Bitcoin Forum

One of the very big hopes for Bitcoin was the notion of enabling 'micropayments'.  Today, one can't practically pay 50 cents with Visa because there is a 30 cent swipe fee and a percent fee on top. 

However, now with the stalwarts of 1MB blocksize limits, it looks like we are going to have to start setting our miners fees to (remarkably enough): 30 cents. 

Does this spell an end to micropayments? 

Only time will tell.
I believe micro-payments are what will really push Bitcoin/bitcoin to mass adoption one day.
Any amount, around the world, any time, without trusted parties. That is special.
But as I have said, only time will tell.

Machine-to-machine payments are hugely important concept.  This will be totally suppressed if we get stuck with the same high transaction fees that Visa has.  Side chains tend to be unreliable and proprietary letting a 'middle man' tax traffic on that medium.  I think we should be careful to preserve the notion of micropayments and let blocksize go to 20MB to avoid log jams and corresponding high miner fees.

micro payments? cmon give me a break this is true degennery

miner fees : 0,4 mBTC
http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees



but, that, it's to use the next block ...
and micro-payment don't say that it's for the next block ...



that is the key.

Hi

For micropayments you can use service like xapo wallet,or send bitcoin with a low fee,and wait 3-4 days for confirmation.

We don't know how side chains will work yet. They might be flawless or a load of shit. Off chain payments are already here but that's far from ideal.

If Bitcoin can't pull off micro payments then you can guarantee that there'll be some other system that can. It's too important and useful to disregard and might spell the beginning of Bitcoin's slide into the history books if it isn't addressed.

It is useless, micropayments are usually used to pay for some services like access to website, items in online games or stuff of that nature.
You pay and you want to have that access/item/service available for you right away. Waiting for it couple days - and in addition using xapo wallet is contradiction in my opinion.
Bitcoin transfer fee will be lower that credit card/paypal still so we have nothing to worry about.

I think we are better off leaving micro payments to shared wallets like xapo. It is costly and inefficient to send on chain micro payments. We could have side chains to handle micro payments but that is too distant. I think micro payment is not crucial to mass adoption. I am prepared to forego that for less spam on the blockchain.

This is why it needs to be addressed.  Why allow a problematic weakness when it can be easily solved?  IMO micro payments are an important part of the bitcoin ecosystem.  We need them for wider adoption.  And having the fee the same as visa is just depressing.  We are supposed to be better than those guys right?

Micropayment is not going to be death as long as bitcoin have people like you and me
 Even if it fail we have many altcoin for micropayment like the very popular dogecoin and litecoin.

Don't you guys read anything?
Micropayments are already happening in streamium, and things like Lightning network are on the way.
Payment channels are all the rage!

With the stress testing coming to an end, transactions should start flowing as usual, shouldn't they?
The number of unconfirmed transactions is ~2K, which is not huge.
Having said that, the block size debate will continue and the block size will eventually have to be raised.

Also need ed for new business ideas. Lot of these app games have their own markets, which could really work well with micro payments.

Micro payments is so important. There are just so many avenues that open up when micro payments are enabled, they'll be a lot of growth there. A whole lot of things related to tint smart contracts that will be automatically set (for the user) that'll enable them to do many new things.

It would be a shame if Bitcoin doesn't optimize for that. It needs to, one way or another, because if it doesn't, that's a big chunk of actual/potential value taken out of your BTC, and something else (alt coin/other) will definitely capitalize on that.

I do not think the bitcoin developers will want to stop micro paying. I think they are coming up with a better idea. Bitcoin developers is very smart.

I believe that micro transactions are very important to Bitcoin adoption. However, having a global flat ledger where everyone needs to see every stinking 50 cent transaction is a stupid design. Right now if my bitcoind crashes it takes 2 days to re-index the blocks on disk before the node is fully online again - so increasing block size beyond 1MB should really be done as a last resort. We need a better architecture than simply crying out to increase the block limit every time there are too many unconfirmed transactions. I mean, should we increase taxes every time the government can't balance their budget?

no buddy, because we will raise the blocksize. bitcoin is for the people. sent 3 cents or 3 mio - your choice.

there are some wallet that dont charge fees..
but takes time to confirm..
it up to you if you want fast transaction pay fee..
or if you want to save you can try some web wallet

I cannot see how this is a problem now... Yesterday I have made 3 transactions and the average fee for the 3 transactions was 0,07915 USD. Where are you getting the 0.30 cents from?

I did not even have to wait a long time for the confirmations.. {within 30 minutes there were 12 confirmations}

That address is also full of dust payments from faucets I experimented with, so it should have been expensive, but it was not. The only thing periodically pushing the fee's up, is

the people doing these fake stress tests to force people to pay higher fees. This is still way cheaper than any other bank I have dealt with or credit card fees.  ;)

If this is a real issue for you.... use Xapo. {zero fees}

your 8 cents was during a network of light congestion. When things get busy, you need to increase the fee to get the confirmation.  Besides, micro payments can survive with even $.08 fee. Micro payments really need a .01 fee or even less. Yesterday, the network wasn't full of crap from load testers. So your calculation is only good for 'yesterday' but not good for the future.

I've thought the same with the blockchain debate and the rise in fees. It made me angry because bitcoin was supposed to allow micropayments online, and now it won't be possible. After a while I became comfortable with bitcoin becoming the "store of value coin" the gold-of-coins and allow an alt-coin like litecoin to handle the micro payments world, that wouldn't be so bad I suppose.

I agree with having another crypto-coin for the purpose of micro-payments. But Litecoin has to compete with the other cryptos out there (such as Namecoin, Ripple, Terracoin, Quarkcoin.etc) for that place. There is no no.2 crypto by default. Personally, I would prefer Namecoin over Litecoin, as it is less susceptible to manipulation in the exchange rates.

What are you saying? Bitcoin was invented to be a money you can use without having to trust banks. Now you start to say it is a money that you can use for small amounts similar to 0.01 USD? That would be no normal money anymore. And would contradict what satoshi wanted to create.

I know there are some guys that want to push their own project. Micropayments not on bitcoin but on their own project. Unfortunately these persons are bitcoin core developers too. And... of course, they don't want the blocksize limit to be raised.

That is simply stupid. It is like politicians that decide about bank regulations while they are ceo of these banks on the same time.

Guess we have our first cases of power misuse and corruption on bitcoin core developer level.

I think it is still a problem. Compared with credit cards it is a small fee. But bitcoin should be compared to normal fiat too. We want bitcoin to be adopted. It should be used widely and everywhere. Only then the amount of fees needed to support miners will be created. And that means it has to be possible to spend really small units of worth, like 0.01 USD. It would not work when you have to pay a 0.05 USD fee on top.

That reminds me of paypal. At least not as expensive.

wallets does not charge fees, they suggest the fee amount suitable for your transaction size to get high priority. and some of them enforce it but all of them can be over-ride to change the fee to any amount you want.

I see as micro payments anything below one $, and I'd be happy to see them disappear. Come on, the blockchain will keep those transactions forever, and there's no need for this. I'd be a miner, I would simply ignore all smallish transactions, and I believe this is what they will all do, unless block size is raised.

If someone wants to spend a 0.0001 tx fee on a 0.00001 transaction they should be allowed to. But since that is not prudent to spend more on a tx fee than the transaction itself an altcoin could be the better solution for a micro transaction. If you want to send 10 cents use doge coin or something and that can later be converted into the all mighty bitcoin.

There are already services like Coinjar and Changetip who focus on the micropayment space. I think that with sidechains we will see innovations in  the micropayment industry.

Micropayments don't necessary need to be finished because of the blocksize debate. I think they will still remain in one way or another, it's one of the killer selling points of Bitcoin. If the fees are too it will fail.

Well those sidechains altcoins would be backed by the bitcoin blockchain, they would be more trusted than alternative coins.

its ok.. his whole post was bullshit anyways so he can increase his post count with his sig campaign.  i dont think we had 12 blocks in 30 minutes that day.

bullshit posters posting bullshit things.  lets all get on a bandwagon.  there are currently 3 of them leaving the station so pick one and stick with it.

What is your definition of micropayments? Obviously there has to be some limit, some floor, or people could spam any blockchain to death. How small an amount do you think it should be reasonable to send?

Maybe there could be a system where all the really, really small payments get put in the same area of a coins blockchain, and this area is periodically pruned, so it can never get too big. This area of a block could be reserved for very small transactions so that if someone tries to spam it, it would not affect other transactions. Sort of a tiered system.

sounds like this system you desire already exists and functions how you describe in the current use of the blockchain.  this area where small payments and free spam is called the mempool. if you pay little or no fee then you must wait in line with all of the other micropayments or spam transactions until there is room for you to be confirmed.  if you think your transaction is priority then you pay a fee. anyways you can still send older coins or higher amounts free as both dont need any fees.

Lol, yes I guess you have a good point there! It basically operates the way I was thinking already due to fees. Although there is no auto-blockchain pruning system. I'm not sure how much of the current block size debate is due to the needs of the system to deal with individual block sizes during mining, or concerns over the growth of the overall blockchain due to the addition of larger blocks.