Hi Guys,
My name is Brian and I am one of the founders of Youtipit, the Bitcoin based online tipping service. I'm pretty sure some of you guys have seen our site at some stage so you may be aware of what we are about. We initially set out to create a platform that allowed people to tip others small amounts of cash with the minimum effort and at the lowest cost. It is a simple idea but one that was exceedingly difficult to get off the ground, largely due to legal matters surrounding the holding and transferring of money. We discovered Bitcoin and decided to use it as our base tipping currency: it was an almost perfect solution to our problems. It has very low transaction costs, its a truly distributed currency with and of course it has a small but growing user base. We embraced it fully and built our platform around the currency.
Unfortunately, we have been unable to turn Youtipit into a self sustaining product and are considering to halt further development.
Mainly for two reasons:
- Legal problems selling Bitcoins in Germany. We actually got threatened by the BaFin (German Finance Regulator) that what we where doing is likely to be illegal
- Weve run out of money and therefore time. We are all back in full-time jobs and dont see ourselves continuing anywhere in the near future
The reason I am writing this is to ask if there is anyone out there interested in taking over the project. Youtipit has been running for almost a year and a half now with some degree of success. We were actually making some money when we where still allowed to sell Bitcoin so the possibility remains possibly to transfer it to a more Bitcoin friendly jurisdiction and continue with the project. During this time we have built up a strong active user base and managed to maintain the security of the site through out and have gained extensive knowledge of Bitcoin. The site remains fully operational in the short term but we are currently reviewing our options.
We would like to hear from anyone who has any (wild) or interesting ideas on where to take Youtipit.
Kind regards,
Brian(and the other members of the Youtipit team)