[Cryptography] True Micropayments with Bitcoin — Medium

[Kevin W. Wall]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 12:36 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:
> It is my opinion that micropayment schemes will probably
> continue to fail because consumers will probably continue
> to loathe them.
>
> Nobody wants the stress of making a money decision, when
> only a half-cent is at stake.  Money decisions are still
> stress, and bothering someone about piffling small change
> is merely rude.
>
> It is only when micropayments are redefined as, say, at
> least half a US dollar, that the idea becomes psychologically
> viable, regardless of the technical feasibility.

I see your logic, but I'm not sure I agree. If this were pushed
out either for some new service / killer app that people thought
they could not live without, pushed into some hidden legislature
by some cabal, or even done via collusion for some industry
that together comprises a monopolistic hold on the market
I could see it getting past the mostly apathetic public. As
long as they could be assured the spending would be capped
somehow.

Scenarios I'm thinking off... micropayments to speed up your
Netflix or other streaming movie downloads. (E.g., paying to
boost your QoS.) Or pay some small amount (a tenth of a
cent? A hundredth?) for a Google search...especially if it
resulted in an ad-free experience. And if Google, Bing, Yahoo,
and a few others decided to collude, would the public really
push back that much for such small amounts, especially if
it provided ad-free search results?

I'm sure there are other opportunities, but I don't think it
has to reach $.50 before it is acceptable to the public. If
the public perceives a value and they are worried about
someone stealing their account and running up their bill,
I think they will accept it as long as it doesn't become a
PITA for them.

-kevin
-- 
Blog: http://off-the-wall-security.blogspot.com/    | Twitter: @KevinWWall
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