Show HN: Accept Bitcoins on your site

40 points by zabeth24 14 years ago | 21 comments

A friend(@wolever) and I spent the weekend hacking up a small web app which makes it easy for you to sell digital goods for Bitcoins. Once a customer has clicked the “buy” button, we take care of giving them a unique address, monitoring that address for transactions, then securely notifying your website once a minimum number of confirmations have been received. Oh, ya, and then we send you the Bitcoins :)

The website is here: BitWillet: http://www.bitwillet.com and there is a demo on the front page.

(full disclosure: BitWillet uses the Willet, http://dev.getwillet.com, platform, of which I co-founded)

geuis 14 years ago |

A good companion for this would be a browser extension that interfaces with the bitcoin network so interactions could be streamlined. The extension does not need to be a bitcoin miner, simply an interface for your existing account(s).

The usage pattern would follow:

1) Install the extension

2) Configure extension with your bitcoin address(es).

When encountering a site using bitwillet:

1) User clicks "Pay"

2) bitwillet overlay appears with generated bitcoin address to send payment to. bitcoin address is clickable.

3a) Clicking the bitwillet address interfaces with the bitcoin extension to send the payment from your account to the one provided by bitwillet. A "Are you sure?" confirmation should appear before the transaction is complete.

3b) Alternatively, the overlay interfaces directly with the extension and bypasses the need for the user to click the bitwillet address. Confirmation screen should still be used.

4) bitwillet overlay updates its text to tell the user the transaction is in process.

5) When the transaction is complete, the overlay message changes again to inform the user.

zabeth24 14 years ago | |

It's a good idea that would take quite a bit more work on our part. We'll discuss it and see what happens! Thanks!

alx 14 years ago |

That's really great!

Some feedback:

- "This may take up to 5 minutes." < you might have to explain why - "What is BitWillet?" open a new tab instead of opening inside the popup

maushu 14 years ago | |

Ow, and I thought those 10 seconds it sometimes takes using a credit card was bad.

zabeth24 14 years ago | | |

This may take up to 5 minutes due to how the Bitcoin network is implemented. We have to wait for the correct number of confirmations to propagate through the Bitcoin network in order to be able to confirm a BTC transaction has occurred.

Wish we could do it faster, but this is as fast as it gets!

wolever 14 years ago | | |

Ya, this is one of the things that bugs me most about Bitcoin… And there isn't really any way to “fix” it apart from accepting a transaction after a smaller number of confirmations.

adrianwaj 14 years ago |

I'm glad you did this. http://bitcoinservice.co.uk/ has been doing something similar but without the polished look and feel, and higher fees.

The big money in e-goods is with these guys http://www.clickbank.com

nicksergeant 14 years ago |

Doesn't work for people using an Apps account:

Oops... you need a Google profile to use this feature. Google Profiles is not available for your organization.

zabeth24 14 years ago | |

I bet your App Admin can set this up for you to allow it access. I don't know 100%, but I'd recommend checking it out.

brk 14 years ago |

Thanks, I will probably use this. I have been thinking about offering bitcoin-paid server colo options.

wolever 14 years ago | |

Cool. If you end up using it, we'd love to hear about it (@wolever/@BarbaraEMac).

dreamdu5t 14 years ago |

I don't get it. How do you make money? Why spend all this time and effort without reward?

zabeth24 14 years ago | |

It won't be free forever.

Once we know how well it works and we've ironed out any bugs, then we'll start charging. Initially we'd rather deal with people who don't trust us because we're free than people who are pissed off because we aren't free and don't work :P

Also, it was a fun project to work on - we had to learn all about the Bitcoin API and host our own daemon!

iambot 14 years ago |

clickable: http://www.bitwillet.com

chrislas 14 years ago |

Sent this to a friend who was just looking for something like this!

zabeth24 14 years ago | |

Thanks! Do they have Twitter? I'd love to chat with them about it. Looking for feedback on the project too!

vgurgov 14 years ago |

Please send 0.001 BTC to 1Gauo5b1X42wGjmpjt4QBDjiaURUPJGaGM.

Please remove . (dot)

swishercutter 14 years ago |

This is exactly what I needed...Thanks.

mrmang 14 years ago |

i support this project :) wish more people started using bitcoin