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Given that BTC transactions take time (and high fee), how does it work for cafes or any micro transactions of this kind?

tom_mellior 9y ago
It's been a while since I last used it in a physical place, but basically the store's or restaurant's payment system accepted the payment as soon as the transaction was broadcast over the network. In other words, payment was instantaneous. The system did not wait for a confirmation block. That's not unreasonable, since every transaction with nonzero fees was eventually confirmed, in those early days before the network got clogged up. Not sure how it would work now, but I think even now chances are that the transaction would eventually be confirmed, so the POS system could gamble on that and "accept" it if it includes some minimal fee.
callahad 9y ago
I don't have any BTC on hand, so I genuinely don't know. The barista I spoke with mentioned that they get four or five transactions per week, and they had a physical POS terminal for Bitcoin transactions, similar to the one CoinKite was producing a few years ago: http://blog.coinkite.com/post/76526284739/did-you-know-that-with-the-coinkite-terminal-you http://blog.coinkite.com/post/76526284739/did-you-know-that-...
timfrietas 9y ago
How it (generally) works now: intermediaries pay the restaurant in fiat the equivalent price in BTC on the time/day of the transaction. They facilitate the trade without the restaurant needing to worry about price fluctuations or digital currency exchanges. How it may work in the future: Off-blockchain processing solutions like the Lightning network (1) have been proposed to decentralize some degree of transactions. However, this inevitably takes some of the power away from the miners/those who make money off every transaction fee. This has in essence been the struggle/division behind many of the most recent forks or proposed forks; a tradeoff between scale and economics for those that are generating coins or facilitating transactions. The Bitcoin drama is far from over, and for it to be anything other than (primarily) a store of value in the longer term will require significant technical changes. In fact, at this point, no existing cryptocurrency can support the scale of, say, VISA. It's early days and the race to solve this problem (or fail) is a fascinating drama to watch. 1. https://cointelegraph.com/explained/lightning-network-explained https://cointelegraph.com/explained/lightning-network-explai...

tom_mellior 9y ago

It's been a while since I last used it in a physical place, but basically the store's or restaurant's payment system accepted the payment as soon as the transaction was broadcast over the network. In other words, payment was instantaneous. The system did not wait for a confirmation block. That's not unreasonable, since every transaction with nonzero fees was eventually confirmed, in those early days before the network got clogged up. Not sure how it would work now, but I think even now chances are that the transaction would eventually be confirmed, so the POS system could gamble on that and "accept" it if it includes some minimal fee.

callahad 9y ago

I don't have any BTC on hand, so I genuinely don't know. The barista I spoke with mentioned that they get four or five transactions per week, and they had a physical POS terminal for Bitcoin transactions, similar to the one CoinKite was producing a few years ago: http://blog.coinkite.com/post/76526284739/did-you-know-that-with-the-coinkite-terminal-you http://blog.coinkite.com/post/76526284739/did-you-know-that-...

timfrietas 9y ago

How it (generally) works now: intermediaries pay the restaurant in fiat the equivalent price in BTC on the time/day of the transaction. They facilitate the trade without the restaurant needing to worry about price fluctuations or digital currency exchanges. How it may work in the future: Off-blockchain processing solutions like the Lightning network (1) have been proposed to decentralize some degree of transactions. However, this inevitably takes some of the power away from the miners/those who make money off every transaction fee. This has in essence been the struggle/division behind many of the most recent forks or proposed forks; a tradeoff between scale and economics for those that are generating coins or facilitating transactions. The Bitcoin drama is far from over, and for it to be anything other than (primarily) a store of value in the longer term will require significant technical changes. In fact, at this point, no existing cryptocurrency can support the scale of, say, VISA. It's early days and the race to solve this problem (or fail) is a fascinating drama to watch. 1. https://cointelegraph.com/explained/lightning-network-explained https://cointelegraph.com/explained/lightning-network-explai...