Dug Campbell

Tipping Tuesday

I had a great day speaking about Bitcoin at the ‘Scotland and The Future Of The Web’ Conference today. It was a totally different type of audience for me,  filled as it was with folk predominantly from the public/third sectors.

It really is a privilege to be given these kind of opportunities to run through the general concepts at a very high level with that type of audience. If at least one person left that venue intrigued by Bitcoin’s potential and motivated to find out more then that’s a successful event to me. And given the fact that there were some great questions being posed at the end of the session (and no-one was asleep as far as I could tell), I reckon some folk are intrigued at the very least.

Of course, there’s usually a big difference between simply being interested and actually getting involved as we all know.  So it was heartening to see the bitcoin tips flying around Twitter this evening as part of ‘Tipping Tuesday’ .

If you aren’t aware of this yet, unless you manage to steer clear of all social networks, you might soon be. The short story is that following a post on Reddit last week encouraging the use of Changetip, people have been rushing to tip others. Whether it’s in return for useful content that’s been posted online, a thank you for help in the real world or just to support a cause, real value has been changing hands.

It’s attracted some press which was exactly the intention for some who are fighting to raise the profile of Bitcoin. It’s a no-brainer to expend that effort on particularly busy social channels where users may be skewed more strongly towards the early-adopter demographic. Regardless of the reasons, it seems like a great idea to me.

If you’re looking for someone to tip, I’d suggest taking a look at the RNLI, a charity in the UK that’s leading the way by accepting bitcoins as donations. Once you’ve got some bitcoins in your ChangeTip wallet, tweet the charity directly, include the amount you want to tip (you can do this in sterling if this is more comfortable than trying to decipher the many shorthand expressions) and make sure you use the @ChangeTip user handle in the message.

And it’s done – as simple as that.