Twitter CEO Uses Tippin Add-On for Bitcoin (BTC) Tips

Published on February 13 by Cryptovest Staff

The Tippin button for Twitter accounts, launched on February 13, uses the growing Lightning Network to send micropayments in BTC.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1098324828182831104

https://twitter.com/tippin_me/status/1098268884833091585

The micropayment option is building a new use case for the Lightning Network (LN), a growing collection of nodes that use a different principle for sending Bitcoin (BTC) without the need for mining. Nodes are constantly added, and the network is becoming less centralized around key users, as it was in the past.

According to the latest statistics, the LN carries over 709 BTC a day and has 28,783 active channels between nodes.

https://twitter.com/LNstats/status/1098408849818742784

For now, the button is limited to Twitter, but there are suggestions that other social media may benefit in the future. For now, smaller coins are seen as more suitable for micropayments, and assets like ReddCoin (RDD) and Verge (XVG) have attempted to become coins for social media payments. DogeCoin (DOGE) has also been used for tipping in the past.

The chief argument against BTC micropayments are the relatively high fees for on-chain settlement. With the Lightning Network, however, off-chain settlement through known nodes is seen as viable, at least for small-scale payments.

Tippin is a personal project of Sergio Abril’s, who is currently celebrating the addition of such an option.

https://twitter.com/eiprol/status/1098214099840917505

For now, it is much easier to receive than send tips. However, the button code generated can be used on other social media. Paying others is a bit more complicated as it would require uploading some BTC and connecting as an LN node to the Tippin node. This task may not be easy for newcomers to social media. On the other hand, Tippin usage may help grow the LN further.