Micropayments | Bitcointalksearch.org

rahl

full member

Activity: 140

Merit: 100

Quote from: despens on June 07, 2011, 02:13:21 PM

I got 0.02 BTC from the faucet and cannot transfer them even for testing purposes to another user, because the "transaction fee" -- which is, according to the documentation I know technically not required -- is more than I have.

Just get an earlier version of the client. It should be free in 0.3.20.2

Quote

At the current rate, which is almost 10 USD per coin, how should users do micropayments on websites, for example for a song, if they have to spend double the amount on transaction fees?

On iTunes, a song costs 99 cents. That is 0.01 BTC right now. If I pay via BTC, the song will actually cost me almost 2 USD. That is not cool and has a very PayPal-feeling to it

As some people have already said micropayments can be managed in bitcoin backed centralized payment system. It is not much risk that it is centralized if you only use the account for micropayments and withdraw frequently at the minimum amount that is cost effective to send with bitcoin itself.

I am not sure how the processing power needs will grow. But I would be perfectly happy to put my old machine in the server room here and let it calculate BitCoin transactions for free 24/7 once it is time to get a new motherboard. Everyone does not have included electricity and server rooms in there rent but well I still think there are many with more then monetary incentives to maintain help maintain the network. Then it is just a matter of hardware development speed vs bitcoin processing requirements growth. Anyway as long as boot miners and spenders can decide the fee they want to process at or pay themselves it will end up at the ideal level.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Quote from: damiend on June 07, 2011, 02:35:20 PM

I was under the impression that transactions are free. I know you can nominate a transaction fee but if I wanted to say, transfer some mined coins from one computer to my main wallet, I would have to pay a fee? And to whom? The system?

Transaction fees are usually voluntary, but there are some fees required for certain types of transactions. For example, there is a small fee for sending very small amounts that is intended to limit 'transaction spamming' of people sending vast numbers of small amounts to themselves repeatedly. This lower limit is currently in the process of being lowered from .01 bitcoins, as when this was instituted it was a very small fraction of a cent. Another required fee exists for unusually large transactions, such as you might get if you had 1000 input transactions of .02 bitcoin each trying to total up to pay a bill of 19.99 bitcoin. Yet another required fee is for the -sendtomany option employed by the mining pools to distribute earnings to all the pool members in a single transaction. Still another is required if you were to create an unusual transaction via the internal transaction scripting language, which is not really functional just yet anyway, but will allow the sender to do some nifty things; such as create conditional transactions, claimable transactions, and time-locked/delayed transactions.

MoonShadow

legendary

Activity: 1708

Merit: 1010

Micropayments are likely to be handled by online wallet sites, like Mybitcoin.com works now. For example, when a Mybitcoin.com user sends funds to another user, the transaction is entirely internal, occurs instantly, and can be of an infinately small amount. Bitcoin is more likely to function as a kind of monetary backbone between users and these varied wallet services. Many popular online games are going to probably run their own wallet services, wherein you can deposit a lump sum to be spent over a period of time, and then withdraw the balance if you so desire. The important part is that they all use Bitcoin as their underlying currency, and don't all try to invent a digital currency of their own.

damiend

newbie

Activity: 2

Merit: 0

I was under the impression that transactions are free. I know you can nominate a transaction fee but if I wanted to say, transfer some mined coins from one computer to my main wallet, I would have to pay a fee? And to whom? The system?

Steve

hero member

Activity: 868

Merit: 1008

Quote from: despens on June 07, 2011, 02:13:21 PM

At the current rate, which is almost 10 USD per coin

Well, first things first, could you please PM me your source for $10 bitoins? Wink

Regarding micro-payments, in the long run, I don't thing bitcoin will be well suited for use directly in micropayments...some bitcoin backed account service will likely be needed for that eventually. There are scaling limits that will eventually make the cost of transactions on the block chain too expensive for micro-payments. I think in the long term, bitcoin block chain transactions may be used more for peoples' long term savings or large purchases as well as inter-institution settlement transactions than it will be used for your everyday purchases (but that's probably years off, and in the meantime, transactions on the block chain will be quite useful for merchants).

thundertoe

legendary

Activity: 938

Merit: 1000

lol check your BTC prices 1BTC= 19.24$ atm

Dobrodav

sr. member

Activity: 350

Merit: 250

Yes, devs fighting with that problem now.

despens

newbie

Activity: 3

Merit: 0

I got 0.02 BTC from the faucet and cannot transfer them even for testing purposes to another user, because the "transaction fee" -- which is, according to the documentation I know technically not required -- is more than I have.

At the current rate, which is almost 10 USD per coin, how should users do micropayments on websites, for example for a song, if they have to spend double the amount on transaction fees?

On iTunes, a song costs 99 cents. That is 0.01 BTC right now. If I pay via BTC, the song will actually cost me almost 2 USD. That is not cool and has a very PayPal-feeling to it

Topic: Micropayments (Read 1506 times)