Type of site Online Bitcoin tipping Website changetip.com | Owner ChangeCoin, Inc. Alexa rank 131,120 (June 2015) | |
Revenue 1% withdrawal fee (starting December 15, 2015) and 1.5% pocket transfer fee Slogan(s) A Love Button for the Internet | ||
ChangeTip is a micropayment platform built by ChangeCoin, Inc., an American corporation based in San Francisco, California, which specializes in online micropayments using the digital currency bitcoin. Founded in 2013, ChangeTip enables users of the digital currency to send micropayments across various social media websites, such as Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and Facebook, as well as e-mail and text messaging. These micropayments, referred to as 'tips', are primarily used to express appreciation for quality content. As of January 31 2015, the average micropayment using the ChangeTip platform was a little over $1, with over $250,000 having been tipped since its inception.
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History
The concept of sending bitcoin micropayments over social media was inspired by BitcoinTip, which began facilitating bitcoin micropayments on Reddit in July 2012, and was decommissioned in April 2014 after assisting users in migrating to the ChangeTip platform. Tipping functionality was extended to YouTube, Google+, and Tumblr in August 2014.
In October 2014, ChangeTip experienced a viral phase which has resulted in a dramatic surge of interest in the tipping platform. During this phase, the platform processed 10,000 tips in one day.
In November 2014, Reddit users started a new community called "Millionaire Makers" with the goal of creating a random millionaire by encouraging one million people to donate $1 each. A drawing was held to select a winner by random, and Reddit users each made donations to the winner using PayPal, ChangeTip, and other cryptocurrencies. Since then, the community has gained over 60,000 subscribed users and holds monthly drawings. Combined donations have exceeded $47,000.
In December 2014, ChangeTip announced that it had raised $3.5 million in venture capital funding led by Pantera Capital. At the time, 50,000 social networking accounts had connected to ChangeTip, with transaction sizes ranging between $0.00001 and $100. In the same month, Walter Isaacson speculated that micropayment platforms such as ChangeTip could improve the quality of journalism by encouraging news sites to publish high quality content to attract users, instead of relying on click-bait to increase advertising revenue.
In November 2016, it was announced that Changetip would cease operations at the end of the month.
Criticism
Users and critics of the ChangeTip service have expressed concerns about internet privacy, particularly repercussions which may result from linking various social media profiles to a single entity. For example, a Facebook user might connect their profile to ChangeTip in addition to their Twitter or Reddit profiles with the potentially unintended consequence of creating a link between these profiles.