So Twitter has launched a new tipping feature where you can send money to anyone on twitter. You can send it through cash app, venmo, and a few other sites, but the most interesting integration they have is with bitcoin and lightning. So I set up the tipping integration.
Here’s what you need to do:
First, you need to be on twitter on your phone. Go to your twitter profile, then hit “Edit Profile” then turn tips on.
You can set usernames for venmo, cash app, strike for lightning and a bitcoin address.
Now to actually make a payment with bitcoin and lightning, you’ll need a lightning wallet. Lightning is nice because it’s extremely low fees for bitcoin and very fast.
You can download blue wallet ( bluewallet.io) on your phone. Create a bitcoin wallet and back it up. Create a lightning wallet and back it up. The backup is a key step! Make sure to save the QR codes and recovery phrases.
Then you’ll need to deposit bitcoin into your lightning wallet. Click “Manage Funds” then “Refill with External Wallet” (or just refill if you already have bitcoin on blue wallet). Then you send bitcoin to that wallet. It takes 3 block confirmations to show up in your lightning balance, which can take some time.
Then when you tip through the twitter app, you can send sats (short for satoshis, 1/100 million BTC) through your blue wallet lightning wallet. $1 is currently 1834 sats. The twitter tip button will open blue wallet.
This whole process took me about an hour to set it all up. If you aren’t as familiar, it could take a few hours. Mainly it is an interest exercise to test out the integration and see how lightning works.
Original twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/jkeesh/status/1446942817679446021