Four months after Twitter first introduced in-app tips, the company is expanding its tip jar feature in a big way. The company is opening up tips to all its users globally and for the first time will allow users to send and receive tips in Bitcoin.
With the update, Twitter users around the world will have access to Tipping, which allows users to send money to each other through apps like Venmo, Cash App, or Bandcamp, GoFundMe and PicPay, a Brazilian mobile payment platform. Twitter users in the United States and El Salvador will have the added option of sending and receiving Bitcoin tips through Strike, a person-to-person payments app built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. People in other countries will be able to receive advice through their Bitcoin address.
As with tips using traditional, non-crypto platforms, Twitter will not receive a portion of the tips exchanged between users. The tip is rolling out to all Twitter iOS users starting today and will be available on Android “over the coming weeks.”
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Twitter sees the change as an extension of its recent work to empower creators on its platform. “We want everyone to have access to toll roads,” Twitter’s Esther Crawford said on a call with reporters. “Digital wallets that encourage more people to participate in the economy and help people send each other money across borders and with as little friction as possible help us get there.”
The move is also Twitter’s first major move into cryptocurrency, for which founder Jack Dorsey has been a key proponent. Crawford, who leads the company’s creator monetization efforts, also said the company is in the early stages of exploring an NFT authentication service, which would allow users to display NFT art on their profile.
Those plans are still in an experimental phase, but the idea is to support NFT creators by giving them a way to display NFTs on Twitter and provide details about their ownership, Crawford said. “By allowing people to link their crypto wallets directly, we can track and display our NFT ownership on Twitter,” she said. It’s not clear exactly what that would look like, but she said it could take the form of a badge or other visual cue. “We’re interested in making it somewhat clear visually that this is a[n] authenticated avatar and, and then giving you some interesting information and insights about the origin of that NFT.”
Twitter has previously experimented with NFTs or non-fungible tokens. The company recently released its own collection of NFTs, and Dorsey sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million earlier this year.
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