Pretty cool, but it's been possible to tip users bitcoins on Reddit for a while now. (<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip</a>). Although this has the advantage of being fee less, since it can stay within Coinbase and avoid the blockchain.
There's been a bot facilitating something similar for a while now. You can just post a comment, something like "+/u/bitcointip @RedditUsername $1". I haven't used it, but it seems pretty neat. Documentation: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip/comments/13iykn/bitcointip_documentation/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip/comments/13iykn/bitcointi...</a>
What do people think about a similar service for HackerNews/Twitter/Facebook? You need a way to be able to send the person a private message (to receive the first claim URL). But other than it is pretty simple to set up.<p>It uses our Token api call <a href="https://coinbase.com/api/doc/1.0/tokens.html" rel="nofollow">https://coinbase.com/api/doc/1.0/tokens.html</a> and a browser extension. Here is the one we wrote for reddit <a href="https://github.com/coinbase/bittip" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/coinbase/bittip</a>
There are two immediate question that jump to mind when I see this. What is the percentage of Reddit users that also use Bitcoin (or Coinbase for that matter)? And for those non-users, what is the minimum tip value that would entice them to actually go through the process of claiming the Bitcoins?
I think tipping people in Bitcoin is an absolutely awesome way to introduce new people to Bitcoin. I think it would work well on HN, but I imagine not everyone would be a fan.