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.

[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?