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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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).

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.

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