The Bitcoin investment firm Pantera Capital announced today that it was participating in the Series A funding round for Changetip. The funding round is worth $3.5 million and is expected to boost the potential of the tip platform company which has already strongly entered the future playground for Bitcoin: online micropayments.

In both a twitter post and a Reddit comment (discussion), Pantera Capital announced its leading of the Series A funding round for the tip platform company Changetip. Change is a platform that promises to tap the potential of Social Networks as vehicles for someone to tip anyone. Entire sectors or industries will be attracted to the idea of Social Networks used as payment and funding mechanisms. Social Networks buttons for tips are a planned reality, with Changetip in the leading position.

Change is using algorithms developed in fields such as Advanced Robotics/Deep Learning to parse messages containing the amounts tipped and correctly identified the identities involved in a tip transaction. Users are identified by their Social Network ID, but if you send a tip to a profile that isn’t yet a Changetip user, he/she will be invited to join and claim the tip. Unclaimed tips are returned to the sender.

Also read: Is Changetip the Viral Bitcoin Killer App?

From Viral to Internet of Things Micropayments

After opening a Changetip wallet, users are allowed to link to multiple social profiles: Google+, Reddit, Github, Youtube. The integration of Facebook is still in progress. This multiple-choice structure points to the high potential of the Changetip platform to spread in waves of viral adoption.

In a letter released today to Series A round participants, Pantera Capital Director of Research Ron Glantz and Dan Morehead highlight the potential in micropayments for Bitcoin. Within the Internet-of-things, the revolution in micropayments is likely to be just one killer app of many for the success of Bitcoin:

Micropayments are likely to be Bitcoin’s first killer app – seamlessly integrated into social media, enabling people to send money in a free , fun, instantaneous way, without borders or minimums. This could have a huge impact in Bitcoin adoption.(…) When we look back in a year’s time, there is a good chance that the majority would have received their first bitcoins free via Changetip. – Dan

In the same document, Pantera discloses the main reasons for Pantera’s investment in Changetip. Changetip fulfills three of Pantera’s venture theses:

Bitcoin meeting Social media, tapping into its vitality to spur digital currency adoption.

Changetip is developing the micropayments infrastructure for the Web.

Bitcoin is ultimately laying the groundwork for an Internet-of-things.

The last of these requirements is, for me, the best one from a Social Media perspective, and also from a wider economic and digital currencies use case. The current phenomenon called the Internet-of-things maybe like a major Industrial Revolution for the XXI Century, which promises to change whole economic sectors. With certainty, Bitcoin and all digital currencies will find their place in the new environment.

Images from Changetip and Investopedia and Shutterstock.