Cryptocurrency on The Thumbs Up Bloghttps://thumbsup.me/tags/cryptocurrency/Recent content in Cryptocurrency on The Thumbs Up BlogHugoen-usSat, 04 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000Why the heck would I want crypto tips?https://thumbsup.me/posts/why-the-heck-would-i-want-crypto-tips/Sat, 04 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000https://thumbsup.me/posts/why-the-heck-would-i-want-crypto-tips/<p>Hey friends đź‘‹</p> <p>In my <a href="https://thumbsup.me/posts/building-custom-social-post-embed-cards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">last blog post</a> we looked at how and why I built custom social cards. In case you missed it, I wanted a way to &ldquo;embed&rdquo; social media posts in a way that is consistent with my theme&rsquo;s styling, fast to load, and which didn&rsquo;t make a bunch of unnecessary API calls and expose my reader&rsquo;s data in the process.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m a big believer that the internet is simultaneously one of the greatest boons to humanity ever created, and one of the most dangerous. This only becomes more true as time goes on and corporations, governments, black hat hacker groups, and run-of-the-mill psychopaths get better at abusing the data we put out into the world.</p> Hey friends đź‘‹

In my last blog post we looked at how and why I built custom social cards. In case you missed it, I wanted a way to “embed” social media posts in a way that is consistent with my theme’s styling, fast to load, and which didn’t make a bunch of unnecessary API calls and expose my reader’s data in the process.

I’m a big believer that the internet is simultaneously one of the greatest boons to humanity ever created, and one of the most dangerous. This only becomes more true as time goes on and corporations, governments, black hat hacker groups, and run-of-the-mill psychopaths get better at abusing the data we put out into the world.

Take for example patronage and support platforms like Buy Me A Coffee, Patreon, and Substack. Conceptually, these are deeply aligned with my belief in solidarity and grassroots support. They provide a way to offer sustainable income to creative professionals like writers, journalists, adult entertainers, and visual artists of all kinds.

Note

I’m hesitant to use the term content creators, but as a shorthand I may use the terms creators or creatives at times.

The issue with these platforms is that they all run on one of a limited set of very similar financial rails. The most common backend is Stripe, though some may use PayPal or other payment processors. So, what happens is that when creators who opt for pseudonymity/anonymity—often sex workers, political activists, whistleblowers and journalists—receive tips, their personal information can be leaked on the transaction receipt. On some platforms, even their billing address may be shown. On more than one instance this has been used for harassment, threats, and even acts of violence.

Now I’m by no means a journalist and while I’ve written the occasional post that might be seen as radical—usually just passing comments that could be seen as advocating for revolution against the tyrannical US government, subversion of major corporations, or protection from the unlawful spying deemed status quo in the west—I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about vigilantes, or big brother, coming for me. But that doesn’t mean I want to introduce unnecessary risk either.

With that said, I do have bills to pay and I do appreciate when people want to support with even just a dollar here and there. So I made a decision…

Remove the middle man

Say what you will about cryptocurrency—and you’ll be right about most of it—but it has a number of unique and wonderful properties.

  1. It’s direct. You can send $1 worth of digital currencies straight from your wallet to mine with no intermediaries. This makes it the fastest and least complex method of settlement available today.
  2. It’s borderless. Whether you’re sending a stand-in for a sovereign currency like USDC/EURC or something intentionally separate from existing financial systems like ETH or Bitcoin, there are no hoops to jump through. Whether you’re sending to Canada or Kenya, it’s treated the same. There is some nuance here with respect to public blockchains and countries sanctioned by the global financial hegemony, but we’ll get to that.
  3. It has no hidden fees and fewer fees overall. Payment processors often take several percentage points off each transaction. In the early days of my blogging, I used Buy Me A Coffee, and I was taking home like $3.50 on every $5 tip. If you send me $5 of USDC or any other cryptocurrency, you (the sender) will pay the fee for validation on the blockchain, and it will most likely be just a few pennies.
  4. Truly private options exist. Payment processors offer something that can seem like privacy: heavily regulated, centralized data handlers. In a lot of ways, at least in a perfect world where data breaches didn’t happen all the time, this would be preferable to transacting on a public blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum. However, this technology lends itself extremely well to innovation around privacy. Options like Zcash and Monero offer excellent privacy guarantees while retaining all of the benefits of Bitcoin. And eventually similarly effective options will exist on Ethereum, meaning more stable currencies can be used to transact privately, solving for the usability issues caused by currency volatility.

But I thought only criminals use crypto

While a lot of folks, especially liberals, are quick to imply that crypto only exists for scammers to commit financial fraud or hide their wealth offshore, a growing number of us on the left are pushing back against this narrative.

Firstly, more crimes have been committed by way of and in exchange for Dollars than for cryptocurrencies. And while this may change, it’s not the medium of exchange that creates this issue, it’s the structure and incentives of society. Marxists know this. And intellectually consistent progressives do too.

Additionally, I would challenge the asker of this question to clarify who should decide what is a crime? Is it Donald Trump bombing civilian fishing boats, kidnapping and killing the leaders of sovereign countries (in violation of international law, and thus a criminal himself btw) who should say which non-profits in which countries should be allowed to receive funds? Is it Visa and Mastercard—who arbitrarily debank lawful adult entertainers and UN employees—who should decide which transactions are permitted?

I would argue that any interaction should be based on the consent of both parties. If I want to financially support a journalist on the ground in Palestine, an open source software developer undermining Microsoft’s business monopoly, or a pseudonymous artist creating beautiful works, I should be able to do so without permission.

Here are some examples of trusted organizations who agree with what I’ve said, at least enough that they themselves allow for support via cryptocurrencies:

If these organizations believed that only criminals used cryptocurrencies, it would be quite an indictment for them to accept them.

Call to Action

So I’ve given you the why. And you can take it or leave it. This is not going to be a blog all about cryptocurrency. In fact, I’m not planning to write very much else about it, but I thought I should explain why at the bottom of each post you can expect to see little tip buttons that prompt you to support with cryptocurrency.

Writing is a labour of love for me. Putting my thoughts down to share and connect with other people is something I’ve been doing for years and it’s extremely fulfilling. And what’s more, I feel like I’m pretty good at gathering together useful information and sharing it to people.

I want people who come across this blog to feel like they learn something, see a different perspective, and get some value. And one of the best ways to show a creative person that you value their work, is through patronage.

If you are not completely crypto averse, consider using the buttons at the bottom of this post to tip with Ether, USDC, Bitcoin, Cashu, Monero, or Zcash. I’ll most likely use it to cover my operating costs

Some of it, I’ll donate.

And if there’s anything meaningful left over, I’ll put it towards projects that I’ll write about. Some things I could potentially fund via donations, which I would absolutely write about are:

And of course just keeping a roof over my head through these difficult economic times.

Closing thoughts

Whether or not you want to support, or even if I haven’t convinced you about the role cryptocurrency can play in this kind of internet money ecosystem, I hope you enjoyed reading this post.

And I hope you’ll come back in the future and read more of my posts. This blog is syndicated to AT Protocol blog readers like pckt, leaflet, and surf via the Standard.Site lexicon. If you use one of these readers, subscribe! You can also add my RSS feed to your feed reader of choice.

See you in the next one.

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