I saw the news this morning about the release of Rumble Wallet (#1405816). It's a wallet built on Tether's WDK (#1257967) that will accept USDT and Bitcoin.
Rumble is not a platform I had used before, but since SN is the middle kingdom of zapping, I decided to sign up and check out the user experience Rumble had delivered.
Signing up to RumbleSigning up to Rumble
First of all, when a website looks like this, I usually leave. I had forgotten that Rumble was a video streaming platform and was confusing it in my mind with Gab or Truth Social. This screen made me flinch:
Nonetheless, I perservered. Clicking Sign up got me to this screen:
And right off the bat they want my birthday. No option to skip. Luckily, I have a lot of birthdays. Next screen!
Even more demands! I can't imagine why they need gender. Again, no option to skip.
Now, this actually became a stopping point. I used a gmail address and the email with the code never came through. Gmail seems to be pretty aggressive with their spam policies these days and many auto emails like seem to get bounced without even showing up in your spam folder.
I ended up having to redo the process with a protonmail address. (I'll note that Rumble didn't even have a "send the code again"option, much less some way to proceed if email wasn't working for me).
But at last, I had a Rumble account!
Of course, they then made me go through the "find your interests"
Clicking through, I was then assaulted by this screen (foolish me, I thought it couldn't be worse than the landing page...)
Stay on target...stay on target...Stay on target...stay on target...
My mission was to see how easy it was to enable tipping and set up Rumble Wallet and see if I could tip myself some bitcoin.
I went through every settings screen and could not find an obvious button to connect my wallet, create a wallet, or enable tipping.
After some googling I discovered a few things:
1. Rumble Wallet is a separate app, "Rumble Wallet button will appear only for creators who have enabled tip jar"1. Rumble Wallet is a separate app, "Rumble Wallet button will appear only for creators who have enabled tip jar"
2. Enabling a tip jar seems to require "verification"2. Enabling a tip jar seems to require "verification"
I couldn't find this written down on any official Rumble site, but lots of non-Rumble sources seem to think that I need to verify my account before I can access monetization features. (I'm still unclear if this is actually true)
3. Verification requires a phone number3. Verification requires a phone number
If this is the only way to connect your Rumble Wallet, this is pretty shit.
- I wish they had an obvious tab in their settings that started the monetization process
- I wish they didn't require all the various customer data they forced me to provide
- I wish they the wallet was integrated inside their app (I never even bothered to download Rumble Wallet)
I'm going to keep poking around on this, because I want to see if they can deliver anything even close to the experience of zaps on SN, but I'm not hopeful. I had delusions of grandeur that they were going to deliver a zapping experience that was so good the rest of Bitcoin could steal some things from it. Sadly, that is not the case.
I made a little more progress:
I downloaded the Rumble Wallet appI downloaded the Rumble Wallet app
Upon opening they show you this screen:
If you tap "Continue with Rumble" it takes you a screen where you can sign in with your Rumble account.
Next you can choose to recover a wallet or create a new one:
Save it in the cloud or do 12 words.
And then I saw the button:
Activate Tip JarsActivate Tip Jars
Tapping this gives you two options
Select one and you see the screen:
I entered a made up name. It didn't seem to mind.
So then I tried tapping the receive button:
I selected Bitcoin and discovered:
Rumble Wallet doesn't support LightningRumble Wallet doesn't support Lightning
Not even trustodial spark lighting.
It's only onchain.
So then I thought I would see if they accepted USDT on Lightning...
Sigh...
But I can still tip people right?But I can still tip people right?
In the Rumble Wallet app I see a tip button next to a list of accounts I follow, like Bitcoin Magazine, but it's grayed out (I assets because my wallet balance is zero?)
So then I thought I would go check the desktop version of Rumble.com and see if I could tip someone.
I found out that Simply Bitcoin has an attached wallet.
You can see the tip button up there on the right hand side of the screenshot.
Once again though I discovered that it's onchain bitcoin only. No lightning. No spark. No ecash (guy can hope, right?). Unsurprisingly, the USDT options were also the same.
Clicking "Tip with another wallet" just let's you generate a qr that is specific to the currency you plan on using (onchain Bitcoin, USDT (eth, arbitrum, or polygon) or UAXT.
So where does this leave it? I guess it's clear they want you to use USDT, not bitcoin.
They require you to use their own wallet app, and they still require you to scan a QR code? Sad
Maybe because they are doing it all behind the scenes with bullshit swaps.
Neither can you tip someone from an external wallet via lightning.
I think you can tip someone from an outside onchain wallet, but I'm not that dedicated to this research.
I don't think I'll subscribe to any streaming service that either has a restrictive moderation policy, or wants to serve me ads. I was hopeful for Rumble but it's disappointing, so far.. I don't mind the algo serving me reactionary content and having an erroneous assumption on my interests, but my attention has limits, and it'd be so easy to put right.
Like all the best sites right now, you shouldn't need to dox yourself to supporting content you are interested in engaging with, that allows natural discovery, meaningful statistics, and would help to retain quality content and discovery.
Thanks for the hilarious write up!
The write up made me chuckle.
Having read this article, I just tipped you 100 sats.
It took about 0.01 seconds...
If tipping takes signups verification and personal data it stops feeling like freedom and starts feeling like friction so most users will never bother.
Thank you for flushing this out, so the rest of us don't have to.
More like digging through all the shit so we don’t have to.
I tried to figure it out too but gave up much sooner.
For real. I actually came here just now to ask about Rumble Wallet and now I know not to even bother.
Wow this is terrible. Come on Palo I expected big things
please keep going with this and see if you can get from A --> Z and actually tip someone
#1406177
Thanks for doing this so I don’t have to. Haha
Dig more and you will find out that behind is a Spark crap scam.
#1406177
Welp I won’t be buying rumble shares
Vaya solo faltaba tú historial médico 🤣 y todo por ganar unos sat, si lo que quieres es ganar directo y sin tanta información, enlázate aquí yo gano cada 4 días porque no tengo móvil y tengo que esperar a que mí esposo me lo preste y aún así gano 👍, prueba si quieres a fin de cuentas no pierdes nada https://litebits.io/ref/RVNQ3KIY
I'm going to have to check this out when I'm bored at night. Like tonight. After TV night.
source
source
https://twiiit.com/Pledditor/status/2008959927813799965
https://twiiit.com/LightningNewsX/status/2008956887253815633