I'm pleased to announce the beta release of
http://www.btctip.com, a service that allows you to send any Twitter user bitcoins with a tweet.
You can log in to the website with your Twitter account, no other sign up necessary. Through the site interface, you can see your account history, and withdraw and deposit bitcoins.
Green address depositsCurrently you can deposit from a MtGox green address to have your deposit registered with zero-confirmations, in about 30 seconds. Non-green-address deposits take three confirmations, or about 30 minutes, to be registered by the site.
Sending bitcoinsThe format for sending bitcoins is:
#btctip [recipient] [amount] [unit]
For example:
#btctip @BobOnTwitter 10 centcoins
The permitted units are bitcoins, centcoins (0.01 BTC), and millicoins (0.001 BTC).
The variations and aliases of each that are recognized by btctip.com are:
bitcoin: bitcoin(s) and btc
centcoin: centcoin(s), bitcent(s), cbtc, and internet(s)
millicoin: millicoin(s), millibit(s), mbtc, and woolong(s)
Note that , (comma) is treated the same as . (decimal mark), so for example, 10,2 bitcents will be interpreted as 10.2 bitcents.
Your tweet can contain other text as well, as long as some segment of it contains the tipping command.
For example, this would be valid:
Great post! #btctip @BobOnTwitter 10 centcoins!
After btctip.com has registered your tweet, the Twitter account @btctip will post a tweet verifying the transaction, in the following format:
@Recipient, you received a [Amount] BTC tip from @Sender! Log in with Twitter to btctip.com to claim your bitcoin!
Unclaimed tipsIf the tip recipient doesn't become a BTCTip user (which happens automatically when they log in) within 5 days of the tip being sent, then the tip will be returned to you. If they are already BTCTip users, their tip is considered claimed whether they log in or not.
1 day before the tip is returned, @btctip will post a tweet alerting the tip recipient that they have 1 more day to log in before their tip is returned.
InspirationI got the idea for the site in this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/idea-for-the-killer-bitcoin-app-5382The site is very new and has had very little testing in a live environment, so please don't store more than small amounts of bitcoin on it.
If you have any questions send me a PM or post it here.
Tip for sending: Occasionally a #btctip command will fail to be read by the BTCTip bot and will not illicit a tip transaction through btctip.com. To maximize the chances of your tip command working, we advise you make the tweet containing the #btctip command a normal tweet rather than a reply tweet. This is because the BTCTip bot scans through Twitter's search results stream to find a tweet containing a #btctip command, and reply tweets show up in Twitter's search results less reliably than normal tweets
Happy Tweeting
Updates:
**May 5th 2012** Added 'unclaimed tips' section
**December 23rd 2012** Added 'internet(s)' as an alias of the 'bitcent' unit, and 'woolong(s)' as an alias of the 'millibit' unit, and added note recommending tips be regular tweets rather than reply tweets
**May 16th 2013** Added 'centcoin(s)' as an alias for 'bitcent' and 'millicoin(s)' as an alias for 'millibit'. These new aliases are featured as the primary ways to refer to the cBTC and mBTC denominations, respectively, on btctip.com.
A new BTCTip Tweet Box has been released, that website owners can customize on
http://btctip.com and embed in their websites to receive BTC microdonations. It's been set up on
http://kianoo.com as a test case.
**May 22nd 2013** Reduced minimum tip amount from 1 centcoin (1 cBTC) to 1 millicoin (1 mBTC).