Recurring Bitcoin Donations
The first use case I ever found for bitcoin was donations. In 2015, Dan Carlin asked for a buck a show. I donated a dollars worth of bitcoin to his single address for every new episode of Common Sense to the single legacy address he displayed on the donation page. He had this address displayed beside his PayPal donation button. I wonder if the recent PayPal controversy is a problem for Mr. Carlin. He's squeaky clean, but argued against the two party system. Chances are, a squeaky clean guy like Dan Carlin might say something the censors at PayPal don't like these days.
I guess I'll never know since he hasn't had a Common Sense show since March of last year, but the fact that he accepts bitcoin changes the relationship of the content creator to the audience. Patrons of political podcasts are free to support the podcaster peer-to-peer without any pesky payment provider like Patron or PayPal.
The user experience of bitcoin donations were not ideal 420,000 blocks ago. I kept a list of podcasters who accepted bitcoin in an Evernote notebook. It was a short list. After every show, I copied and pasted his address into my blockchain wallet and manually sent him a little BTC tip.
It was never as easy as using an automated service like PayPal. I would imagine these centralized payment options are more lucrative for content creators since they allow the audience to set it and forget it like Ron Popeil's famous Showtime Rotisserie oven(not an affiliate/not even a recommendation).
Alternatively, copying and pasting a bitcoin address is a pain in the ass, not to mention terrible for privacy. Since the lightning network has matured, we can really put the magic in magic Internet money, yet when I see netizens asking for bitcoin donations, most of them still use a single bitcoin time-chain address. The value for value model with podcasting 2.0 apps like Fountain and Breez look promising, but now there is a new way to make recurring bitcoin donations. It is called Oak Node.
What Is Oak Node?
Oak Node is available on the Umbrel App Store. It allows a lightning node operator to set up automatic payments. Instead of dispersing those payments based on the Gregorian Calendar, it is based on the Bitcoin Timechain. The patron enters the lightning address of the recipient and sets the amount to send and payment schedule. This can be a one-time payment or a recurring payment. The schedule is set according to blocks.
For example, a donation set for approximately every block would be sent about every ten minutes. A donation set for once every six blocks is sent about every hour. Every week is 1,008 blocks, every month is 4,032 blocks...you get the idea. To try it out, I asked 5 people I wanted to support for a lightning address, except for Gigi. His lightning addresses are public and really cool. He creates a new lightning address for each article he writes. Three out of them replied back to me. I set my node to send them 21 sats every 6 blocks or about every hour.(unless my node goes down).
How To Make Recurring Lightning Payments With Oak
Step 1) In the Oak App, click Schedule New Button.
Step 2) Enter a lightning address, the amount of sats you wish to donate, the schedule you wish to pay. You could do the math yourself, but they also provide examples of converting blocks into days, weeks, etc.
And violà we have scheduled payment lightning payments.
Why Make Recurring Lightning Payments Over Your Own Node?
Censorship resistance requires censorship resistant money. There are too many stories about people losing their lively hood because of something they have said over the Internet. In 2018, I had this idea to start a blog and use the lightning network as a way for the audience to directly contribute to my work. I got the idea after watching Jordan Peterson talk about Sargon of Akkad getting his Patreon subscription payments suspended for using the mother of all naughty words, the one that nobody with a skin color lighter than the 46th POTUS can say for any reason whatsoever. To be clear, I do not use that word. I would even support a user activated boycott of Carl Benjamin. I do not like the power of this decision to be held in the hands of a single corporation or even a handful of corporations. Back then, it never even occurred to me that a leader of a so-called "Western Democracy" could actually impose a more draconian form of payment censorship, but the Canadian government suspended that disbelief just a few years later.
My own node now allows me to send value over the Internet as a self sovereign individual. 21 sats is one tiny donation,but one giant leap for mankind. 21 sats is only $0.004 cents at the time of this writing, but that works out to ten cents per day. At then end of 30 days, the content creator receives 15,120. That's only $2.91. You can't even buy a grande black coffee at Starbucks for that price, buy you can make the day of your favorite podcaster or writer. Since it takes less than 30 seconds to set up, there's no need to worry about mental transaction cost. Best of all, since there is no middle man, no one can say:
We don't like what those people say so we will not allow you to send money to them.
They prefer the wrong pronouns. We will fine them $2,500.
They are petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. Block there bank accounts.
Some Things Recurring Donations Can Be Used For:
Allowance: Give your kids 50,000 sats every 1,008 blocks. They can save it or buy some Vbucks or something.
Send your nieces and nephews sats on their birthday for by setting the recurring payment to 52,560 blocks.
Support your favorite content creator. Many of them already accept bitcoin, even non-bitcoin podcasters like Dan Carlin. I tried to get him to set up Fountain to no avail, but he still has a legacy address on his donation page. Brett Wienstien has a lightning enabled podcast, So does Aubrey Marcus, Jordan Harbinger, and Jupiter Broadcasting.. They're not what you would call ride or die freaks, but I bet they would they have lightning addresses. They might not even know it.
How will you use Oak Node? Hit me up if you have any ideas.
Blogging Bitcoin
Support The Current Article using the following lightning address:
recurringbitcoindonations@bloggingbitcoin.store
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Addendum
This blog was first published on my Ghost account in October of 2022. Sadly, my Umbrel was NGMI and died in November. Consequently, I am no longer streaming sats at the moment. My wife says I can't run a third node until her kitchen is remodeled. She made some good arguments.
Nostr has also made me question the way I've been doing everything. I liked sending donations to Dan Carlin every month. It feels good to consciously make an effort to send Podcasters value. I miss sending Dan Carlin a buck a show, but 5,000 sats on a legacy address doesn't make sense anymore. In 2015, a buck a show was like 300,000 sats. That's more sats than most big boosts are today. Maybe we should get him on Nostr and start zapping him.
I also think it makes more sense for Dan Carlin to get on-boarded to Fountain. I already asked him. Oscar Merry has to. Here's a clip of Oscar Merry responding to the question What's one podcast that has changed your life?
I never really thought about it before, but the fact that Dan Carlin accepted bitcoin changed my life. He was one of 3 maybe three people accepting it back then. Bitcoin was a historic human achievement and a "not a historian" was accepting it. It must have had some influence on me.
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