Or is the real benefit of your proposed use case the distance of bitcoin value from perceived financial value (ie you are willing to tip X bitcoin but have second thoughts when looking it as X cents)?
When you earn a small percentage of a $5 transaction, which a sender claims to have sent by mistake (or he/she requests the money back due to different reasons) 2 things happen:
A. You lose your % of $5
B. You get charged $35.
Not a pretty situation to be in when you are scaling and about 15-30% of your sales get charged back.
Bitcoins are irreversible, so at least they mitigate your risk as a micropayment provider (or as a seller).
Yes, the addresses are public, but there isn't a way to prove who's who according to addresses alone.
Unless of course you publicly attach your identity to one.
That's correct, but those are humongous only's.
> If that is the case, wouldn't future bitcoin regulation put an end to this type of use case?
Short of large-scale Internet traffic examination, the only thing regulations can hope to do is restrict the exit points: the exchanges between Bitcoin and some government-controlled currency.