Comment by xrd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xrd | Hacker News Reader

This article assumes that things like transaction costs are fixed, and customer support is legally required.

If you removed those two assumptions, micropayments make sense.

Crypto currency actually can solve those problems elegantly. You can have low transaction costs. And, transactions can be anonymous and irreversible (depending on the currency).

Critics will rightly point out those promises are not always kept (ethereum gas prices, for example), but they are the goals. Lower transaction fees, I would assert, are not the goals of PayPal.

The problem is not technical. It's that there isn't mass adoption. If a well funded startup did a "Fresno Drop" they might be able to overcome that. That would be interesting and could be very effective.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-fresno-drop/

Full disclosure: I'm working on such a system and have a patent pending on the process.

Crypto currency does not have "low" transaction costs: it takes a lot of energy to commit a BTC transaction to the blockchain. Crypto can only ever be viable for non-trivial (large, or unusually valuable) transactions where trust cannot be provided by common mechanisms, such as a stable government or a private escrow agent. This clearly doesn't match the typical use case for micropayments.

Bitcoin (and other proof of work coins) are not suitable for the job. But there are cryptocurrencies out there that are almost purpose-built for it! Stellar, on which https://satoshipay.io/ is built, is one of those.

>it takes a lot of energy to commit a BTC transaction to the blockchain

This is a misunderstanding of how mining works. It takes virtually zero energy to create a block (ie. commit a transaction). However, it takes massive amounts of energy for your block to be considered valid. This is because each block also comes with a block subsidy (currently 6.25BTC), which many miners are competing for.

I don't think the OP is misunderstanding anything, but you seems to be: the proof of work occurs at the creation of the block (which doesn't really mean “commit a transaction” but instead “acknowledge a bunch of transactions requested by users”), the “validation” comes from other miners adding more blocks to yours (the “chain” thing).

It also assumes the world is limited to what can and cannot work in the US. In some parts of the world micro payments are the majority of payments.

Micropayments are actually a very useful thing as part of a much larger solution. We need to monetize digital content, journalism and open source.

https://qbix.com/token

Reply on news.ycombinator.com