Letter to Ryan X. Charles, in response to his “Bitcoin Post-Mortem” writing
Hey Ryan, you might remember me as “Bitcoin Optimist” from yours.org; and as someone influenced and inspired by you, aware of your progress and history, and built a platform that could be classified as an evolution of Yours.org (TipStampers.com), I wanted to touch on a few things from your Post-Mortem writing (found here).
To start, I agree with you on most everything. Especially the reason for Bitcoin’s lack of adoption as a payment system.
After the Bitcoin Cash split, the Bitcoin brand was tarnished by being labeled as Digital Gold, and this likely marked the (hopefully short-term) death of Bitcoin becoming adopted as a payment system. With BTC dwarfing BCH and taking the reigns as crypto leader while retaining the Bitcoin name, the chance of becoming widely-used Electronic Cash was slim to none. Like you said, in most people’s minds, Bitcoin and crypto was just a speculative investment, nothing more. It would take too much digging for the mainstream to think otherwise.
Had the big block side won, maybe it could have been different, but honestly I think it was just too early. The altcoins, ICO’s, and their lucrative potential had already infiltrated the market, and without real regulation, it was inevitable that the spread would continue. The big block side would have needed to win out, and regulation labeling tokens and non-PoW Blockchains as securities would have been necessary for Bitcoin to continue evolving as the internet of money. Until the blocks filled up it had solid momentum as such — with adoption accelerating and many merchants accepting it for payment — but once the blocks were full and the Digital Gold narrative prevailed, progress in this realm would stall indefinitely.
At least until something happened.
And I think the downfall of FTX and others might be the “something happened” catalyst necessary for Bitcoin to continue progressing as the internet of money, and become widely adopted as a payment system over the internet.
But you’re right, in the short-term, this blow-up is going to tarnish anything related to crypto and Bitcoin. The mainstream perception will be negative for quite some time, and very few will want to have anything to do with it.
However, if the shake-up actually clears the field and regulators do what they should have done from the get-go, in due time, a recovery can occur. The useful version of Bitcoin can retake the Bitcoin name and brand from BTC, and with all the scams gone, the negative stigma can be squashed and its real-world, lawful use-cases can once again be at the forefront of people’s minds, as well as their businesses. Its revolutionary capabilities and properties as a form of programmable money and payment system are just too good for it to remain down forever. There is hope.
Now, let’s touch on “your failures” — which to me, are not failures at all. But for the sake of simplicity, I’ll accept the premise.
Being too early is 100% true, and you really didn’t have a chance because of the reasons mentioned above. I believe this combination is 99% why yours.org never caught on with the mainstream. It didn’t stand a chance in that environment.
But it was also very “crypto” heavy. It had a few alternative categories, but the great majority of the content was crypto-based, and I think this kept it niche and made it less inviting for normal folks to join. But like I said, at the time it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
I’m pointing this out because I’ve done my best to improve on your yours.org model. I’ve thought deeply about how to best attract mainstream users.
As you mentioned in your writing, one of those aspects is keeping “Bitcoin” on the down-low. On TipStampers, transactions between parties are labeled and priced in dollars with no mention of Bitcoin; the category topics are all related to mainstream interests; and the brand has no obvious association with Bitcoin either. TipStampers.com is an “earning platform” where creators receive 100% cut on everything they earn, instantly and directly from their audience. With paywalls, we’re a clean version of OnlyFans, not a crypto platform.
Besides minimizing the Bitcoin factor and having categories that appeal to non-crypto folk, there are a few other aspects I’ve incorporated to draw users in — both crypto-friendlies, as well as the average everyday person.
For the crypto folk, I recently built a “Mass Tipping” feature much like HandCash’s Pay Pistol. I plan on conducting a “Mass Tipping” event to active users on a weekly basis, and this giveaway promotion should help drive some adoption towards the platform. Any user can use this feature, so hopefully others will promote it and draw people in within their own influencing umbrellas as well.
When it comes to the mainstream, our desired target audience is teens and young adults. As I learned from Tim Draper in How to be the Startup Hero, they’re the demographic most responsible for massive adoption and virality. They are also least resistant to adopting new technologies. They’re a great fit for a platform like ours.
Since TikTok is their app of choice, I decided to rename the Fun/Entertainment dropdown category #TipToks to align ourselves with their favorite network, and to emphasize the fact that users can share and earn from their own TikToks on our platform.
In addition to embedding TikToks into posts, users can embed video and audio content from Twitch, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Vimeo, Facebook, and YouTube. This way, creators can continue posting their content elsewhere to their existing audience, and use us as a supplement to broaden their reach and earn a 100% cut here. This should make our platform more attractive to existing creators who already have an audience.
When it comes to attracting an audience and promoting the platform, I think that’s one area where Yours.org could have been stronger. Which I know you know, since you were hiring for this role before directing your focus towards MoneyButton.
Well, my overall promotional plan includes frequent and consistent activity over major Social Media outlets, including TikTok.
To keep this brief, I’ll be prompting our Social Media audience with Polls, Lists, and Q & A questions over them, to entice people into signing up and participating on our platform. To add some FOMO to the mix, these particular prompts freeze submissions within 48 hours, where official results get posted to the Blockchain as a “Stampshot” thereafter. Maybe that will appeal to the mainstream, maybe not, but with consistent daily prompts related to average people’s interests, there’s a chance they’ll sign up.
And when it comes to signing up, because of technology similar to what you created with MoneyButton, we have additional advantages that Yours.org didn’t have.
By integrating HandCash, there’s a wide variety of additional apps people can use without having to do any manual wallet transfers. That is a pretty nice perk, as I can tell people they can use their TipStampers earnings in a variety of ways, including playing arcade games via Haste. Plus, HandCash’s credit card purchases and USDC integration makes onboarding and retention much easier.
For initial onboarding, yes, people have to create a HandCash wallet, but they don’t need to start with any BSV. To start them off, I’ve created an introductory category called “Meet the Stampers” where they can introduce themselves for free. Once they do, the platform and community can send them $ to get them started. And if you remember the tail end of Yours.org where the only content seemed to be people begging for money, users can only post once within this category. That should help prevent mass begging from occurring again.
The last distinct difference between Yours.org and TipStampers.com is that we do require a small micropayment to post content throughout the platform. Even though this is indeed a barrier to entry, I believe the long-term benefits are worthwhile.
This will keep the quality higher, limit spam, and properly align incentives. It enables the platform to offer 100% cut on everything a user earns thereafter, and it gives us an alternative to the ad-based business model. Then to expand on the business model, we offer membership for a fee, which makes the price to post free and provides a variety of other benefits to the user (which lasts indefinitely in this early stage).
And that summarizes how I’ve attempted to improve your Yours.org platform model, so let’s conclude this writing.
The current environment makes the task of achieving mainstream adoption difficult, but I’ve done my best to give it the best shot possible, and I’m going to ride the storm out over the long-term. My activity may be limited at times depending on my life situation, but this is my baby and giving it up entirely is not an option. Because of you, I took a coding bootcamp to build this vision out, and I spent the last 3 years of my life putting it together. Sunken costs or not, I’m not letting it go. Promotion will always continue.
Anyway, I wish you luck with itisbit.com and any future endeavors of yours, Ryan. You have been instrumental in my Bitcoin journey, and TipStampers.com would not exist without you. Take care, and I hope you consider creating a HandCash account and using TipStampers as you see fit. Would be great to have you on board.
Thanks again,
Sam
