How to do micro payments with bitcoin?

[bitspectacle]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

[1714888577]

1714888577

[1714888577]

1714888577

[LoyceV]

At current fees, you can forget about micro payments. Even if you manage to send a payment at low fee to many addresses, those addresses can't use the Bitcoin dust, as it would require a higher fee than it's worth.
Lightning Network is supposed to solve all this in the future, I just hope it won't take too long.

[13abyknight]

As of right now, micro payments are almost impossible to make because of high transaction fee situation caused due to network congestion. The fees you pay for the transaction would overshadow the actual amount being sent making it useless to do so.

Then again, as LoyceV said above, Lightning Network would be the optimal solution for this problem but we just need to wait for it to go live so we can start making using of it.

[Turkish88]

Transactions in bitcoin network paid according to capacity in Kb, this conception cant give you opportunity to make micro transaction for now.
One way to decrease tx fee sending btc from one big input

[crypt0heaven]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Lightening network takes care of that. This is how you will do micropayments or anything under 100$ with basically no fee.

Here is LN wallet, check it out https://htlc.me/

[Colorblind]

Today it is impossible to make micro transactions without using off-chain services. In future LN supposed to bring bitcoin micro tx in fast, trustless and decentralized manner.

[Kprawn]

OK, you want the micro tx's to be verified on the Blockchain and that is physically impossible with Bitcoin at the moment. The

best alternative would be to use something like Xapo with off-chain tx's {instant & free} and then withdraw that with one tx

onto the Blockchain. {high fees come into play again} At least with this method, you would be doing micro payment and the

balance will be reflected on the Blockchain. 

[cellard]

OK, you want the micro tx's to be verified on the Blockchain and that is physically impossible with Bitcoin at the moment. The

best alternative would be to use something like Xapo with off-chain tx's {instant & free} and then withdraw that with one tx

onto the Blockchain. {high fees come into play again} At least with this method, you would be doing micro payment and the

balance will be reflected on the Blockchain. 

Xapo is a scam, don't use it at all, Bitfury and Coinbase and co are also not to be trusted, they are behind the BCash agenda.

If you really want to transact offchain then LN was designed for that, the problem is to fund the channel you still need an on-chain transaction, and once you use all the funds, you need to recharge it again, and typically you don't want to have big amounts out of your cold storage... fees need to go down on-chain. Segwit, MAST, Schnorr.. could make fees go down a lot, but that is a slow process, and some people are paranoid about segwit's safety.

Whatever the outcome, BCash is not the solution.

[collapse]

I can remember the days of totally free transactions.
Bitcoin (2009-2017✝) was intended for cheap transactions and micro-payments (P2P cash), you need something similar.

"I don't think the threshold should ever be 0.  We should always allow at least some free transactions." Satoshi Nakamoto.

[squatter]

I can remember the days of totally free transactions.
Bitcoin (2009-2017✝) was intended for cheap transactions and micro-payments (P2P cash), you need something similar.

"I don't think the threshold should ever be 0.  We should always allow at least some free transactions." Satoshi Nakamoto.

I can sympathize with Satoshi's sentiment there, but he didn't build incentives for that into Bitcoin's design. The system relies on rational mining incentive: miners publish transactions because they are incentivized to mine for block rewards and collect the fees.

And for years, miners largely enforced node policy that reserved some space for "priority" transactions, including old coins sent with no fees. But miners are rational. When fee income became significant, they removed that node policy and started maximizing the fees they collect.

It's the mining incentive -- and therefore the protocol itself -- which resulted in this situation. This is the only way the system can guarantee block rewards in the future, once most of the 21 million coin supply is mined. And that's why Bcash will probably fail: when the block subsidy drops to zero, so will mining output, because fee income won't replace subsidy income.

[Samarkand]

... And that's why Bcash will probably fail: when the block subsidy drops to zero, so will mining outpute, because fee income won't replace subsidy income.

I´d speculate that it will fail much earlier. Their blocks are still literally empty most of the time and if
the prominent backers of Bitcoin Cash will someday switch their support to a different project
(remember, some of them were also involved in earlier ventures like Bitcoin Unlimited and so on), the
project will fade away or become one of these "ghost blockchains".

I agree on the general importance of a competitive fee market in order to incentivize miners to secure
the network when the block reward becomes negligible.

[Kakmakr]

... And that's why Bcash will probably fail: when the block subsidy drops to zero, so will mining outpute, because fee income won't replace subsidy income.

I´d speculate that it will fail much earlier. Their blocks are still literally empty most of the time and if
the prominent backers of Bitcoin Cash will someday switch their support to a different project
(remember, some of them were also involved in earlier ventures like Bitcoin Unlimited and so on), the
project will fade away or become one of these "ghost blockchains".

I agree on the general importance of a competitive fee market in order to incentivize miners to secure
the network when the block reward becomes negligible.

The BCash guys are literally hanging on with their finger tips. They know the Lightning Network and SegWit will eventually render BCash obsolete, but they are using this temporary advantage in their favour, to push BCash adoption and to attack Bitcoin's current scaling problems.

BCash will soon join Bitcoin Unlimited in being a failed attempt to take Bitcoin down. This was a stronger attempt, but Bitcoin is known for coming back in the last rounds. ^smile^

Cheap micro payments with Bitcoin <Lightning Network> has been done on the Main Net, but it is still early days for this technology.

[regnidorhcs]

I don’t about micro payments but can you help me to explain something about micro payments that can help me in knowing more to this? Thank you for the response

[LoyceV]

"I don't think the threshold should ever be 0.  We should always allow at least some free transactions." Satoshi Nakamoto.

I can sympathize with Satoshi's sentiment there, but he didn't build incentives for that into Bitcoin's design. The system relies on rational mining incentive: miners publish transactions because they are incentivized to mine for block rewards and collect the fees.

As far as I can tell, Satoshi never intended the current situation to happen. Back in 2010, he already suggested to phase in bigger blocks again, but this never happened.
When Satoshi created Bitcoin, there was no difference between nodes and miners: before asics took over, all nodes could mine. Miners currently earn around $30 million per day from block rewards and fees. I can only imagine how decentralized Bitcoin would be if millions of users could all run mining nodes on their own home computer, and all earn a few dollars per day from this.

It's the mining incentive -- and therefore the protocol itself -- which resulted in this situation. This is the only way the system can guarantee block rewards in the future, once most of the 21 million coin supply is mined.

I don't disagree with the fee-replaces-block-reward thing, but in my opinion it's too early for that. It would be perfectly fine 20 years from now, when Bitcoin has a billion users who each make several transactions per day. Now 300,000 users pay around $7 million in fees per day, which limits adoption to the point that services that were accepting Bitcoin in the past, are now abandoning Bitcoin.

The BCash guys are literally hanging on with their finger tips. They know the Lightning Network and SegWit will eventually render BCash obsolete, but they are using this temporary advantage in their favour, to push BCash adoption and to attack Bitcoin's current scaling problems.

All true, but none of these forks would have happened if Bitcoin would have allowed more transactions years ago, long before it became a problem, and long before any miner would reject an update to Bitcoin Core that makes this possible.

This was a stronger attempt, but Bitcoin is known for coming back in the last rounds. ^smile^

I really hope so.

Cheap micro payments with Bitcoin <Lightning Network> has been done on the Main Net, but it is still early days for this technology.

It's a very complicated solution that needs time we don't have. Larger blocks could have offered temporary relief for the network. Instead, we got RBF and CPFP to pay more for a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

I don't like Bitcoin Cash and especially the manipulation from the guys behind it, but I can't deny it works just fine to send a transaction.

[JainaVsUther]

This really isn't possible currently due to the minimum fee being around ~$20. Personally I'd recommend using BCH (Bitcoin Cash) as you can still get low fees there.

[hasmukh_rawal]

Micro transactions are not possible on the current transaction fee. It should be considered as a myth . On chain transactions can never be made to do micro payments since the fee itself would be more than the  micro payment.Nobody would want to spend double than the actual cost.
The Lightning Network is being made to solve this problem. It has been tested successfully now and will be implemented on the network very soon this year. Many people including are waiting for the moment for the establishment of the Lightning Network. Don't know what's gonna happen Bitcoin's price when the moment arises.

[znake]

Micro transactions are not possible on the current transaction fee. It should be considered as a myth . On chain transactions can never be made to do micro payments since the fee itself would be more than the  micro payment.Nobody would want to spend double than the actual cost.
The Lightning Network is being made to solve this problem. It has been tested successfully now and will be implemented on the network very soon this year. Many people including are waiting for the moment for the establishment of the Lightning Network. Don't know what's gonna happen Bitcoin's price when the moment arises.

Normally the price should go up !

For micro payments you should use Stellar Lumens, they have the lowest transaction fee.

[Jessica2009]

  Before doing micro payments first we have to know what is micro payment and how it works.Micro payment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money done online. At present micro payment is not applicable in bitcoin because of the fee structure of micro payments will double the actual cost so this type of payment is impossible.There is some alternatives for micro payment something like xapo .There are also lightning Network to solve this problem many are waiting for the lightning network.

[Carlton Banks]

Larger blocks could have offered temporary relief for the network.

Larger blocks would have to be far too large to permit micro-transactions though.


Also, Bitcoin now has larger blocks, blocks between 1.1 MB and 1.4 MB are a regular occurrence. ~ 2.1 MB is the vaunted max for current usage patterns, and Lightning will likely push that up higher (as open/close channel HTLC transactions have a higher weighting than typical transactions), within an overall 4MB maximum blockweight.




Your arguments ignore the drawbacks of block size can-kicking: efforts must be made to mitigate the effects of the additional verification resources required for increasingly larger blocks, otherwise there will be a compromise to other aspects of Satoshi's overall mission statements. These cannot be ignored or wished away, Satoshi wanted a decentralised network and p2p cash-style transactions.

Segwit's solution for non-linear sig-hashing was the beginning, but future innovations to improve the performance of block verification and propagation (e.g. MAST and signature aggregation) will be needed in order to ensure safe increases of the block-weight limit. Scaling-up blockchain tech actually involves changing the performance of the Bitcoin network at larger scales, not just "making everything bigger". That's not scaling.

[adzino]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

With the current situation of the network and all those fee it is actually not possible to do micro transactions with bitcoin. Your best option is to switch to some other Alt coins or just wait for the lightening network which is supposed to help us do transactions instantly with very less fees.

I don’t about micro payments but can you help me to explain something about micro payments that can help me in knowing more to this? Thank you for the response

Micro payments are low value transactions.

Xapo is a scam, don't use it at all, Bitfury and Coinbase and co are also not to be trusted, they are behind the BCash agenda.

I understand the deal with bitfury and coinbase, but why is Xapo a scam?

[cellard]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

With the current situation of the network and all those fee it is actually not possible to do micro transactions with bitcoin. Your best option is to switch to some other Alt coins or just wait for the lightening network which is supposed to help us do transactions instantly with very less fees.

I don’t about micro payments but can you help me to explain something about micro payments that can help me in knowing more to this? Thank you for the response

Micro payments are low value transactions.

Xapo is a scam, don't use it at all, Bitfury and Coinbase and co are also not to be trusted, they are behind the BCash agenda.

I understand the deal with bitfury and coinbase, but why is Xapo a scam?

About Xapo: He shows a behaviour similar to Brian Armstrong (Coinbase CEO). He went up on the Segwit 2x train defying the community's will to not have another fork armageddon of 2 competing versions of Bitcoin. He is also constantly delaying scaling solutions like allowing native segwit support and instead he is profiting from enabling Bitcoin Cash and racking up the transactions fees in there.

I can't trust all these big blockers, they are all dodgy and they come from the old world, they just want to make more dollars, they don't even hold that many bitcoin themselves.

[MrCrank]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Nowadays it is impossible.
Do you know how much fees today? It's very big amount.
I tried btc accelerator too, not working at these days

[Wirex]

As of Now, It is pretty much impossible to make micro transactions with bitcoins with their current transaction fees. However, We at Wirex have been working tirelessly to improve transaction speeds and costs of bitcoins within our network and have implemented SegWit for all our users.
We also have ZERO fees when transferring bitcoins from one Wirex user to another, making it possible to some degree to use bitcoins for micro-transactions .

We are also going to implement B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Customer) transactions to hopefully allow bitcoins to be used more as a medium of exchange rather then just a store of value

for more information, Please follow these links:

https://wirexapp.com/bitcoin-money-transfers

https://wirexapp.com/segwit-wallet-upgrade-lower-blockchain-fees-customers/

[Anti-Cen]

Lightening network takes care of that. This is how you will do micropayments or anything under 100$ with basically no fee.

Here is LN wallet, check it out https://htlc.me/

Yes if you buy a coffee each day from the same shop for a month and can spread the $30 cost over the month
as a type of surcharge on top of a $1.50 drink plus pay the fees of the hub/bank who you opened a
channel too.

What you are saying is not correct at all you have been mislead and micro payments are going to often be a few cents sent
to a web site needed to view VIP pages which i am sure we will start to see a lot of these soon.

From a development perspective LN is a hack job and from an economic perspective it could well
push fees even higher unless your doing 50 transactions a month and the hub you use has all the
right channels open and lets not forget that Hubs need to commit there transaction to the main
block-chain when doing inter bank settlements which is nothing new.

Please debate these guys if you feel that my description is incorrect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g   (Short version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A (long version, skip to 6:10 for the meat)

if the public block-chain was such a fantastic concept then how come they want to go off block now
and how did we ever mange to build scale-able system in the past (link web farms) without CPU wars for
mining or PoW and no we didn't needed to deal with 51% attacks because our systems were better than
that but yes DDOS can bring most systems down.

LN introduces a degree of centralization which I can live with but they are fudging the problem
which will create more trouble instead of dealing with the problem at the right level and breaking down
the block-chain to become a block matrix or do you think they like running out of space in blocks, only just
found out that this BC would not scale and are simply loving ripping us off in fees and some vain excuse
about running out of block space.

oh did i forget to mention "Lock-Managers" just in case the process was not far to
complicated as it is which might just give some of the current 20,000 full nodes needed
to preform seven transactions a second some real work to do for once.

I think all they have done is added another wheel to to the slot machine with a few more
buttons so when it costs you even more to play then it must all be the punters fault.

Yes I could go on a lot more but hopefully some of the developers here will start thinking
for themselves instead of being pushed along

[cybersofts]

As of Now, It is pretty much impossible to make micro transactions with bitcoins with their current transaction fees. However, We at Wirex have been working tirelessly to improve transaction speeds and costs of bitcoins within our network and have implemented SegWit for all our users.
We also have ZERO fees when transferring bitcoins from one Wirex user to another, making it possible to some degree to use bitcoins for micro-transactions .

We are also going to implement B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Customer) transactions to hopefully allow bitcoins to be used more as a medium of exchange rather then just a store of value

for more information, Please follow these links:

https://wirexapp.com/bitcoin-money-transfers

https://wirexapp.com/segwit-wallet-upgrade-lower-blockchain-fees-customers/

Wow, that is a welcome development for the bitcoin community and users as well. great work, Wirex!

[squatter]

"I don't think the threshold should ever be 0.  We should always allow at least some free transactions." Satoshi Nakamoto.

I can sympathize with Satoshi's sentiment there, but he didn't build incentives for that into Bitcoin's design. The system relies on rational mining incentive: miners publish transactions because they are incentivized to mine for block rewards and collect the fees.

As far as I can tell, Satoshi never intended the current situation to happen. Back in 2010, he already suggested to phase in bigger blocks again, but this never happened.

I don't think that's what he did. He said we could increase the block size that way. He then went on to say that Bitcoin users might become increasingly tyrannical about blockchain size.

When Satoshi created Bitcoin, there was no difference between nodes and miners: before asics took over, all nodes could mine. Miners currently earn around $30 million per day from block rewards and fees. I can only imagine how decentralized Bitcoin would be if millions of users could all run mining nodes on their own home computer, and all earn a few dollars per day from this.

Maybe that was a flaw in Bitcoin's design. On the flip side, ASICs can exploit excess capacity, which in turn secures Bitcoin's proof-of-work.

It's the mining incentive -- and therefore the protocol itself -- which resulted in this situation. This is the only way the system can guarantee block rewards in the future, once most of the 21 million coin supply is mined.

I don't disagree with the fee-replaces-block-reward thing, but in my opinion it's too early for that. It would be perfectly fine 20 years from now, when Bitcoin has a billion users who each make several transactions per day. Now 300,000 users pay around $7 million in fees per day, which limits adoption to the point that services that were accepting Bitcoin in the past, are now abandoning Bitcoin.

80% of the supply has already been mined. How long are we supposed to wait? More importantly, Bitcoin is an opt-in network. Why limit yourself to Bitcoin if you are so worried about fees?

Good technology takes time. That's why Lightning and Rootstock have taken so long. But now they are coming to fruition. It's better to introduce new systems with different risk/trust models that can integrate with Bitcoin than to contentiously hard fork at this point.

[Cryptotradenz]

I just dont even bother with micropayments nay more, just liqui into eth and send value that way, faster and cheap

[shield132]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Nowadays it is impossible.
Do you know how much fees today? It's very big amount.
I tried btc accelerator too, not working at these days

Btc transaction accelerators not working? Hmm, I was going to suggest it right now. No they work, tu be fair only one works and that's viabtc's free transaction accelerator which is so spammed that it makes nearly impossible to include your transaction in 100 free tx list. But op if you can to do everythinf in less than a second, just send any transaction with 0.0001 btc fee and it will get confirmations by helping of viabtc. There are no other chanses if you don't use wallets with local offchain transfers.

[cellard]

Lightening network takes care of that. This is how you will do micropayments or anything under 100$ with basically no fee.

Here is LN wallet, check it out https://htlc.me/

Yes if you buy a coffee each day from the same shop for a month and can spread the $30 cost over the month
as a type of surcharge on top of a $1.50 drink plus pay the fees of the hub/bank who you opened a
channel too.

What you are saying is not correct at all you have been mislead and micro payments are going to often be a few cents sent
to a web site needed to view VIP pages which i am sure we will start to see a lot of these soon.

From a development perspective LN is a hack job and from an economic perspective it could well
push fees even higher unless your doing 50 transactions a month and the hub you use has all the
right channels open and lets not forget that Hubs need to commit there transaction to the main
block-chain when doing inter bank settlements which is nothing new.

Please debate these guys if you feel that my description is incorrect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g   (Short version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A (long version, skip to 6:10 for the meat)

if the public block-chain was such a fantastic concept then how come they want to go off block now
and how did we ever mange to build scale-able system in the past (link web farms) without CPU wars for
mining or PoW and no we didn't needed to deal with 51% attacks because our systems were better than
that but yes DDOS can bring most systems down.

LN introduces a degree of centralization which I can live with but they are fudging the problem
which will create more trouble instead of dealing with the problem at the right level and breaking down
the block-chain to become a block matrix or do you think they like running out of space in blocks, only just
found out that this BC would not scale and are simply loving ripping us off in fees and some vain excuse
about running out of block space.

oh did i forget to mention "Lock-Managers" just in case the process was not far to
complicated as it is which might just give some of the current 20,000 full nodes needed
to preform seven transactions a second some real work to do for once.

I think all they have done is added another wheel to to the slot machine with a few more
buttons so when it costs you even more to play then it must all be the punters fault.

Yes I could go on a lot more but hopefully some of the developers here will start thinking
for themselves instead of being pushed along

I also see a problem with the opening and closing of the different channels for each shop you buy at... this would incentivize opening a channel on a big merchant and always buy there (say amazon starts accepting LN payments, then most people would go there always and not give a chance to the smaller merchants just to save the money from opening a channel on other online shops). This would make it even worse for them.

The problem tho, is when we have total morons like the BCash herd pretending that having big blocks is an actual solution and not a disaster and completely retarded approach. At least LN engineers are trying not to centralize at layer 0.

[collapse]

I don't think that's what he did. He said we could increase the block size that way. He then went on to say that Bitcoin users might become increasingly tyrannical about blockchain size.

Where the "tyrannical users" text can be found ? 

[Carlton Banks]

I also see a problem with the opening and closing of the different channels for each shop you buy at

It's much cheaper just to leave it open as long as possible (channels can be left open permanently)

this would incentivize opening a channel on a big merchant and always buy there (say amazon starts accepting LN payments, then most people would go there always and not give a chance to the smaller merchants just to save the money from opening a channel on other online shops). This would make it even worse for them.

You don't need a Lightning channel for every person or store you send to. Money can be routed across multiple channels, so as long as the overall network is well connected, there's not much advantage to who you open a channel with. It's probably better to open channels with more neutral intermediate channel operators, they'll almost certainly try to gain some advantage from opening channels directly with big businesses (that's not going to be an easy business to be in when the barrier to entry is so low)

[squatter]

I don't think that's what he did. He said we could increase the block size that way. He then went on to say that Bitcoin users might become increasingly tyrannical about blockchain size.

Where the "tyrannical users" text can be found ? 

It was one of the final posts that Satoshi ever wrote, two days before he left the forum forever. Here you go:

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately.  Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other.  BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.

The networks need to have separate fates.  BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

In any case, I don't think that we should take anything Satoshi said (including his design intentions) as gospel. What matters are Bitcoin's users, collectively. They determine the network's fate. That's partly the message I get from the above quote.

[tententen]

How to do micropayments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain but need to minimize the fees.

Some miners may prioritize coins that have many days destroyed or for very large txs.  Since you're sending tiny txs I would probably reccomend using an altcoin or a fork, such as bitcoin cash or litecoin.  Bitcoin (until LN is easy to use) isnt very conductive to micro txs.

[collapse]

"while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices."

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg28917


Sorry, but not related to fees.
It's related to tyrannical users that want to limit block size, for example to 1MB. For easy download,...

[ihsanskanzaone]

The way to be able to transact micro without the big cost is to use Criptobank application.

Cryptobank is an application that works like a Bank Account / Digital Wallet, but the special currency is Crytocurrency. To use the Customer buy first use Bitcoin or Ethereal money then in Convert to Token CRPT (CRPT is Currency Cryptobank), then CRPT can be converted back to BITCOIN and ETHEREUM to start shopping on the micro scale such as buying candy and coffee without a large transaction fee.

[onnz423]

Honestly, the best way to send microtransactions right now, is to use an exchange to convert the BTC into another crypto with a very low fee, such as ripple.

BTC > Ripple > Sent to recipient > Ripple > BTC, this way you only pay the exchange fees and the ripple transfer fee which is still likely to be massively smaller than the BTC fee would have been. This process assumes that you move all your BTC to an exchange at once, and that your clients have an exchange or will accept payment in alts.

Other than this, you can use a transaction accelerator to push the tx, but depending on how micro we're talking about, this may not be economically feasible.

[cellard]

I also see a problem with the opening and closing of the different channels for each shop you buy at

It's much cheaper just to leave it open as long as possible (channels can be left open permanently)

this would incentivize opening a channel on a big merchant and always buy there (say amazon starts accepting LN payments, then most people would go there always and not give a chance to the smaller merchants just to save the money from opening a channel on other online shops). This would make it even worse for them.

You don't need a Lightning channel for every person or store you send to. Money can be routed across multiple channels, so as long as the overall network is well connected, there's not much advantage to who you open a channel with. It's probably better to open channels with more neutral intermediate channel operators, they'll almost certainly try to gain some advantage from opening channels directly with big businesses (that's not going to be an easy business to be in when the barrier to entry is so low)

Can you describe it with a practical example?


For example, I want to buy something in Amazon using LN. Where do I connect to, to a random channel or directly to Amazon? how do I know if I connect a certain channel it will re-route to Amazon and other places?

And lets say I also want to buy in some other less known independent website that accepts LN payments... how do I get this routed around by only opening my channel once?

Also, once the funds go to 0 because I spend all them, the channel remains open and I can make another on-chain transaction and fill the channel again?

Im not sure about this... it would force me to make transactions as big as possible, even if I want to buy something worth $40, depending on how crowded the mempool is, I may consume a big chunk of these $40 in fees... and I don't feel confident having big sums of money outside of my cold storage, I would like to get out only what im going to spend but I dont see a clear solution to this, LN forces you to fill a decent amount, like $500 with current fees I guess would be a decent amount to spend on smaller purchases and would last for a while until you need to refill again.

[Carlton Banks]

Can you describe it with a practical example?


For example, I want to buy something in Amazon using LN. Where do I connect to, to a random channel or directly to Amazon? how do I know if I connect a certain channel it will re-route to Amazon and other places?

In practice, it'll be simple.

You can open a channel with yourself to start with. No need to lock yourself to anyone.

Then, the wallet software will dynamically open channels with whoever you need to transact with. The option of choosing specifically who to open channels with can be done, but it won't be as quick or efficient as using the wallet software to route the transaction for you.

Im not sure about this... it would force me to make transactions as big as possible, even if I want to buy something worth $40, depending on how crowded the mempool is, I may consume a big chunk of these $40 in fees... and I don't feel confident having big sums of money outside of my cold storage, I would like to get out only what im going to spend but I dont see a clear solution to this, LN forces you to fill a decent amount, like $500 with current fees I guess would be a decent amount to spend on smaller purchases and would last for a while until you need to refill again.

"Force" is the wrong word. You're right though, there's not much point in adding BTC to a channel just for 1 purchase, you should fill it with as much as you're happy with so you can make multiple purchases from 1 channel. That way you can take advantage of the Lightning's fees, refilling channels with on-chain transactions should be kept to a minimum if you don't want to pay too much in fees.

[Ranker]

No way to do micropayments with the current network fess.

I'm big on Bitcoin, but sadly, at the moment, PayPal is probably your best bet

[squatter]

"while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices."

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg28917

Sorry, but not related to fees.
It's related to tyrannical users that want to limit block size, for example to 1MB. For easy download,...

That's inextricably linked to fees. That's what the entire scaling debate was about: creating a fee market with limited block size. Limited block capacity means (due to bandwidth and storage savings) that "it's easy for lots of users and small devices." But limited block capacity also means that there is a market for transaction fees -- limited supply of block space vs. demand for on-chain confirmation. And miners are incentivized to confirm the transactions that pay them the most. This has made on-chain micro-payments untenable.

So, "limiting the size of the chain" has everything to do with fees. That's why I brought it up.

[cr1776]

...

Maybe that was a flaw in Bitcoin's design. On the flip side, ASICs can exploit excess capacity, which in turn secures Bitcoin's proof-of-work.

...

When ASICs are using the then-current best fab process, their useful life will be much longer than the time between early 2013 and now.  At that point it should be easier for more non-farm miners to return since you’ll have years to ROI.

[drwhobox]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Micro payments are really imposible for now in the network due to high fees. The lightning network would be the best big thing to the network I hope that this would be fixed someday. Last 2010-2014 fees are not even a thing when sending transactions it would just cost a few cents unlike now. Micro payments is not prefered.

[xiguadady]

  what I consider bitcoin will be an expensive investments ,an the function of payment would be replaced by another one

[ABISprotocol]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

This wasn't really feasible before, but once Segwit activated a ray of hope came forth.  With Segwit implemented and gradually growing, and with Lightning now being examined more thoroughly, micro transactions are more of a possibility in bitcoin.

See project in my signature for details, the first phase of the project was proof of concept in the BCN GUI. The next phase will be doing the same thing in GUI settings in a bitcoin wallet (providing the option for microdonations at certain thresholds, for example), but in that latter context, the precondition has always been (1) Segwit and (2) a working Lightning implementation.

Cheers

(Note:  The 'first implementation' on the abis.io page is a dead link due to reorg of the BCN website, please scroll down to where it has a link described as 'bytecoin (BCN) ~ discussion' for more coverage of how this was implemented there for the proof of concept; it is certainly hoped that this will not only be able to be done in BCN (where it was first implemented) and also soon in a bitcoin wallet, but later in various other crypto systems as well.)

And for some other details of a project which will enable microtransactions which was spawned by ideas which were first discussed in the ABIS repo at https://github.com/ABISprotocol/ABIS -- please see http://subsatoshi.org/ which was developed by a colleague of mine, ktorn, and some other folks.

[Carlton Banks]

No way to do micropayments with the current network fess.

I'm big on Bitcoin, but sadly, at the moment, PayPal is probably your best bet

PayPal can't do micropayments either.

Micropayments are probably best defined as payments in amounts less than the smallest unit that a given payment network can process using regular payments. Which isn't possible on PayPal.

[cellard]

Can you describe it with a practical example?


For example, I want to buy something in Amazon using LN. Where do I connect to, to a random channel or directly to Amazon? how do I know if I connect a certain channel it will re-route to Amazon and other places?

In practice, it'll be simple.

You can open a channel with yourself to start with. No need to lock yourself to anyone.

Then, the wallet software will dynamically open channels with whoever you need to transact with. The option of choosing specifically who to open channels with can be done, but it won't be as quick or efficient as using the wallet software to route the transaction for you.

Im not sure about this... it would force me to make transactions as big as possible, even if I want to buy something worth $40, depending on how crowded the mempool is, I may consume a big chunk of these $40 in fees... and I don't feel confident having big sums of money outside of my cold storage, I would like to get out only what im going to spend but I dont see a clear solution to this, LN forces you to fill a decent amount, like $500 with current fees I guess would be a decent amount to spend on smaller purchases and would last for a while until you need to refill again.

"Force" is the wrong word. You're right though, there's not much point in adding BTC to a channel just for 1 purchase, you should fill it with as much as you're happy with so you can make multiple purchases from 1 channel. That way you can take advantage of the Lightning's fees, refilling channels with on-chain transactions should be kept to a minimum if you don't want to pay too much in fees.

What will happen once all on-chain scaling methods are already on place (so let's say, segwit at 90% usage, schorr sigs, MAST...) and the fees start getting too high even after deploying all of that? How high would the fee need to go to consider a blocksize increase?

And under what scenario isn't a blocksize increase a total clusterfuck which would end up with 2 coins? Because I don't see it possible, a blocksize increase will ALWAYS end up with 2 coins... the hardcore "original bitcoiners" will stay with 1MB and then the new whatever increase of blocksize new chain... I just don't see blocksize increase possibles without massive drama and a split of 2 coins happening, and unless developers can keep coming up with strategies to reduce fees on-chain without a blocksize increase, we'll have that drama sooner or later... don't like to think about that but I think it's coming eventually.

[Carlton Banks]

What will happen once all on-chain scaling methods are already on place (so let's say, segwit at 90% usage, schorr sigs, MAST...) and the fees start getting too high even after deploying all of that? How high would the fee need to go to consider a blocksize increase?

Define "too high". Clearly, everyone has different definitions of how much is too much, people are paying historically high average fees at the moment which are clearly not too high for those people.

As for on-chain size increases, those need to be preceded by study into off-setting the additional processing burden higher blockweight limits represent. Segwit is somewhat of an example; allowing signature hashing to scale linearly mitigated (but did not offset) the increase to a 4MB block limit.

Aggregated Schnorr signatures will positively off-set the effect of larger blocks; not only will they permit more space within the present limit, but the much reduced processing required for aggregated signatures means larger block sizes should be safer (but only for block-space containing aggregated signatures, much like how >1MB of block space is only available to Segwit transactions).

And under what scenario isn't a blocksize increase a total clusterfuck which would end up with 2 coins?

Segwit. Increased block limit to 4MB. No clusterfuck (or continuation of a non-Segwit hardfork) occurred.

[Wirex]

Unfortunately with the current miners fees that bitcoin is subjected to, it is almost impossible to use BTC for microtransactions. However, With Wirex, you can transfer any amount of bitcoins to any Wirex wallet with ZERO FEES. We also give our customers segwit wallets that can reduce the transaction cost by up to 60%. For more information on what we have to offer, feel free to visit:

https://wirexapp.com/wallet/

https://wirexapp.com/bitcoin-money-transfers

https://wirexapp.com/segwit-bitcoin-wallet-update/

[squatter]

As for on-chain size increases, those need to be preceded by study into off-setting the additional processing burden higher blockweight limits represent. Segwit is somewhat of an example; allowing signature hashing to scale linearly mitigated (but did not offset) the increase to a 4MB block limit.

Have there been any noteworthy studies on the potential effects of bigger blocks since the IC3 and Bitfury studies? I suppose that data is a few years old now.

My biggest concern at this point isn't the marginal nodes and miners that couldn't keep up with the network. I'm much more concerned about the propensity for any hard fork to cause a permanent split with multiple resulting networks. Segwit was a one-shot deal; there's only so much you can do by discounting witness data. We can further optimize transaction size, but eventually, the notion of a hard fork block size increase will rear its head again.

[Carlton Banks]

As for on-chain size increases, those need to be preceded by study into off-setting the additional processing burden higher blockweight limits represent. Segwit is somewhat of an example; allowing signature hashing to scale linearly mitigated (but did not offset) the increase to a 4MB block limit.

Have there been any noteworthy studies on the potential effects of bigger blocks since the IC3 and Bitfury studies? I suppose that data is a few years old now.

Not aware of any, but I would look more to the developers implementing features like MAST or Schnorr for that type of information, the stuff that hits the press is usually self-promoting (why take it to the press otherwise). I think 1 MAST implementation exists (but is controversial), and no Schnorr implementations exist yet. Benchmarking to gauge the extent that MAST could permit larger blocks doesn't exist, AFAIK.

My biggest concern at this point isn't the marginal nodes and miners that couldn't keep up with the network. I'm much more concerned about the propensity for any hard fork to cause a permanent split with multiple resulting networks. Segwit was a one-shot deal; there's only so much you can do by discounting witness data. We can further optimize transaction size, but eventually, the notion of a hard fork block size increase will rear its head again.

I'm not sure about Segwit being a one-shot, it's possible that future soft forks could be designed to increase the max blockweight even further. I would certainly hope it can be done, as it's the least disruptive way to do so.

This doesn't have to mean hard-forked blockweight changes will be difficult, though. I think once the case for that is genuinely compelling, then it will happen. Up till now, that case has been rejected by most Bitcoiners. But people will change their minds about it as improvements to block processing are tested and proven on the live network.

[Michael CF]

It is difficult to make small payments when the value of Bitcoin has increased significantly compared to before. You can switch to other coin for a cheaper deal!

[bitcoinisbest]

It is difficult to make small payments when the value of Bitcoin has increased significantly compared to before. You can switch to other coin for a cheaper deal!

Nowdays it is impossible to send a small transaction in btc to anyone else because it might be possible that the network fees would cost you more than the actual sending. So best way only eft now is to send via altcoins which is very less expensive and way quicker than the btc.

[sjyi]

...We also have ZERO fees when transferring bitcoins from one Wirex user to another, making it possible to some degree to use bitcoins for micro-transactions .
...

Hmm, an interesting idea and implementation.

So the BTC would go from one address (A) to a Wirex address (B).  Then the transfer occur to another Wirex address (C).  This amount then can be withdrawn to a local fiat currency.

My question is how would blockchain represent this balance of BTC address A?
Maybe BTC address A and Wirex address B could be in one account, but when some bitcoin got transferred to Wirex address C in a different account, how would A be reflected in the chainblock?

[madwica]

It is difficult to make small payments when the value of Bitcoin has increased significantly compared to before. You can switch to other coin for a cheaper deal!

Nowdays it is impossible to send a small transaction in btc to anyone else because it might be possible that the network fees would cost you more than the actual sending. So best way only eft now is to send via altcoins which is very less expensive and way quicker than the btc.

Agree with you mate, almost all the exchange and wallets are now implement the minimum amount of transaction with high transaction fees, for now at the current value of bitcoin there is no users do micro transactions because we do not want to take high fees in every transaction we made.

That is why i did is if i do transaction i assure that it is a huge amount of transaction and choosing small transaction fee but i need to wait for long period of time to confirmed it in blockchain it was listed in the Que.

[piter_wip12592]

The value of BTC is very high so you want to pay small amounts, then I should switch to a smaller value as ETH will be easier to pay but lose less transaction fees. I usually do not trade small amounts of BTC because when trading small amounts that many times will cost me much transaction.

[SamsungBitcoin]

Unfortunately with the current miners fees that bitcoin is subjected to, it is almost impossible to use BTC for microtransactions. However, With Wirex, you can transfer any amount of bitcoins to any Wirex wallet with ZERO FEES. We also give our customers segwit wallets that can reduce the transaction cost by up to 60%. For more information on what we have to offer, feel free to visit:

https://wirexapp.com/wallet/

https://wirexapp.com/bitcoin-money-transfers

https://wirexapp.com/segwit-bitcoin-wallet-update/

That is normal that doing transaction with the same wallet has a ZERO transaction FEE.

Because for now if you are transferring fund to different wallet the fee was too high even you send small amount of bitcoin that is why i recommend if you want to do transaction like that much better it is have huge volume of transaction to lessen the fees imposed in your transaction.
Specially if you are using exchange site wallets.

But i heard that if you are using segwit address it will reduce the transaction fee, but i do not even try to used segwit address.

[cipher-x_09]

Based on my experienced this cannot be done right now why? Because if you pay small amount of payments for the transaction you are going to conduct needing miner's confirmation  will not be confirmed because it is basically low priority you need to pay them with a huge amount coins for them to prioritize confirming your transaction.

[market field]

For bitcoin, I should not go to retail transactions, as this would cost a lot of money. To make a small payment, I should choose ETH to choose better and more effective

[endlasuresh]

It's hard to do micro payments and it also can become mini micro payment or big payment because of fluctuation in price. I suggest you to check some other alternative coins.

[nc50lc]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

If you think of it, that was easy~ Offchain.
Use or partner with a 3rd party service (Ex. Coins) that accepts bitcoin and can send and receive bitcoins between users without a fee (or just their service fee, they didn't send the funds using the blockchain anyways).
Or establish a 3rd party wallet accounts (offchain) to be used for the site that can hold (pseudo) btc balances from users to be used for purchasing products.
With this, you can even offer refunds which is impossible using the blockchain.
The process is Centralized, but micro-payments needs centralization.
Take note of the security vulnerabilities.

The only drawback is, users have to use that particular service in order to pay for your store or establishment.
Just add a different payment option and you're good to go.

[tech72]

Wait for the lightning network. Super cheap fees, that's when Bitcoin can be used for micropayments.

[pkg_pkg]

Well at the current rate, you can't. Just hope the new forks come up with something really fast, efficient and scalable. Till then use iota.

[reliable]

Wait for the lightning network. Super cheap fees, that's when Bitcoin can be used for micropayments.

For the current transfer if you have to do in micro payment then only option left is to convert it into altcoin and transfer it . Else there is no way at present for btc to transfer as the network confirmation itself may takes days and fees will be much more expensive than your transfer itself.

[SpyX]

Yeah, that's exactly what I do actually. For micro payement, I convert my bitcoin into ETH or XRP, I think it's the best way to move between exchange for example. The only problem about micro payments, you need an other service which accepts alternative cryptocurrency.

We just need to wait a bit longer for The Lightning Network, and basically pretty damn cheap fees. I hope amazon or ebay will accept bitcoins with lightning network effects.

[fluctuations]

To pay small amounts of money from my bitcoin is not recommended, this can cost a lot. If possible you should switch to low-cost electronic currencies for payment. Also, for BTC I should not take a small payment,

[tabas]

Micro payments aren't good for transacting with bitcoin for now, yep just for now and as others are saying lightning network will solve this expensive fee that we are dealing with today. Let's just hope that everything goes accordingly and it will be implemented as soon as possible. For micro payments you can convert it to other alts for the meantime like DOGE or ETH. But if you can afford to pay the fee with bitcoin why not still continue transacting with it. That's what I do, if the fee is affordable and it is not more than the amount I send then it's fine.

[Shenzou]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Micro transactions with bitcoin are a thing in the past, paying fees higher that than the actual transaction it self is somthing that is crazy, as of right now many companies wbesties such as steam are considering removing it, because of this issue, the LN is promised to fix this issue but i don't think it is going to be anytime soon or at least not before all the investment that were made into these micro payments are cancaled, they need to make that if you are sending 30$ or less worth of bitcoin you don't pay such high fees.

[Oceat]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Micro transactions with bitcoin are a thing in the past, paying fees higher that than the actual transaction it self is somthing that is crazy, as of right now many companies wbesties such as steam are considering removing it, because of this issue, the LN is promised to fix this issue but i don't think it is going to be anytime soon or at least not before all the investment that were made into these micro payments are cancaled, they need to make that if you are sending 30$ or less worth of bitcoin you don't pay such high fees.

This is a mainstream problem now since they do raise the transaction fees so doing a micro payments would cost you a lot instead of saving a couple of bucks. Only lightning network that can solve this cases but we should wait for it until it is released because it is under in development. As for now don't just do any micro payments using Bitcoin because it will cost you a lot but rather use an alternative coin instead.

[thenachoguy]

it's almost impossible, with a fee lower than 6$ the transaction get's rejected by the network

[nc50lc]

...We also have ZERO fees when transferring bitcoins from one Wirex user to another, making it possible to some degree to use bitcoins for micro-transactions .
...

Hmm, an interesting idea and implementation.

So the BTC would go from one address (A) to a Wirex address (B).  Then the transfer occur to another Wirex address (C).  This amount then can be withdrawn to a local fiat currency.

My question is how would blockchain represent this balance of BTC address A?
Maybe BTC address A and Wirex address B could be in one account, but when some bitcoin got transferred to Wirex address C in a different account, how would A be reflected in the chainblock?

It must be the same way as Coins did, they have zero fees on trades between their users because the bitcoin addresses used by the users are not entirely owned by that user.
Their Accounts hold/send/receive the Bitcoins (displayed) but their address doesn't send or receive the btc in the blockchain.
The user doesn't have the private keys of their addresses.
Users own the account, not the addresses.
It's a clever idea on handling mainstream micro-payments.

[mpufatzis]

For the time being, you can't the fees are too high unless both addresses are segwit.

[Anti-Cen]

Then again, as LoyceV said above, Lightning Network would be the optimal solution for this problem but we just need to wait for it to go live so we can start making using of it.

Yes ye old problem-reaction-solution in nine months time, stay with us, we have a plan like Segwit again that didn't
work because you are all using it wrong.

I suspect you know by now that Lightning Network is a bankers dream and maybe your getting ready to run a
banking node to make you rich but i have looked under the table and it contains magnets so maybe this is why
you was so rude yesterday when I pointed the obvious out to you.

You know full well I am kicking up about miner rip of fees
Question
Why am I not screaming to see the Lightning Network implemented or do you think I have spotted the trap ?

[Anti-Cen]

For the time being, you can't the fees are too high unless both addresses are segwit.

I hear that all the outputs need to be Segwit so bungling up big transactions by someone
like Coinbase (spit, spit , spit) to save money is a waste of time for them so this is why they
are slow off the mark to implement Segwit

Apart from changing a "1" to a "3" in the address I have not worked out why Segwit
code brakes wallets myself or even the reason for the change to the address in the first place.

Backwards compatibility has been broken so was it done deliberately just to fill the miners pockets
because i have changed back end databases from Oracle to SQL-Server on live system and I didn't
need to tell everyone that they needed a new browser to use the web-site

Maybe someone here can explain what needed to be changed in the outbound transaction from the
wallet to the node that could not be fixed by the node please or have people stopped questioning
things these days and just do as they are told

[Anti-Cen]

If you have an unconfirmed transaction on the Bitcoin Blockchain, I will be happy to assist, just email me your transaction ID to isaacthompson997@gmail.com and I will speed up 20 requests free but on a priority basis, so please include the time frame you have been waiting. If you would like to make a donation to ensure your transaction gets sped up immediately, please send donation to wallet - 1HedbDtaacra6qDp6y5SbZ6s3fvcC8aSxD and email me the TX ID and once I have located the transaction I will speed up your requested transaction immediately. I am available all this week so just drop me an email.

Regards,
Isaac

Sounds like manual intervention is needed on the Bitcoin network and you can bribe miners to boost transactions
so I wonder what new services we will be seeing Isaac when the lightning network turns the place into a network
of banks ?

Shit it will be click this referral link and get free banking fees for a month won't it

[savushkinTA]

ightning Network would work far better in situations like this, where thousands of TX can happen very quick and almost for free.

[Anti-Cen]

Lightning Network would work far better in situations like this, where thousands of TX can happen very quick and almost for free.

You mean "almost for free" like Bitcoin use to work and now your falling for it again with LN banking hubs

I am not buying it again, sorry no way and the ones who have the know how, BTC and
hardware resources to become banking hubs are the very same people that are ripping us off today
and the development team has done naff all about it but talk and give us excuses about why
Segwit has not lived up to it name so they can forget having any of my trust

Networks come with specifications like 56k speeds and proposals contain cost annalist so where is it in the sixty
pages of the LN white-paper or does this not concern academics who's living in academia because I want to
see figures that I can take to the bank like this.

1. Up to 100 transactions per day will capped at $0.99 per day
2. No single transaction can cost more that $0.10
3. Transaction below $1 will only be charged at $0.01

[SimplyEverything]

Micro Payments with Bitcoin is not possible right now until lightning network is being implemented, Right now Transaction fees are killing people...
If Lightning network is not being implemented soon i guess Core gotta do something like upgrading the blocksize ... like BCH, if transaction fees aren't fixed i think more people would switch to LTC or BCH.

[millgates]

Wait for the lightning network. Super cheap fees, that's when Bitcoin can be used for micropayments.

What do you mean by lightning network? Is that mean internet network that faster than 4G? I heard that japan will launch 5G. But I am not sure  this has correlation with reducing bitcoin transactions fee, we actually can set the fee but if amount of fee is to small then maybe the transactions will not be confirmed.

[bosian]

Hope lightning network will be used by bitcoin soon. The current fee in way too much...

[Anti-Cen]

Hope lightning network will be used by bitcoin soon. The current fee in way too much...

I would like to agree but it's like your onion skins and the more I peel bank the more obvious it
becomes that lightning network is all about banking (Relay nodes in Tor) and the miners have
the BTC to deposit to complete the next hop plus hardware and also the skills to put themselves at an advantage
during disputes

See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2776719.msg28395400#msg28395400

Your BTC is locked in a private ledger with the bank and does not cross over in the banks to the banks outbound
ledger so effectively your borrowing your own money during transit over the network

[dietmarfritz59]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Yea micropayments are hard because you will lose so much money in fees. If this is for a business I would recommend upping your prices to cover the fees.

[abdulq]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Yea micropayments are hard because you will lose so much money in fees. If this is for a business I would recommend upping your prices to cover the fees.

yes that is correct micro payments are much expensive in btc but not in other alternative coins. You can use other alt coin that have very less fees.

[madwica]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Yea micropayments are hard because you will lose so much money in fees. If this is for a business I would recommend upping your prices to cover the fees.

yes that is correct micro payments are much expensive in btc but not in other alternative coins. You can use other alt coin that have very less fees.

Both of you are correct, that is why micro transaction is not recommended usually for transferring bitcoin wallet to an exchange because of the high transaction fees. For me every time i do transaction i include multiple wallet to lessen the transaction fees.
Or if you want small amount of fees used faucet because the calculation of their transaction fee is much lesser than usual bitcoin wallet.

[MCVXYZ]

Bitcoin is a good accumulation system,Its the most secure crypto wich we can to use but why do you need to do micro transactions with bitcoin?Do you have fear that your funds will not be sent by another cryptocurrency for exampleby Bitcoincash? Today,Bitcoin is more effective for big transactions and not for micro.The whole idea of satoshi's is that there will be no centralized administrator to control big  transactions.if you have 0.0005 satoshi you don't need bitcoin,you can use another cheaper cryptos,like as i've already mentioned bitcoincash,litecoin,etc.

[TastyChillySauce00]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Yea micropayments are hard because you will lose so much money in fees. If this is for a business I would recommend upping your prices to cover the fees.

yes that is correct micro payments are much expensive in btc but not in other alternative coins. You can use other alt coin that have very less fees.

Both of you are correct, that is why micro transaction is not recommended usually for transferring bitcoin wallet to an exchange because of the high transaction fees. For me every time i do transaction i include multiple wallet to lessen the transaction fees.
Or if you want small amount of fees used faucet because the calculation of their transaction fee is much lesser than usual bitcoin wallet.

As to my experience, faucets or any kind, just making your input address in every of your transaction from an address that you're used to claim those faucets from ridiculously increasing thus, increasing the transaction size. Speaking about the fee calculation, whether from faucet or ordinary wallet there's no actual difference, they use the same blockchain, there's no way that the other one could have smaller fees while having the same transaction size and will get the same speed. At the current time, yes, micropayments is not as effective as it is back then. There's no other way instead of waiting for the further advancement of blockchain's technology to resolve scalability issues. However, the transaction fee has now seem to be gradually decreased mainly caused by the profitability ratio between BTC and BCC close to 1:1 while the difference between price is pretty high. Therefore, miner coming back to bitcoin and increasing the hash power.

[Anhmai]

I think that when dealing small you should use the Altcoin. Because the processing speed and price of each transaction is quite small. With Bitcoin, the issue of price per transaction is really too large, so it is only suitable for large volume transactions. You trade $ 1000 and you have to spend $ 30 in fees. It is a huge deduction. That is the reason that ETH and CMT was born. Furthermore Bitcoin's transaction speed is rather slow due to its Blockchain platform problem. I am still waiting for a day Bitcoin will reduce this transaction fee down

[shinjunobi09]

Usually if the transaction fee is low the time for the confirmation usually consumes a week or days for it to be confirmed, sometimes the transaction usually cannot happen, which is why we cannot avoid using the high amount of transaction fee in order for the transaction to come to fruition, we just have to wait for the lightning network to happen successfully.

[ninche]

you can not send small amount of btc currently without paying high fees
i had to pay 11$ fees to send 10$ only

[Sammylezzy]

I couldn't  send small amount of btc when I wanted to make the transaction  without paying high fees
i had to pay 11$0 fees to send 10$ only

[pebwindkraft]

I couldn't  send small amount of btc when I wanted to make the transaction  without paying high fees
i had to pay 11$0 fees to send 10$ only

you can not send small amount of btc currently without paying high fees
i had to pay 11$ fees to send 10$ only

YES YOU CAN!

See, your statements are a bit misleading, at last. Looking at the current tx fees, we are near all-time-lows: https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h

You must check the service, your wallet, the provider - whatever you use. Don't generalize your problem over Bitcoin.
When you create the tx yourself, you can go with 5 Satoshi per Byte (or even lower). A std tx is roughly 227 bytes, even if it is a more complex one say 500 bytes. Then you pay ~2500 Satoshis as fees. This is 0.000025 Bitcoin, at 10'000 US$ it is 0.25 US$. I last had a tx going through with this amount. So you are only making your service provider rich...

So really, check with your service provider! 

Those who stay uninformed, pay the price for not willing to learn...

[cryptorampage]

You can send multiple from one single wallet. Bitcoin transaction takes place as  sat/b. Multiple sending address dramatically decrease the fee. And now the fee is low and affordable.

[darkangel]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

It is so long that bitcoin becomes a widely used currency. There are many people who do not know bitcoin. they still pay in cash. The value of bitcoin is quite large, it is not suitable for small payments

[rext]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

The price of bitcoin is very high. It is difficult to use it to pay small amounts. Bitcoin transaction fees are quite high. With small payments you should pay by cash, it will be easier

[drmarcobelli]

No chance for micro payments.
Go use Ethereum. I just did a $1.5 transaction with $0.02 fee. It got confirmed within 10mins.
Amazing.

[atomicgroup]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Lightening network takes care of that. This is how you will do micropayments or anything under 100$ with basically no fee.

Here is LN wallet, check it out https://htlc.me/

I somehow buy this idea of Lightening network, though I am not all that comfortable still. I will rather hold my micro bitcoin payments since the present upsurge charges of exchange due the available exigencies could be frightful, carry out micro transaction payment off line till the situation improves or changes.

[BTCerm]

Micropayments also have the capacity to put an end to many of the problems the internet currently faces, like spamming. In the future, some of the services that are free – and constantly attacked by spam, like emails – could be replaced by making use of micropayments.
 Paying a fraction of a cent for an email wouldn’t bother most people, but for the spammers it would totally be a deal breaker.  Micropayments definitely have a huge role to play in the future, but how things will change because of this transition is not clear. In any case, in order for micropayments to prevail, adoption of cryptocurrencies needs to increase and that is only going to happen when people understand the possible applications and prospect that this technology offers.

[lionelho]

Forget about micro payment for now using bitcoin. Try IOTA for micro payments . Lightening Network probably is a solution for bitcoin micro payment, but it still needs proved.

[squatter]

Forget about micro payment for now using bitcoin. Try IOTA for micro payments .

No.

Lightening Network probably is a solution for bitcoin micro payment, but it still needs proved.

True, but given the developer excitement around LN and node adoption, I'm confident that a lot of Bitcoin network traffic will migrate there. It might take a while, but the incentives to adopt LN -- cheaper and more private transactions -- are huge.

In the meantime, I've been paying < 2 sat/byte, so micropayments work fine.

[jrian]

Nowadays it is impossible.
Do you know how much fees today? It's very big amount.

Yes, we know about 10 cents. Too big, yeah?

ps. just sent bitcoin payment. paid 3 cents for commission.

[SerHodlot]

blockstream has also recently release a micro payment processing system... incoropration of lightning networks claim to potentially solve this issue
- otherwise better of using other coins like viacoin, etc. for micropayments.. fast reliable and dirt cheap transaction fees.

[jona]

The transactions charges is becoming too heavy that i think it is violating the concept of bitcoin,cause i could remember back than transactions were micro payment but this year is like hell,i don,t think micro payment do exist any longer.Because i have done any micro transaction this year.

[Betwrong]

Right now you can pay as low as 3 sats per byte, which corresponds to around $0.07 for transaction of the median size, and your transaction will be confirmed within an hour. So it's possible to do micro payments with Bitcoin these days. I suggest you to always check this site https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ before making any transaction and set your fees accordingly.

Btw many regular people who were following the news about Bitcoin some time ago still think that tx fees are around $20 or higher. I think we should spread the good news. )

[binting]

How to do micro payments with bitcoin? The transactions need to be verified on the blockchain, but need to minimize the fees.

Well micropayments still there because they continued used technology like gadgets so that its currentlyfaces like spamming.some of service is free constantly attacked spam, wpwe could use of micropayments

[Oregano012]

if you got LTC or an ETH payment option go for it , BTC transaction from exchange cost 6$ each ATM and take about 20minutes to couple hour

[xraisers]

BTC value is very high so you want to pay small amounts, then I should switch to a smaller value as ETH will be easier to pay but lose less transaction fees. I usually do not trade small amounts of BTC because when trading small amounts that many times will cost me much transaction.

[RGBKey]

I've been playing around with the mainnet lightning network a lot recently. I've been paying 1 satoshi in fees for almost every transaction. Note: That's not 1 satoshi per byte, that's 1 satoshi full stop..

The lightning network is specifically geared towards micropayments, with the ability to add another 4 decimal places to Bitcoin. Try downloading the Eclair mobile wallet and go make some payments at https://mainnet.yalls.org

[chibimanau]

Currently high fees, and long transaction is still a major barrier to Bitcoin development. I think lowering the payment costs, will promote Bitcoin in the future. With a small payment, choose another coin to pay if possible.

[Thanasis]

Currently high fees, and long transaction is still a major barrier to Bitcoin development. I think lowering the payment costs, will promote Bitcoin in the future. With a small payment, choose another coin to pay if possible.

I don't think the transaction fee is high now,because even I made a transaction of 0.1BTC but the fee is about 0.00001BTC which is very very low for that amount of bitcoin so the micro payments are possible now and the transaction time also wuite faster it will take only about 15Mins for three confirmation transactions.So here we go we can use bitcoin even for tiny transactions too.

[CryptoCoin8487]

I think micro payments almost imposible to do in bitcoin now that the fee is too expensive if you send a micro payments or a small amount of bitcoin you have to pay the fee is more higher than the fund that you are sending to your friends your just only lossing your money.

[renbucs]

In the mean time micro payments are impossible due to high transaction fee situation caused due to network congestion. However, Lightning Network would be the solution, we just need to wait when it happened.

[RGBKey]

In the mean time micro payments are impossible due to high transaction fee situation caused due to network congestion. However, Lightning Network would be the solution, we just need to wait when it happened.

Plenty of people are using the lightning network on the mainnet right now. Nothing is stopping you from joining them.