by Kai Sedgwick
People Are Discovering Bitcoin Worth Thousands of Dollars in Changetip Accounts
Changetip is the gift that keeps giving. One year after the micro-tipping service shut down, account holders are logging in to discover forgotten bitcoin worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The San Francisco-based micropayment platform is no more, but its legacy lives on through forgotten bitcoin shrapnel that is now worth multitudes more.
Also read: This App is Trying to Predict the Bitcoin Bubble Bursting Using AI
Changetip is Changing Lives
When Changetip announced that it was shutting down in November 2016, one bitcoin was worth around $750. With the cryptocurrency now trading for more than 20x that figure, it's turned a little shrapnel into a whole lot of dollars, as numerous account holders are discovering. All across social media, stories are emerging of bitcoiners logging in to retrieve loose change and finding, to their delight, that it's no longer change.
One redditor found 0.25 BTC languishing in their account, and there are many more reports of bitcoin worth hundreds of dollars being recovered by individuals. Despite having been sunsetted, Changetip still allows account-holders to log in using social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to retrieve their bitcoins.
Tipping Intensifies
There's just one downside for account holders whose wallets contain extremely low amounts of bitcoin: the fee to send it may now be worth more than the value of the coins. Bitcoin's come a long way in the past year, but its remarkable appreciation in value has come at the expense of high fees. Bitcoin's inefficacy as a micro-tipping platform was illustrated last week when someone tried to contribute $1.50 in BTC to Andreas Antonopoulos' fundraiser, only to be stung by transaction fees of over $13.
Bitcoin's micropayment days have passed, but bitcoin cash is being trialed for a number of projects similar to Changetip. These include Yours.org, which rewards content creators and curators with BCH. While some Changetip users are delighted to discover the value of their forgotten bitcoin holdings, others are anguished at the realization of the sums they tossed around freely back then – sums which are worth a small fortune today.
Have you discovered long forgotten bitcoin in your old Changetip account? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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Andreas Antonopoulos, bitcoin cash, ChangeTip, micro-tip, Micropayment, N-Featured, Reddit, Ryan Charles, tipping, tipping bot, Transaction Fees
Kai Sedgwick
Kai's been manipulating words for a living since 2009 and bought his first bitcoin at $12. It's long gone. He's previously written whitepapers for blockchain startups and is especially interested in P2P exchanges and DNMs.