At some point cryptocurrencies felt like they could get us most of the way to working micropayments. Unfortunately Bitcoin's huge transaction fees and still unreliable service made that impossible. I still hope this will change at some point, but I can't imagine how a sufficiently dominant cryptocurrency could ever emerge again.
Transaction fees are there, but don't have to be enormous. Our code can also optimistically unlock the page under the assumption that pending transactions will eventually go through, so block time is also less of a concern.
Right now the tricky thing is that it requires a browser extension if you want to transact directly with crypto (or use one of the few browsers that come with a built-in web3 wallet).
We also have a managed crypto wallet service that allows people to pay with credit cards, but it isn't widespread because it can only be used to buy keys for locks we have approved.
> Unfortunately Bitcoin's huge transaction fees and still unreliable service made that impossible
The cost of crypto transactions has always been known, it just used to be paid for by the userbase as a whole when the block reward was more substantial, whereas right now the user pays for their own transactions.
I actually think the Lightning network is a semi-viable solution, it essentially overlays a "credits" system onto the original network that's especially appropriate for micro-transactions.
I can't see how a system in which every node has a copy of every transaction forever could ever be suitable for micropayments, which if they took off would be of the order of millions a day.
You're assuming that no innovation is possible in this space.
Besides, "every node" is not true of Bitcoin even today. Neither my desktop nor my mobile Bitcoin client save a complete history. Miners need history, but maybe there can be a different model of mining. I'm not a customer at all the credit card companies out there, only one. Maybe I could also be only be a customer of only one fixed "miner" in some future system? Possibly a new but fixed one I can pick per transaction, rather than today's essentially random assignment of who gets my fees? Yes, this wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore, but as I wrote above, I don't think Bitcoin is what we need anyway.
I’m pretty sure that last time I repaired an ASIC it had just one crappy 256MB sd card (which was the reason it needed a repair). Maybe pool coordinators still need history, idk.
The second-largest cryptocurrency is about a year away from a sharding system that multiplies scale by a factor of 512, with room to grow as hardware improves.
That's for purely on-chain transactions. There's also a partly-offchain solution called "zkrollups" that uses zero-knowledge proofs to reduce the storage for a simple value transfer to 11 bytes, without introducing any unpleasant security assumptions like requiring the user to be online to receive payment or prevent cheating. Combining that with sharding gets to about a quarter million tx/sec.
If that's not sufficient for micropayments, it's fairly straightforward to extend zkrollups to make payments probabilistic: e.g. to pay one penny, send a 1% chance of paying a dollar. There are some potential doublespending issues here but for voluntary tips that's not a problem.
Bitcoin is your cash reserve, its like tour bank account and you dont go to the bank every day. There are multiple solutions to the speed issues. The real issue is that crypto is incompatible with any taxation system everywhere
I don't know what you mean by the bank account analogy. I don't go to the bank everyday, but I can interact with my bank account several times per day. I can make free money transfers to any SEPA account, so this is also part of what micropayments should be. It's just tedious, and the money takes two to three days to arrive.
That's sort-of not true anymore, SCT Inst is a thing and allows transfers between participating banks within seconds around the clock, every day of the year. It's just that some banks don't seem to see the need, and some think it's somehow a premium feature that you can charge for, some even multiple EUR per transaction (outbound, I don't think anyone charges extra for receiving SCT Inst transfers). But then, many banks seem to understand that that is bullshit and offer it at the same price as regular transfers, which for many banks means free of charge for non-businesses.
I can only hope the former will notice that offering ancient technology is not a good way to keep customers.
> It's just tedious, and the money takes two to three days to arrive
So then it's not free. Instead of charging you a transaction fee, they charge you "time", since time is money, and they can make money off the in-flight money (via interest, ostensibly).
i mean that bitcoin has de facto become a store of cash rather than cash at hand. It's indeed not like a bank since there are no chargebacks, no insurance nothing. It's different. But there are also multiple solutions to the speed issue, so speed is not really what s holding back widespread adoption.
SEPA is bank transfers with delays of entire days - that makes them completely unfit for micropayments.
In Australia, our regular banking system lets you register your mobile phone number (or business/company number or email) as a 'PayID' and then that's all the info you need to send somebody an instant payment... Even our older system usually only takes until the next afternoon or morning on a business day (I believe the older inter-bank payments are settled in two batches per business day).
There is certainly no technical reason for the delay, a transfer should just be a transfer of a few bytes of information.
I think the usual explanation is that this system gives banks a pool of money that they are always free to invest in the time that it's neither in the original owner's nor the recipient's account.
The Wikipedia page says "Area served: Sweden" and points out that even Norway and Denmark use similar systems. So this is quite limited. But sure, would be good to have something like this globally.
A sibling comment says there's a similar system in Australia - I don't think the Wikipedia "see also" section is anywhere near exhaustive on this topic, so no idea how many countries are covered.
I agree it would be great to have something like this globally. Or at least to begin with inside of the SEPA (which recently introduced international instant payments)
it's not cash though (and not global). the promise of cryptocs is that we 're getting back the versatility and anonymity that we had with physical cash
I don't actually know if that is feasible in, say, the Netherlands. I've never heard of paying taxes cash, for instance. And jobs pay wages to bank accounts.
Why would someone not have a bank account? Having a large unbanked population seems like one of those U.S.-centric problems which is rooted in something deeper.
I've been interested in GNU Taler for that reason; it feels like it could be a useful tool for online payments while still being taxable. (Still feels pretty early in development though.)
Can someone explain why micro-payments are good? I get a potential benefit to companies (it typically also means easier payments), but I don't see the benefit to consumers. My perception has been that there is a push towards smaller payments at a higher frequency, such that consumers pay more over all but don't notice it; a sort of financial "death by a thousand cuts". Is there any actual consumer benefit to these? I can think of no personal case where I even _want_ to make small payments.
What's the barrier to using Stripe to top-up credit (say USD 20 buys 1 million virtual credits) then spending those on the web buying tiny things for tiny amounts?
In a sense, WeChat Pay etc in China have already "overcome barriers" to micropayments, even tho the amounts do not need to be micro.
That means the company holding that credit becomes subject to financial regulation, which is complex and expensive. Plus merchants now have to integrate with yet another middleman.
The simpler solution is: no fees for small debit transactions, once the baking system is modernized the cost of a transaction is in fact close to zero. This is already the case in Western Europe.
No fees doesn’t solve the onerous accounting issues. This needs some kind of mechanism and legislation that allows accounting of a small amount of money without disclosing the transacted parties
The term to look up is money service business. It wouldn't be so bad except there are federal regulations as well as state regulations. For an internet enabled system, that means registering in 50 states. An estimate I saw put getting licenses for all states in the 200k range.
This difficulty compounds because banks went through a big derisking and are more or less allergic to MSBs. It seems a little anti competitive to have the banks deny you access to payment processing. The alternative is they will charge very high account maintenance fees (10k per month has been quoted to me).
I really want to build something like this but it will be a legal nightmare. No wonder people are looking to cryptocurrencies to solve these issues. I'm actually a little excited about libra since they will have the resources to overcome these hurdles.
The New York Times is definitely ad-supported. You can't read the articles unless you pay, but there are still ads after you pay. It is amazing how they can double-dip.
I used to kinda believe in the argument that it's too much trouble for users, but now a single-click micropayment seems way easier than all the crap I do to bypass soft paywalls.
(I'm not averse to paying and have a digital subscription to one national newspaper, but paying for thirty newspapers just so I can click on reddit links without hassle seems unreasonable.)
I may have a hundred million pageview credits, but it's still a gnawing "This will cost me one." It's still going to end with "we're outside the big network and want a seperate fee."
The simplest answer is to pull the consumer from the purchasing loop. Create a state endowment to pay artists and journalists a living wage, public-domain all the things, and then we can browse in peace, knowing our taxes paid for it.
I think a variant of the street performer protocol (later reinvented as "crowdfunding", minus the idea that once something is funded, it should be available to everyone) is the way to go.
A newspaper could put up a widget saying "these are our monthly expenses, and here is how much in tips we have collected so far this month". People interested in keeping the paper going would tip. Or, well, maybe not, tragedy of the commons and everything.
The important difference to "pay per view" being that you have less of the "this is going to cost me one" problem. You can see what the paper offers and then pay what you think is appropriate. It does seem to work for Wikipedia.
I'd be ok with that if it's not unaccountable bureaucrats deciding which artists and journalists get paid. Some variant of "liberal radicalism" might work out well:
In my opinion, micropayment is more or less a solved problem these days, at least on mobile.
I'm an old fart, I never understand why free games can make a lot of money from selling "powerups" and even vanity stuff like "skins", but as we all know, it's big money.
I even don't understand people buying scratch cards/vouchers from convenience stores with marked-up price.
TL;DR: Lots of free apps/games, yet people pay, sometimes at premium/need to literally walk to a shop.
And, not only Google Play or Apple AppStore, WeChat and other super-apps are also enabling micro payments.
Some issues are still valid though, such as monopoly by the middlemen.
>I'm an old fart, I never understand why free games can make a lot of money from selling "powerups" and even vanity stuff like "skins", but as we all know, it's big money.
I was like yourself with this belief until i tried out mobile legends at a friend's request. I'd always read how bad those games were for that but I didn't really get why until I seen it myself. The game is so full of dark patterns and Skinner boxes to get you spending I don't even know where to begin. It's my first f2p game with things like that, it boggles my mind how much crap is being constantly thrown at me to get me to spend money on random skins, powerups, and heroes. Even when you're not playing, the game entices you to log in to give you a free chest every few hours with a push notification. It reminds me of the way a drug dealer gets customers hooked. They give you little bits of free shit when you first start then cut you off hard after a week.
The latter (only up to cent level) shouldn't really matter. Are people that cheap that their problem is they have to give "at least a cent"?
Sub-cent might matter for third world countries wanting to micropay for a western content creator, but it's more than good enough for the 4+ billion of people in developed economies.
And I'd say, relative cost-of-living considered, even someone making $100 dollars month could afford a cent payment, like a person making $3000/month can afford a $5 latte. But I don't think many $100/month populations have "how do I support a western content creator already living 20x as luxuriously as me" as their concern...
So if that was the issue, we could already solve it with cent-granularity payments....
I find the design of the page quite beautiful.