During the past 24 hours we have witnessed a large influx of new users. Current stats show that Voat has been visited by 168,213 people in the last 24 hours alone, making 9,571,200 requests and burning through 117 GB of bandwidth. We are currently running at 300% our normal volume. You can see the spike very clearly here.
Because of this, we were forced to scale up our hardware to accommodate the new users, but this will incur significant costs which we won’t be able to cover without your help. Voat gets money primarily from your donations and ad-sales, but ad-sales have so far been unable to cover the expenses. In the past 24 hours, we have received $1,085 in donations and ad-orders through our store http://store.voat.co, and $180 through bitcoin. This is amazing and we sincerely thank you for every dollar you contribute to keep Voat online, but our past experience shows that donations and ads combined can no longer cover Voat hosting fees.
Voat also has a major flaw: we have no fulltime staff. Voat is currently managed by two people who have full time jobs “on the side”, which makes things very complicated. Voat needs fulltime staff to monitor the servers, respond to support and abuse emails, process donations and keep the wheels turning. With donations alone, this has not been possible so far, resulting in poor site performance and user experience.
We have all witnessed in one way or another how a website which takes on investors can slowly degrade and become outright unusable. Given our commitment to Freedom of Speech, we have to be very careful about who we partner with. Because of this, we have rejected several offers from investors who we believe would not be compatible with Voat’s core philosophy. For the record, we have had investment offers from all over the world during the past 2 years, many of which we were either too busy to entertain or too concerned with underlying motives of the parties involved.
So, what do we do?
We want to keep Voat alive. We want to be able to work full time on what we love and do best. We don’t want to change what Voat stands for or Voat’s core principles, and thus we need your help. If you have contacts or relationships with potential investors who also believe in and support our Freedom of Speech commitment, please let us know and please let them know that we need their help.
Until we have a permanent solution, we need you to donate, buy ads and merchandise (to be announced soon). Every bit helps.
Edit 1: typos
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psymin ago
Oh right, I forget that some potential bitcoin enthusiasts haven't done this part yet :)
There are a number of ways to obtain bitcoin. The most straightforward methods are to offer goods and/or services for them. You can also buy them. Or you can mine them.
Sounds like you're interested in buying them with PayPal. I've bought and sold BTC with PayPal. It is more risky for the seller of the BTC than the buyer when someone is buying with PayPal. This is because a BTC transaction cannot be reversed and PayPal transactions can be.
I'm willing to sell you some BTC and both expose my PayPal ID to you and have yours exposed to me.
I'm up for taking the risk on selling BTC to you via PayPal for a few reasons, but if you're not up for it, no worries.
The trick about buying BTC is that it is hard to remain anonymous. You can contact someone via https://localbitcoins.com/ and meet somewhere in person for a cash transaction. That is probably one of the most secure ways as a buyer.
I've sold this way and it feels really sketchy every time. Flipping open laptops in a bar. Waiting for the blockchain to sync. Putting the money on the table, waiting 10 minute (or longer) for the transaction to be verified. There is stress involved.
But for small amounts like $50, I'm sure the stress would be minimized.
Another way is to hop on #bitcoin-otc on FreeNode IRC. It feels like the Mos Eisley Cantina there. I haven't been there much since my annoying web of trust situation, but you can buy "anonymously" there.
Here is my ranking as a seller from bitcoin-otc. I helped expose a scammer (who was trying to buy BTC with PayPal, always a shady situation there) and the scammer took revenge. shrug
https://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=psymin&sign=ANY&type=RECV
Long story short: Buying bitcoin reveals your identity to the seller depending on the purchase method. If you're using PayPal, you will be telling the other end who you are.
I'm willing to sell you bitcoin for paypal. Hit me up. I'll use the current bitcoinity frontpage price. I guess that is bitfinex?
http://bitcoinity.org/markets
(Edit: "helped out" means many things, I "helped expose and help thwart" the scammer. Editing for clarity)
psymin ago
Shit. I left out the most important part. Install the bitcoin client and get a wallet.
https://bitcoin.org/en/
Not sure if they've gotten past the part that requires you to download the whole blockchain .. which is tens of gigs in size. Holy crap, maybe even 100 gigs? Anyway, do that part first.
psymin ago
Heh, or hit up the local goats https://voat.co/v/bitcoin