Micropayment only client

[cbeast]

I wonder if mass adoption could be sparked with a browser-friendly client that only allows a 1 BTC (or some arbitrary amount) wallet. It would only be used for micropayments. Advertising and websites could allow people to earn small amounts instead of mining. This might be something great for young people to purchase content rather than piracy. It could be upgradable to a full client for anyone over legal age.

[PrintCoins]

I wonder if mass adoption could be sparked with a browser-friendly client that only allows a 1 BTC (or some arbitrary amount) wallet. It would only be used for micropayments. Advertising and websites could allow people to earn small amounts instead of mining. This might be something great for young people to purchase content rather than piracy. It could be upgradable to a full client for anyone over legal age.

I think instawallet fills in this nitch. I wouldn't trust them with any more than that (not judging them, but just the method of stroring private keys). I think they do a great job of living up to their name. The no-login url based system should be use my more services (I might do smackcoins.com's user management system like this).

[deepceleron]

I wonder if mass adoption could be sparked with a browser-friendly client that only allows a 1 BTC (or some arbitrary amount) wallet. It would only be used for micropayments. Advertising and websites could allow people to earn small amounts instead of mining. This might be something great for young people to purchase content rather than piracy. It could be upgradable to a full client for anyone over legal age.

Don't think so...a clever 10 year old will just install whatever client they want. Bitcoin doesn't care if you are of a legal age, and works excellently even when others don't want you to be able to send money.

So I send the address 2BTC, and it explodes?

[westkybitcoins]

I wonder if mass adoption could be sparked with a browser-friendly client that only allows a 1 BTC (or some arbitrary amount) wallet. It would only be used for micropayments. Advertising and websites could allow people to earn small amounts instead of mining. This might be something great for young people to purchase content rather than piracy. It could be upgradable to a full client for anyone over legal age.

Don't think so...a clever 10 year old will just install whatever client they want. Bitcoin doesn't care if you are of a legal age, and works excellently even when others don't want you to be able to send money.

So I send the address 2BTC, and it explodes?

That was my concern. How do you prevent someone from sending too much to the wallet address?

Sure, the system could try to return any excess to the sending address(es), and hope they wont need to pay a transaction fee. That might work... until someone sends the 50-coin reward for a block to the address, leaving no address to send back to.

[Costia]

I wonder if mass adoption could be sparked with a browser-friendly client that only allows a 1 BTC (or some arbitrary amount) wallet. It would only be used for micropayments. Advertising and websites could allow people to earn small amounts instead of mining. This might be something great for young people to purchase content rather than piracy. It could be upgradable to a full client for anyone over legal age.

Don't think so...a clever 10 year old will just install whatever client they want. Bitcoin doesn't care if you are of a legal age, and works excellently even when others don't want you to be able to send money.

So I send the address 2BTC, and it explodes?

no. it "donates" the extra BTC to the developers

a zero trust web interface to bitcoin could be an interesting idea - you can perform any transaction on the website , but all the keys and signing is done locally via script+HTML5. but then backups and lost wallets will be a pain in the ass

edit: can you set up a script that will require the site's key to use the BTC? so he will have 50 BTC in the account but can use only one per month or something

[Phinnaeus Gage]

SOLVED!?

Simply call it a microprocessor stipulating that it's only for 1 BTC or less, but in reality it'll work for any amount, hence not breaking it. A new user would simply think they found a way to get around the restrictions. Think game code hacks. They're built it, but the user thinks he's getting something free.

[cbeast]

Maybe the sweepprivkey RPC command could be implemented to limit amounts so the client stays under the arbitrary balance. My point is that a micropayment-only browser plugin client is less threatening to people and may seed new entertainment business models. Hardcore gamers and such could adopt a larger limit, but they risk losing more from internet thieves.

[SgtSpike]

Seems utterly pointless to me...

[Costia]

could be used as a "parental control" for gamer's parents

[cbeast]

Seems utterly pointless to me...

So far bitcoin clients have been fairly secure because mostly internet savvy folks are using it. When it opens up to other users, if the clients are not absolutely 100% fool-proof, there will be key loggers, trojans, and viruses stealing wallets. It will scare folks off and henceforth require online bank type security to use through a centralized server. Limiting the size of the wallet for entertainment purposes limits the risk and lessens the fuel for news headline panics.

[istar]

You can limit the amount sent from the wallet not to it.
For example, limit it to send no more than 1 bitcoin per day/week.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

You can limit the amount sent from the wallet not to it.
For example, limit it to send no more than 1 bitcoin per day/week.

Fine! With a backdoor hack to increase that amount.

[Costia]

no, you will have to pay them to increase the amount - it a new and exciting feature

[MysteryMiner]

The idea of such client is pointless as hell.

You can send small amounts of coins with official client.

You can limit the amount you can send to 1BTC by having only 1BTC in your account.

Computer can be protected from malware by not running malware on the computer.

[SgtSpike]

Seems utterly pointless to me...

So far bitcoin clients have been fairly secure because mostly internet savvy folks are using it. When it opens up to other users, if the clients are not absolutely 100% fool-proof, there will be key loggers, trojans, and viruses stealing wallets. It will scare folks off and henceforth require online bank type security to use through a centralized server. Limiting the size of the wallet for entertainment purposes limits the risk and lessens the fuel for news headline panics.

On the same token, however, a limited wallet is a limited wallet.  How many people are going to say, "Hey, this Bitcoin thing is stupid - I can only have one of them at a time"?

Yes, it would limit risk, but it would also limit purchasing power, usability, and usefulness of the wallet.  Since the first impression is generally the most important one, in the user's mind, those things would be a limitation of Bitcoin as a whole, pushing them away from it.

Go ahead and make such a client (or have someone make it) if you really believe in it, but I think it's a bad idea.

[phelix]

imho URI support is much more important to make micropayments (and paying in general) less of a copy paste hassle.

[MysteryMiner]

imho URI support is much more important to make micropayments (and paying in general) less of a copy paste hassle.

Yes, the Copy-Paste takes me whole 0.8 seconds, better bloat the official client. And from another side URI support is so easy, just bitcoin://bitcoinadress/amount/ or similar.

[jim618]

@phelix - there is already protocol handler support for bitcoin URIs in MultiBit and Electrum.   IIRC there is a Satoshi client branch with it working too that the devs are testing and (presumably if they are happy with it) it is targeted for v0.6.

[phelix]

@phelix - there is already protocol handler support for bitcoin URIs in MultiBit and Electrum.   IIRC there is a Satoshi client branch with it working too that the devs are testing and (presumably if they are happy with it) it is targeted for v0.6.

ahh, nice.

[ThomasV]

@phelix - there is already protocol handler support for bitcoin URIs in MultiBit and Electrum.   IIRC there is a Satoshi client branch with it working too that the devs are testing and (presumably if they are happy with it) it is targeted for v0.6.

I think we should try to have bitcoin URIs supported on the forum; it is the best way to spread their usage.
http://ecdsa.org/bitcoin_URIs.html