My Bitcoin Beginnings: Adventures in the Bitcoin Tipping World
I entered the Bitcoin world in a time of abundant exchange of Bitcoins through Tipping. Reddit's tipping bots were my first experience with the Bitcoin world, and this is a story from back then...
Sometime in 2014, I discovered Bitcoin and it opened the windows to the world for me. I wrote in the previous article how I took my time learning about it. I compared Bitcoin wallets and chose one for me. I was a user on Reddit at the time so I went to r/bitcoin it was my source for Bitcoin news and discussion.
In these discussions, I found people tipping each other for good comments. Following these conversations, I learned the concept of Satoshi as the smallest fraction of Bitcoin. (1 Sat is a hundred-millionth of a Bitcoin.) I learned it's named after the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. I took my time learning about him.
I registered on a Tipping bot, and strived to earn my first Satoshi on Reddit!
Shortly after learning about Bitcoin and joining the Bitcoin Communities on Reddit, I found a community of Bitcoin Tippers.
The community's mission was simple. Someone opens a discussion about whatever topic they want. They'd reward the comments they liked with a tip. Commenters were encouraged to tip each other, and multiple users have made recurring contests with small tips as prizes. Some examples of posts on that community are trivia questions and giveaways to the user who says the closest to the winning number.
I frequented this community and may have become one of its most active members for a while.
I entered most discussions when I had something to say. I tried to learn about topics I didn't know about to have something to say. I was making art at the time so I drew some pieces for the community. I overestimated my art ability back then. (It wasn't all bad, it was around that time when I designed my current Logo.)
Bitcoin's promise of owning my own money made earnings feel sweeter. More precious. Each time I got a tip of a cent or two in value, I felt as happy as earning hundreds of dollars.
I used two Tip Bots during my time in Reddit communities. I forgot the name of the first one. I didn't use it much and it was sort of replaced by the other one quickly. It was strictly a Reddit tip bot.
The other Tip Bot was my favorite. It was called ChangeTip. It was a cross-platform tipping service. (As in you can use it on multiple Social Media platforms.) It was released shortly after I discovered Bitcoin. I witnessed ChangeTip's birth and was I around when it faded from the online world.
What I liked about ChangeTip is that it had special named values for tipping. A Pizza tip was worth $10. It also allowed the tipping amount to be written in words and not just numbers. “Give him to dollars /u/changetip“ would take $2 from you, and give it to the other user.
We used ChangeTip massively in those communities. I used to give and receive tips on Reddit and Twitter. I cherish the time I joined the Slack group and talked with ChangeTip’s team there. It was a fun educational time.
A year or two into it, though. Regulations came. Bitcoin faced heavier regulations over time, and ChangeTip had to be regulated too. Being a USA-based company, ChangeTip was forced to exclude its audience from countries sanctioned by the USA. Incidentally, my country Libya was one of them.
I contacted the team about it and they told me: "There’s nothing they can do." My options on their website were reduced to one: Withdraw the funds I had.
It was fun while it lasted, but I had to go away. A few years later, I learned that ChangeTip ended its service. I can only assume they were regulated by USA laws so much, they couldn’t operate anymore…
So this was my story in Bitcoin’s Tipping Communities. I believe Bitcoin Tipping is still a thing today, especially with Lightning Wallets, but I don’t think it’s as strong as when I was in the space.
I joined Bitcointalk forums shortly after that, but that’s a story for another time. Hope you enjoyed reading this and/or learned something from it. See you in another article.
- Images in this post are made using Clip Studio Paint. Get Free Trial Here! and iBisPaint.
- This article was originally published on CoinPayU Article. Republished here for archiving purposes.
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