I've been using Tubular by NewPipe for a long time and as a YouTube frontend, to skip the ads, it's been outstanding
So I wanted to see if they would accept some sats as a token of appreciation
They do accept donations according to their web page as above
And upon further inspection, they accept:
- LiberaPay (no idea what that is)
- PayPal (err no)
- Bank Transfer (also no)
So I decided to contact them to ask the question
The modes of contact were email or matrix?
I've never used this matrix, so after a little research it seems to be similar to Nostr whereby there is a protocol and clients sit on top of it
I found Element X on ZapStore which is a matrix client apparently, never used it before but span up an account with a fake email and away we go
Luckily before sending a message to the group, I noticed there was already some chatter about the acceptance of Monero, there were some privacy bros in the chat, saying 'You should accept this and that' yadda yadda yadda, but the development team were quite adamant that they were not interested in crapto donations
But I shot my shot anyhow and sent a message explaining my offer and all I got back was a 'nah! Just send cash in an envelope or gold lol'
After a few other comments I just offered my contact as in my SN link and wished them well, then a dev warned ⚠️ the group that my link was doubling as a referral link, which it is, but I wasn't trying to be 'Download my free webinar' maybe I should have just used my npub
Mission unaccomplished 😢 😭
After a little digging on their group and their website I found a couple of announcements, one was this old reddit post about...
Due to our obligations, we couldn't afford a significant portion of our assets to be stored in such volatile currencies, making frequent swapping necessary, in turn causing fees and organizational overhead. With this, it is not obvious that crypto assets would indeed be cheaper in effect, considering the sender also has to swap first.
Additionally, crypto coins generally pose organizational problems because they are disconnected from the existing legal system, that as of now, already has guardrails against many traditional failure modes. For instance, if all of the board disappears, members together with a court can still establish a new board, which then gets access to the bank account. It is manual work and additional overhead to recreate this in a trustless environment.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NewPipe/comments/1quvxue/reconsider_crypto_donations/o3eocb8/
And then within that post was a link to an incident back in 2019 where, NewPipe was stacking sats but they had an incident with a nefarious electrum update, causing them to lose all their Bitcoin 😢
https://newpipe.net/blog/release/pinned/bitcoin-scam/
On reflection I hadn't spotted this before sending my original message, so I apologised for any offence caused and left it at that
What I did find interesting was some of the language used by the devs surrounding the acceptance of donations, they were saying that if they were to accept let's say Bitcoin for example, they'd need to be able to pay developers and buy stuff for the business which isn’t practically viable at the moment because their suppliers don't accept it
I suppose you could suggest they create a strategic reserve but then you go down the rabbit hole of, what is the purpose of Bitcoin, is it a SoV or is it money to be used as currency and that is definitely a conversation they are not ready for yet.
When you guys orange pill a coffee shop, do you go down the SoV route or the recieve Bitcoin and spend it on the business as a circular economy?
Offtopic, but I personally think alternative frontends are doing more harm than good.
Instead of nagging people to move to open platforms like odysee and nostr we sit comfortably from our invidious and newpipe frontends watching the world go to shit, but with a little more privacy.
Your favorite creators can’t express themselves freely on GoogleTube, shadow banning runs rampant, policy changes delete old videos from the platform, illegal and retarded DMCAs takedowns, random demonetizations… the list goes on and on.
I have nothing personal against NewPipe but their conformist behavior is not surprising given their software is a conformist solution.
Not disagreeing per se, but wondering if or how this is meaningfully different from using an adblocker.
I use UblockOrigin on Firefox for lappy and works well but where Tubular wins is you dont need to be signed in to a goog account. And can still get
I was referring to this bit:
I wasn’t siding with adblockers over custom frontends, both make youtube just ever so slightly bearable to use so people don’t revolt and move into alternatives, like taking painkillers to alleviate the symptoms of poisoning instead of taking an antidote.
That's what I meant. Do you think adblockers do more harm than good too?
No hidden agenda, no trick question. I'm just curious.
I would agree with custom frontends directing traffic to the shitty platform longer is a bad thing.
At the same time though, I don't feel the same about adblockers (not only wrt youtube but any site), even though the very same argument can be made.
I don't have a rational answer as to why, but maybe you feel different or have a new take I'm not seeing.
I have a feeling why that could be.
In a addition to the arguments that also apply to adblockers, custom frontends simply take the oxygen out of the room.
Attention, development, donations etc. that could go towards decentralized platforms get burned with the sole purpose of playing catch up with pointless breaking changes from Google.
So I think it’s fair to say that adblockers are less bad than alternative frontends given their generic nature. And besides, ads aren’t the only annoyance YouTube has that customers frontends workaround.
Could this argument be correlated against the case of Orange pilling businesses, they dont want to accept bitcoin but instead stay on the old fiat system, I guess the business accepting cash is like NewPipe
As opposed to taking card payments, akin to using youtube as goog want
Using Bitcoin as a business is like using say Justin's video platform, it requires a new type of thinking about how we access content, and then how do you get the creators over there etc
It’s not rocket science, Odysee (previously known as LBRY) has been offering a free, single click YouTube channel mirroring tool for years.
This literally has less friction than accepting bitcoin, it’s a single time investment that pays off forever.
Denomination issues between assets and liabilities are always an issue; I personally try to focus on business that can grow in a "sats in, sats out" way, or at least get a significant portion of their liabilities denominated in sats. So yes, MoE.
But, since this is a German org (judging by the country code in their IBAN) they would have more use for it as an endowment-like SoV solution than an MoE, because (for the time being), Germany has a 1-year hold period and after that cap gains are no longer taxed.
Since you cannot really do trusts in Germany (that's not a recognized entity type there) there aren't many other ways to do endowments, meaning that this could be an oppty for them. For example, securities are taxed at 25% cap gains no matter the hold period. I'd run this particular one from a SoV p.o.v., with of course the note that it's volatile af.
Wise words as always
So a great usp for them is stacking for at least a year and then they could decide to stay in sats or convert with 0 tax implications
THANKS 😊 Optimism
Or hodl a growing stack until it is so huge you'll be funding your org from it forever, Harvard style.
I suppose one of the multiple variables that springs to mind is how do they store their sats, on chain is just as cluttered in options as lightning is, without describing all the options, it's important they start off with at least good decisions, it's who makes those decisions I suppose which is key
They are busy running a business, finding time to learn that spark is a bad idea, takes time
It's not just wallet choice. For an existing, compliant org, accounting is even more important and non-optional. So it can become really complicated, really fast.
What helps is if you've done this yourself or have helped someone else doing it prior, in a setting similar to those you're advising. Personally, I don't know enough of the administration of German registered associations (that's the
e.V.in their legal name) to advice in detail, but this is a common form, so I expect there to be people that know.This is a pretty great story. Don't feel like you failed. People have weird feelings about bitcoin and probably the best thing any of us can do is just to ask if we can donate it/spend it at places.
Even if people don't respond positively, it puts the idea out there that there are people who do use bitcoin for things. And that's pretty cool!
Great job!
If the NewPipe dev is queueing up for coffee and sees someone in front paying with Bitcoin
They'll think 'Remember that guy who wanted to donate sats'
its easy to understand being turned off after gettin scammed/exploited.
really sad.
EDUCATION IS KEY
When you guys orange pill a coffee shop, do you go down the SoV route or the recieve Bitcoin and spend it on the business as a circular economy?
When orange pilling a small business in the farmers market or a coffee shop there's one huge advantage over the case your described here. Transaction fees. Most high volume low margin merchants light up when you tell them that accepting bitcoin is free and that fees are the burden of the sender. That's generally my shoe in. The rest comes later.
PayPal is limited try to add Coinbase
Prefer https://grayjay.app/
Respect for the effort. Maybe DM one dev privately later with the NewPipe + Lightning guide.
I've tried this a few times in the past #841523 and it's really not that easy. I will keep on with it again, thanks for your reminder.
NewPipe rejecting sats while shipping a YouTube ad-blocker is the classic FOSS trap: their privacy threat model stops at Google and stops dead at the EU's donation-reporting rules. A Lightning address would force the same volume-based disclosures as PayPal or LiberaPay once it exceeds trivial amounts, yet it also gives them an uncensorable rail they already refuse on principle. The envelope-of-cash line is just theater until someone actually measures how many donors get scared off by KYC friction versus how many stick around for on-chain transparency.
The hardest orange pills are the ones where you're asking someone to care about something that doesn't feel broken to them yet. Devs especially-they're solving concrete problems. The angle that tends to land: 'what happens to your users in a country where the payment rails disappear?' Makes it a resilience argument, not an ideology argument.