>This way it is a) easier to onboard _receivers_, and b) stays open in the sense that _senders_ can send bitcoins by any app they want (including non-custodial of course). If I were to restate what I think you're saying: Twitter is implementing a tipping system that allows you pay using Strike _as_well_as additional non-custodial [and potentially non-kyc] lightning payment apps once a lightning channel is open. I think that you're either dead wrong, or the non-Strike lightning payment option will be so convoluted that almost no one actually will actually use it. I will be happy to be proven wrong though.
blhack 5y ago
Absolutely incredible news. Micropayments are one of the paths out of advertiser hell and were one of the original dreams of many crypto nerds and advocates. I still think that twitter is pure mind cancer, but I have to give it to Jack on this. Great move, and something I hope gets repeated to the rest of the web. For those who aren’t very familiar with the crypto space: this uses a bitcoin side chain called lightning; transactions are effectively free and instant, but still denominated in BTC.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  Do we know why they're not doing it off-chain, similar to the way a crypto exchange will transfer crypto from one user to another off-chain?
  - bmking 5y ago
    Lightning network is "off-chain". Basically a network of 2-of-2 locked bitcoins called _channels_ that exchange valid Bitcoin transactions to update the balances within these channels, but only need to settle them by broadcasting them to the Bitcoin network in case of disputes.
  - blhack 5y ago
    I don’t know the specifics of this, but: Because they don’t need to. My guess is that you just associate a lightning address with your username, and all Twitter does is present that to a wallet. This way twitter doesn’t need to do KYC, or ever hold any funds. They’re just the phone book.
    - xur17 5y ago
      I'm guessing they also don't want to. If they took custody of the Bitcoin, I believe that would make them a MSB, and hence get to do all of the "fun" associated with that. Also, the additional security and financial implications of holding money for their users.
cwkoss 5y ago
Sounds like initial plans are to not take a fee for Bitcoin payments. Which is awesome but a bit surprising. I wonder whether they'll be able to keep this fee-less over the longer term. If/when they start facilitating billions of dollars moving per year, I'd imagine intense pressure from shareholders to take a cut.
- blhack 5y ago
  How would they take a cut?
- kneel 5y ago
  They're using the 2nd layer lightning network, fees are not an issue.
- javert 5y ago
  They can profit simply by holding bitcoin, which they're increasing demand for. Bitcoin has always been the kind of thing that rewards insiders. Companies and government officials can profit just by holding bitcoin and then incentivizing its wider use. It makes more sense to become an insider than to fight bitcoin. Arguably, that's even true for major financial institutions.
DylanBohlender 5y ago
Lightning network theoretically makes micropayments possible, and that should be celebrated for enabling new ways of online monetization that the tech world writ large can explore. Imagine if you could buy access to a paywalled news article for $0.02 (on an article-by-article basis) instead of having to purchase a monthly subscription. Or imagine being able to pay $0.10 to watch a particular episode of a show without needing to subscribe to the streaming service. How many people would prefer doing that instead of using current SaaS subscription models (which exist largely because it's a huge hassle to implement credit card-based micropayments)? Subscription businesses should be on guard: micropayments open up advertising-independent ways for creators to monetize content. With all the well-deserved criticism of ad-based businesses in recent years (particularly social media), it's possible that micropayments enable business models that don't rely on ads the way many online businesses have up to this point. That's huge, and kudos to Twitter for taking the leap.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  I also think if we remove advertising from existence another plus for the society would be getting rid of "articles" about "look this dog how much barks when he sees the postman", maybe some would pay for that, but I think having micropayments to access content would force the content to be meaningful
jjnoakes 5y ago
This (this specific news as well as crypto in general) still feels like externalizing a fairly important cost - the energy usage required to keep this world-wide distributed ledger going. Change my mind?
- JonathanBeuys 5y ago
  Bitcoin's energy consumption depends on mining revenue. Currently the main component of mining revenue is block reward. Block reward will go to zero over time. How much energy Bitcoin will use then is not known today. It is a new experiment that mankind is performing for the first time. The old financial system is not very efficient. In the USA alone, millions of people work in the finance sector. Automating those tasks via crypto systems might save a lot of energy. There is a good chance that Bitcoin's energy usage will be completely solar based in the long run.
  - CJefferson 5y ago
    The bits of the old financial system which duplicate bitcoin (doing simply electronic transactions) are very efficient. I see no reason all the other stuff wouldn't still be around in a world where bitcoin replaced the dollar. Also, there is no way bitcoin can come close to scaling to even a tiny fraction of the transactions which happen every day.
    - JonathanBeuys 5y ago
      Bitcoin does not only do transactions. It has a smart contract language which allows more and more types of smart contracts all the time. (Yes, Bitcoin is not static as many people think). The old system is not at all efficient for transactions. Vendors hate credit cards for a reason. Visa alone made 20 Billion Dollars in revenue last year for a reason. Bitcoin can scale infinitely via the Lightning Network.
      - mdoms 5y ago
        Visa is "inefficient" because they supply many many more services than simply transacting. Dispute resolution, fraud detection, customer service, card issuing, and on and on. You know, all of this stuff we'll have to build from scratch for Bitcoin to become even remotely viable as a currency. There's no reason to believe that Bitcoin can make these services any more efficient.
arenaninja 5y ago
I don't use twitter but maybe now I have a reason to, and I'm not particularly pro-crypto (I hold maybe $8 worth of bitcoin)
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  I use Twitter and it has the opposite effect. I’m not surprised though.
gcampos 5y ago
I'm sure Jack Dorsey selling an NTF of the first tweet ever had nothing to do with this plan.
JonathanBeuys 5y ago
Why does Twitter need to enable anything for users to receive Bitcoin? Couldn't the users just pin a tweet to the top of their profile "Hey, if you want to tip us, here is our Bitcoin address: ..."? And for receiving Bitcoin via the Lighnight Network, I would expect it is similar?
- throwaway158497 5y ago
  Twitter will hold the bitcoins and collect interest before transfering to person tweeting?
  - plebianRube 5y ago
    Yes, they will enter a Defi contract for the few seconds it takes to send the lightning payment. They will scalp fractions of fractions of a cent, making them wealthier beyond their wildest dreams. Try harder.
    - throwaway158497 5y ago
      Well, technologically it is possible to transfer almost impossible That doesn't mean they will do it. They will hold it for a few days. At scale, it will add some money to twitter coffers(if they are successful that is)
- aqme28 5y ago
  A lot of business is just taking something that is possible and making it accessible. See: the famous Dropbox detractor comment on hacker news.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    But it's just a bitcoin address. All you need to do is go to an exchange (or a wallet), click withdraw enter the public key of the other person, type in the amount and you're done. Dropbox is also silly. It's just rsync with a UI, just spin up a command-line and transfer all your fi-... Wait a minute. This is what you meant! ;-) I'd love to hear a version where a chef would talk about food this way or some other field that I know next to nothing about. Edit: I didn't realize it was using the lightning network.
barcoder 5y ago
BitClout already does this although there's a lot of speculation that BitClout will fail where as Twitter has lasted for a decent amount of time.
Imnimo 5y ago
I'm having a very hard time imagining a scenario in which I would feel the need to tip someone for a Tweet. I understand why I might want to pay someone for, say, a Youtube video, or a substack article. But is there really enough value packed into a tweet that I'd want to send someone money for it? Maybe I'm just not imaginative enough. Or maybe the answer is porn.
- trident5000 5y ago
  Might be good for journalism. People get paid for their analysis and being a trusted source. Hopefully revenue drops off when lying or sloppy work occurs.
  - ProfessorLayton 5y ago
    Maybe local news channels can start compensating people who's media they want to broadcast and profit from.
- em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
  (1) to communicate to others that the particular tweet is valuable, by sending something with more scarcity than a mouseclick. (2) to help fund the creator of the tweet. (3) "is there really enough value packed into a tweet that I'd want to send someone money for it"? Well a tweet can be much more concise than a youtube video.
- paxys 5y ago
  It doesn't just have to be for the content in the tweet. For example you could link to an article on your blog.
- joedevon 5y ago
  Here's an example. Journalist spends a year on a story. Puts it on her blog. Shares the post via a tweet. You love the story, appreciate the hard work and give a tip.
- rstarast 5y ago
  "Any tips for this tweet will be sent back double!"
aazaa 5y ago
> Strike works in all US states except New York and Hawaii, and the country of El Salvador. That's odd, because Strike is the company on which El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment is based. https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/what-is-strike-El-Salvador-bitcoin-announcement/ https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/what-is-strike-E... Also, this article has a completely different take: > A video was released on Thursday of Jack Mallers demonstrating the service with the firm’s integration of the Strike API. In the video Mallers sent Bitcoin from Chicago to El Salvador via Twitter. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/jack-dorsey-twitter-rolls-out-bitcoin-lightning-tips-for-ios-users https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/jack-dorsey-twitter-roll... What am I missing?
- neb_b 5y ago
  Confusing sentence. It could be rewritten as "Strike works in El Salvador and all US states except New York and Hawaii"
babyshake 5y ago
Will Twitter offer APIs to do things like allow a user to authenticate to allow an app or service to track tips they receive? I haven't seen any information about this.
Buttons840 5y ago
> Bitcoin isn't the extent of Twitter’s crypto plans: the company said it is also planning to support authentication for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, by letting people connect their crypto wallets. “NFT authentication will come in the form of a badge, shown on profile pictures, marking the owner’s NFT as authentic,” a company spokesperson said. No talk about the NFTs yet. My gut tells me that ultimately, personally speaking, NFTs are going to be about telling me what I can't do. "You can't post that meme, you can't quote that person, etc." Maybe I just don't get it?
ausbah 5y ago
what does bitcoin really enable here that normal payment systems don't
- d0gbread 5y ago
  Well you can't really tip with a payment system, realistically, right? If I want to toss someone 50 cents Visa or whoever takes a fixed amount plus a percentage, so there are usually minimums.
  - ausbah 5y ago
    stuff like the lightning network has similar fees right? I can see the benefit for the smaller scale of tips though
    - reginold 5y ago
      Lightning transfers cost 1 sat, about 0.05 cents. So on a 50 cent transaction that's 0.1% fee.
- nikanj 5y ago
  Saying "we have a crypto strategy" to both investors and the board
CynicusRex 5y ago
Time to double down on Twitter alternatives. I feel immensely conflicted about using a platform that supports multi-level marketing pyramid Ponzi schemes.
- lowkey 5y ago
  Could you elaborate on what you mean here? How is Bitcoin multi-level marketing or a ponzi scheme?
  - CynicusRex 5y ago
    “Thirdly, early adopters mine or buy large proportions of the total supply at negligible costs while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large costs. It follows that holders immediately have every incentive to get as many people to buy after them. Like stocks? Like stocks, but without the dividends or anything tangible in the real world. Congratulations, you got yourself a pyramid scheme.” — https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html This podcast, after the first half, really goes into depth why all contemporary crypto“currencies” are inherently flawed: https://anchor.fm/when-the-music-stops/episodes/Nano--Digital-Cash-w-Patrick-Luberus-e15db6b https://anchor.fm/when-the-music-stops/episodes/Nano--Digita.... Another good article: https://defector.com/cryptocurrency-bad-and-weird/ https://defector.com/cryptocurrency-bad-and-weird/.
    - lowkey 5y ago
      Most stocks do not pay dividends. If you do some research you will find that Bitcoin pays interest at rates higher than most dividend stocks. By your definition real estate, stocks and precious metals are also multi-level marketing since early insiders profit at the expense of late-comers. Also Bitcoin has something like 70 million users so less than 1% adoption. In other words everyone is still early. I’ll read those links but please note when I refer to Bitcoin, I am excluding all other crypto. Bitcoin truly is a special snowflake and if you don’t understand the difference between Bitcoin and Altcoins I would suggest doing some more research to understand what you may have missed.
zht 5y ago
I wonder how much of this will be used for tipping thirst traps
cblconfederate 5y ago
Who are Strike's competitors?

180 points by jbegley 5y ago

Would love to see more of this stuff done with privacy coins instead.

Anyone else not really suprised. It's like they were actively in search of sharks to jump over for years. The question we should be asking is, what's next or why? I think this is for Only Fans uber-for-porn competition. If only a massive corporation could think beyond their wallet which may people put next to their second favourite organs!

seibelj 5y ago
HN will never understand crypto / blockchain. Bitcoin and NFTs are amazing tools with huge potential for monetization of all sorts of digital goods. It has never been a better time to be a digital artist and earn a living. The lack of imagination and "get off my lawn" around here is absurd.
- akgoel 5y ago
  The Diablo 3 real-money auction house was better implemented than most NFT schemes. At least that involved an actual transfer of virtual goods.
  - JCVI-syn10 5y ago
    What's an "actual" transfer of a "virtual" good? When an NFT is sold a unit of data stored on a digital ledger is transferred. When a D3 item was sold a unit of data stored on in the database was transferred. Why are those meaningfully different?
    - frazbin 5y ago
      Thanks for asking! The difference is that Diablo 3 represents 10E6~ dev hours invested into making a fun game, and items make it more fun. The items are a kind of 'share' in the total fun of the game. Now if we imagine NFTing the Diablo 3 item system, that's interesting. Mostly what's interesting about it is why it hasn't happened. I've noticed that actors in public blockchain ecosystems VERY strongly seek 'incentive wells' i.e. locally maximized extraction mechanisms. This might be a property of certain general public-ledger economic systems, because it sure comes up a lot. Basically the law is: as long as a blockchain/Dapp/pattern makes money, the people writing it won't improvements to it outside the core extractive mechanic; at least not without some rare external inputs, which inputs are surprisingly rare in practice. So if your application is on an incentive hill from this perspective, you know it will never get written. The Diablo 3 Dapp won't get written by Blizzard because it lies on an incentive hill from blizzard's perspective, simply because: assets would (1) increase item prices due to fees and (2) Blizzard would be cut out as a middleman for at least some transactions. Only once you find public-ledger tech that fixes those incentives (and probably other incentives I've missed) will you start to see interesting and complex distributed applications
    - almostkorean 5y ago
      I don't understand OPs point, but the meaningful difference is that the digital ledger is decentralized. If Blizzard shuts down D3, your virtual goods are gone forever. NFTs and ownership of NFTs live as long as the blockchain lives
- clpm4j 5y ago
  It's a spectrum of course. Some people thoroughly understand it and still think it's rather boring or dumb. Some people thoroughly understand it and, like yourself, think it's a revolutionary game changer. And most people don't understand it and either (a) think it's dumb and downvote it, or (b) think it's awesome and are fanatical about it. (edit: spelling)
- jimbob45 5y ago
  NFTs solve the problem of digital theft. It's just...that's not really an issue with the sort of digital goods that can use NFTs. Nor do most people want to download a whole blockchain for every marketplace they want to participate in (and then continue participating in to facilitate transactions).
- corobo 5y ago
  How's the eco status on NFTs these days? I know Bitcoin is still trying to cook the Earth but have they fixed NFTs yet? My only "get off my lawn" take on it Also it all seems to be digitally drawn portrait templates with different accessories on (eg robot heads). I have no idea if they sell but someone's giving Twitter a bunch of money to shove those in my face haha. I'll put that one down to not getting it, I never got into pokemon cards etc either
  - DennisP 5y ago
    Most NFTs are on Ethereum. That has pretty high energy usage for now, but is on track to eliminate it almost entirely in Q1 next year.
    - corobo 5y ago
      Oh nice I didn't know it had a timeline rather than just "we want to.. one day"! That's good to hear thank you :)
      - DennisP 5y ago
        The production proof-of-stake system has actually been running in parallel since last December, staking real ETH, with over 200K full nodes. What's left is just to repoint the main clients, so instead of choosing blocks by the most work, they let the staking network choose blocks.
- BTBurke 5y ago
  Here's my question - NYT could charge me $5 and then deduct from my balance on a per-article basis. Do we need crypto to enable those transactions? If micropayments made sense, why haven't they caught on already with the payment infrastructure 99% of people already have? Micropayments via crypto are just payment with extra steps. I'm not for/against either one. I'd just like to see a coherent argument against the idea that crypto is a solution looking for a problem.
  - wskinner 5y ago
    Most of the world does not have access to cheap and easy dollar-denominated payments. Using Bitcoin for this simplifies the implementation for Twitter, and reduces fees.
    - mdoms 5y ago
      Most of the world has credit and debit cards. Or, at least, most of the world where people have enough disposable income to shell out for NYT articles. I don't live in a country that deals in USD but I have a debit card and very often buy services denominated in USD.
  - DylanBohlender 5y ago
    Fees and chargebacks are the ones that usually come to mind. Oftentimes major credit card provider networks set a "minimum" interchange fee to disincentivize small transactions (a chargeback on a ten-cent transaction is often not worth the squeeze from a support/processing perspective). Basically all major payment networks are facilitated by a middleman of some sort, and that middleman entity usually has operational costs that disincentivize them from offering micropayments. Your point about a "balance" lands though - nothing stops NYT from making one "big" charge and then deducting from it other than consumer psychology (paying $10 up front can feel different than paying $0.05 at a time, for example).
  - orf 5y ago
    Imagine a world where not everyone used the dollar. Then imagine having to support different currencies and ensuring that your price per article stayed in line with currency fluctuations.
- markkat 5y ago
  It's really consistent and strange considering the ostensive nature of the site.
- astoor 5y ago
  The problem is that HN actually does understand crypto and blockchain. The layperson might believe the myth that NFTs, for example, are "amazing tools with huge potential for monetization of all sorts of digital goods", but most of HN will know the reality - you are "buying" nothing more than a URL in a JSON file (i.e. no legal ownership of anything), almost all artists will lose money (there are over 20M listings on OpenSea and almost every one of those will not sell or sell at a loss to the artist given all the costs in making a listing), and most "investors" will too (unless they are one of the rings of anonymous bidders who collaborate to artificially inflate the price of their selected "artists").
  - PretzelPirate 5y ago
    Art is one application of NFTs, but NFTs are not specifically made to represent digital art. Gods Unchained cards are a much better use case since there is built-in utility. Artists can also mint on ImmutableX without paying any fee at all.
  - lottin 5y ago
    Indeed, the mainstream media talks about NFTs as if they were property titles, completely misleading the public into thinking NFTs are something they are not. A lot of people also think Bitcoin spends a lot of electricity because it needs to do super complicated calculations. When you explain them how bitcoin actually works they usually can't believe it. The misinformation floating around with regards to cryptocurrencies is staggering.
  - rjknight 5y ago
    > you are "buying" nothing more than a URL in a JSON file (i.e. no legal ownership of anything), This is wrong. I can see why you think it, but it is wrong. The URL in the JSON file is free, as is the artwork that it points to. It's very hard to restrict the copying of digital artworks anyway, so why bother trying to? The person buying the NFT is not "buying a URL". This phrase doesn't even mean anything! What they are buying is control of a record on the blockchain, which (with some slight hand-waving) contains a list of the signatures of the previous owners, including the original creator or their agent. While it is trivial to copy a JPEG, it is not at all trivial to copy the list of signatures from one part of a blockchain to another, unless you happen to have the private keys of all of the previous owners. As such, the JPEG is abundant but the record is scarce. This mirrors the physical world, in which Picasso prints are abundant but signed originals are rare and hard to copy. What you're paying for is the uniqueness of the signature, not the ability to look at the content of the artwork, which you can probably already do for free on the internet. "No legal ownership of anything" is not really true. You do legally own the blockchain record! You can decide whether to sell it or keep it, and you can generally dispose of it as you would with any other property. You don't legally own the copyright of the artwork, but as we've already established, that copyright probably isn't worth very much. Your other statements may be perfectly accurate - I can't imagine 20M artists on OpenSea all turning a profit, and I imagine that a lot of the investors are likely to lose some money too. I just don't think that this has anything to do with faulty assumptions about how NFTs work.
- joelbondurant 5y ago
  HN is for communist betacuck soy bois.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive defensive stuff about the community. I realize it's frustrating to hold a minority view (believe me, I understand) but all a comment like this does is add bile, which helps nothing. Two productive choices are: (1) take up the cross of patiently and respectfully explaining what you believe to be the better information; or (2) chalk it up to people being wrong on the internet and just don't post. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - seibelj 5y ago
    Sorry dang I have patiently defended crypto / blockchain for years and taken all the downvotes. Twitter announces full integration and it’s still all negativity. Not sure what success would be anymore to convince the HN community.
    - dang 5y ago
      In that case you could always go with option 2. I know it's frustrating, but the internet is to a first approximation wrong about everything, so it's a frustration we all have to live with.
pcbro141 5y ago
Plenty of people tip creators on YouTube (SuperChats) and Patreon for things that have nothing to do with porn or sex at all.
cblconfederate 5y ago
onlyfans for SFW stuff actually sounds a much better way to monetize twitter. There's a reason why onlyfans looks like a twitter feed. Might even possibly help them to change their perception of being politically onesided

em3rgent0rdr 5y ago

microtransactions via the Lightning network is wonderful part of the bitcoin vision. But I don't think this sentence at the bottom of the "Strike" app page is holding up to the promise: "Custody of your funds and bitcoin trading are offered through Prime Trust, LLC." [1] [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/strike-send-and-spend-bitcoin/id1488724463 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/strike-send-and-spend-bitcoin/...

m348e912 5y ago
Thanks for bringing this up. While the idea of blockchain payments hitting a mainstream app is kind of exciting, adding Strike support to twitter isn't much different than adding something like Venmo support. Both require a banking style intermediary that require KYC from their users.
- bmking 5y ago
  I don't agree. This way it is a) easier to onboard _receivers_, and b) stays open in the sense that _senders_ can send bitcoins by any app they want (including non-custodial of course).
  - em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
    Ok, I understand (a). Regarding (b) I guess I don't fully understand their implementation, but are you suggesting that any 3rd party app could implement the payments? I guess if any app or user can pull the twitter user's lightning address one can tip then yeah I guess so. So I guess they are just using "Strike" as an officially-supported app?
  - m348e912 5y ago
    >>This way it is a) easier to onboard _receivers_, and b) stays open in the sense that _senders_ can send bitcoins by any app they want (including non-custodial of course). If I were to restate what I think you're saying: Twitter is implementing a tipping system that allows you pay using Strike _as_well_as additional non-custodial [and potentially non-kyc] lightning payment apps once a lightning channel is open. I think that you're either dead wrong, or the non-Strike lightning payment option will be so convoluted that almost no one actually will actually use it. I will be happy to be proven wrong though.

blhack 5y ago

Absolutely incredible news. Micropayments are one of the paths out of advertiser hell and were one of the original dreams of many crypto nerds and advocates. I still think that twitter is pure mind cancer, but I have to give it to Jack on this. Great move, and something I hope gets repeated to the rest of the web. For those who aren’t very familiar with the crypto space: this uses a bitcoin side chain called lightning; transactions are effectively free and instant, but still denominated in BTC.

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fighterpilot 5y ago
Do we know why they're not doing it off-chain, similar to the way a crypto exchange will transfer crypto from one user to another off-chain?
- bmking 5y ago
  Lightning network is "off-chain". Basically a network of 2-of-2 locked bitcoins called _channels_ that exchange valid Bitcoin transactions to update the balances within these channels, but only need to settle them by broadcasting them to the Bitcoin network in case of disputes.
- blhack 5y ago
  I don’t know the specifics of this, but: Because they don’t need to. My guess is that you just associate a lightning address with your username, and all Twitter does is present that to a wallet. This way twitter doesn’t need to do KYC, or ever hold any funds. They’re just the phone book.
  - xur17 5y ago
    I'm guessing they also don't want to. If they took custody of the Bitcoin, I believe that would make them a MSB, and hence get to do all of the "fun" associated with that. Also, the additional security and financial implications of holding money for their users.

cwkoss 5y ago

Sounds like initial plans are to not take a fee for Bitcoin payments. Which is awesome but a bit surprising. I wonder whether they'll be able to keep this fee-less over the longer term. If/when they start facilitating billions of dollars moving per year, I'd imagine intense pressure from shareholders to take a cut.

blhack 5y ago
How would they take a cut?
kneel 5y ago
They're using the 2nd layer lightning network, fees are not an issue.
javert 5y ago
They can profit simply by holding bitcoin, which they're increasing demand for. Bitcoin has always been the kind of thing that rewards insiders. Companies and government officials can profit just by holding bitcoin and then incentivizing its wider use. It makes more sense to become an insider than to fight bitcoin. Arguably, that's even true for major financial institutions.

DylanBohlender 5y ago

Lightning network theoretically makes micropayments possible, and that should be celebrated for enabling new ways of online monetization that the tech world writ large can explore. Imagine if you could buy access to a paywalled news article for $0.02 (on an article-by-article basis) instead of having to purchase a monthly subscription. Or imagine being able to pay $0.10 to watch a particular episode of a show without needing to subscribe to the streaming service. How many people would prefer doing that instead of using current SaaS subscription models (which exist largely because it's a huge hassle to implement credit card-based micropayments)? Subscription businesses should be on guard: micropayments open up advertising-independent ways for creators to monetize content. With all the well-deserved criticism of ad-based businesses in recent years (particularly social media), it's possible that micropayments enable business models that don't rely on ads the way many online businesses have up to this point. That's huge, and kudos to Twitter for taking the leap.

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lnxg33k1 5y ago
I also think if we remove advertising from existence another plus for the society would be getting rid of "articles" about "look this dog how much barks when he sees the postman", maybe some would pay for that, but I think having micropayments to access content would force the content to be meaningful

jjnoakes 5y ago

This (this specific news as well as crypto in general) still feels like externalizing a fairly important cost - the energy usage required to keep this world-wide distributed ledger going. Change my mind?

JonathanBeuys 5y ago
Bitcoin's energy consumption depends on mining revenue. Currently the main component of mining revenue is block reward. Block reward will go to zero over time. How much energy Bitcoin will use then is not known today. It is a new experiment that mankind is performing for the first time. The old financial system is not very efficient. In the USA alone, millions of people work in the finance sector. Automating those tasks via crypto systems might save a lot of energy. There is a good chance that Bitcoin's energy usage will be completely solar based in the long run.
- CJefferson 5y ago
  The bits of the old financial system which duplicate bitcoin (doing simply electronic transactions) are very efficient. I see no reason all the other stuff wouldn't still be around in a world where bitcoin replaced the dollar. Also, there is no way bitcoin can come close to scaling to even a tiny fraction of the transactions which happen every day.
  - JonathanBeuys 5y ago
    Bitcoin does not only do transactions. It has a smart contract language which allows more and more types of smart contracts all the time. (Yes, Bitcoin is not static as many people think). The old system is not at all efficient for transactions. Vendors hate credit cards for a reason. Visa alone made 20 Billion Dollars in revenue last year for a reason. Bitcoin can scale infinitely via the Lightning Network.
    - mdoms 5y ago
      Visa is "inefficient" because they supply many many more services than simply transacting. Dispute resolution, fraud detection, customer service, card issuing, and on and on. You know, all of this stuff we'll have to build from scratch for Bitcoin to become even remotely viable as a currency. There's no reason to believe that Bitcoin can make these services any more efficient.

arenaninja 5y ago

I don't use twitter but maybe now I have a reason to, and I'm not particularly pro-crypto (I hold maybe $8 worth of bitcoin)

meheleventyone 5y ago
I use Twitter and it has the opposite effect. I’m not surprised though.

gcampos 5y ago

I'm sure Jack Dorsey selling an NTF of the first tweet ever had nothing to do with this plan.

JonathanBeuys 5y ago

Why does Twitter need to enable anything for users to receive Bitcoin? Couldn't the users just pin a tweet to the top of their profile "Hey, if you want to tip us, here is our Bitcoin address: ..."? And for receiving Bitcoin via the Lighnight Network, I would expect it is similar?

throwaway158497 5y ago
Twitter will hold the bitcoins and collect interest before transfering to person tweeting?
- plebianRube 5y ago
  Yes, they will enter a Defi contract for the few seconds it takes to send the lightning payment. They will scalp fractions of fractions of a cent, making them wealthier beyond their wildest dreams. Try harder.
  - throwaway158497 5y ago
    Well, technologically it is possible to transfer almost impossible That doesn't mean they will do it. They will hold it for a few days. At scale, it will add some money to twitter coffers(if they are successful that is)
aqme28 5y ago
A lot of business is just taking something that is possible and making it accessible. See: the famous Dropbox detractor comment on hacker news.
- mettamage 5y ago
  But it's just a bitcoin address. All you need to do is go to an exchange (or a wallet), click withdraw enter the public key of the other person, type in the amount and you're done. Dropbox is also silly. It's just rsync with a UI, just spin up a command-line and transfer all your fi-... Wait a minute. This is what you meant! ;-) I'd love to hear a version where a chef would talk about food this way or some other field that I know next to nothing about. Edit: I didn't realize it was using the lightning network.

barcoder 5y ago

BitClout already does this although there's a lot of speculation that BitClout will fail where as Twitter has lasted for a decent amount of time.

Imnimo 5y ago

I'm having a very hard time imagining a scenario in which I would feel the need to tip someone for a Tweet. I understand why I might want to pay someone for, say, a Youtube video, or a substack article. But is there really enough value packed into a tweet that I'd want to send someone money for it? Maybe I'm just not imaginative enough. Or maybe the answer is porn.

trident5000 5y ago
Might be good for journalism. People get paid for their analysis and being a trusted source. Hopefully revenue drops off when lying or sloppy work occurs.
- ProfessorLayton 5y ago
  Maybe local news channels can start compensating people who's media they want to broadcast and profit from.
em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
(1) to communicate to others that the particular tweet is valuable, by sending something with more scarcity than a mouseclick. (2) to help fund the creator of the tweet. (3) "is there really enough value packed into a tweet that I'd want to send someone money for it"? Well a tweet can be much more concise than a youtube video.
paxys 5y ago
It doesn't just have to be for the content in the tweet. For example you could link to an article on your blog.
joedevon 5y ago
Here's an example. Journalist spends a year on a story. Puts it on her blog. Shares the post via a tweet. You love the story, appreciate the hard work and give a tip.
rstarast 5y ago
"Any tips for this tweet will be sent back double!"

aazaa 5y ago

> Strike works in all US states except New York and Hawaii, and the country of El Salvador. That's odd, because Strike is the company on which El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment is based. https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/what-is-strike-El-Salvador-bitcoin-announcement/ https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/what-is-strike-E... Also, this article has a completely different take: > A video was released on Thursday of Jack Mallers demonstrating the service with the firm’s integration of the Strike API. In the video Mallers sent Bitcoin from Chicago to El Salvador via Twitter. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/jack-dorsey-twitter-rolls-out-bitcoin-lightning-tips-for-ios-users https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/jack-dorsey-twitter-roll... What am I missing?

neb_b 5y ago
Confusing sentence. It could be rewritten as "Strike works in El Salvador and all US states except New York and Hawaii"

babyshake 5y ago

Will Twitter offer APIs to do things like allow a user to authenticate to allow an app or service to track tips they receive? I haven't seen any information about this.

Buttons840 5y ago

> Bitcoin isn't the extent of Twitter’s crypto plans: the company said it is also planning to support authentication for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, by letting people connect their crypto wallets. “NFT authentication will come in the form of a badge, shown on profile pictures, marking the owner’s NFT as authentic,” a company spokesperson said. No talk about the NFTs yet. My gut tells me that ultimately, personally speaking, NFTs are going to be about telling me what I can't do. "You can't post that meme, you can't quote that person, etc." Maybe I just don't get it?

ausbah 5y ago

what does bitcoin really enable here that normal payment systems don't

d0gbread 5y ago
Well you can't really tip with a payment system, realistically, right? If I want to toss someone 50 cents Visa or whoever takes a fixed amount plus a percentage, so there are usually minimums.
- ausbah 5y ago
  stuff like the lightning network has similar fees right? I can see the benefit for the smaller scale of tips though
  - reginold 5y ago
    Lightning transfers cost 1 sat, about 0.05 cents. So on a 50 cent transaction that's 0.1% fee.
nikanj 5y ago
Saying "we have a crypto strategy" to both investors and the board

CynicusRex 5y ago

Time to double down on Twitter alternatives. I feel immensely conflicted about using a platform that supports multi-level marketing pyramid Ponzi schemes.

lowkey 5y ago
Could you elaborate on what you mean here? How is Bitcoin multi-level marketing or a ponzi scheme?
- CynicusRex 5y ago
  “Thirdly, early adopters mine or buy large proportions of the total supply at negligible costs while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large costs. It follows that holders immediately have every incentive to get as many people to buy after them. Like stocks? Like stocks, but without the dividends or anything tangible in the real world. Congratulations, you got yourself a pyramid scheme.” — https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html This podcast, after the first half, really goes into depth why all contemporary crypto“currencies” are inherently flawed: https://anchor.fm/when-the-music-stops/episodes/Nano--Digital-Cash-w-Patrick-Luberus-e15db6b https://anchor.fm/when-the-music-stops/episodes/Nano--Digita.... Another good article: https://defector.com/cryptocurrency-bad-and-weird/ https://defector.com/cryptocurrency-bad-and-weird/.
  - lowkey 5y ago
    Most stocks do not pay dividends. If you do some research you will find that Bitcoin pays interest at rates higher than most dividend stocks. By your definition real estate, stocks and precious metals are also multi-level marketing since early insiders profit at the expense of late-comers. Also Bitcoin has something like 70 million users so less than 1% adoption. In other words everyone is still early. I’ll read those links but please note when I refer to Bitcoin, I am excluding all other crypto. Bitcoin truly is a special snowflake and if you don’t understand the difference between Bitcoin and Altcoins I would suggest doing some more research to understand what you may have missed.

zht 5y ago

I wonder how much of this will be used for tipping thirst traps

cblconfederate 5y ago

Who are Strike's competitors?