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That happens today: when I pump gas into my car, the price on the display goes up. When it hits the limit, the gas flow stops. No blockchain is required.
by joosters 9y ago
That happens today: when I pump gas into my car, the price on the display goes up. When it hits the limit, the gas flow stops. No blockchain is required.
- tlrobinson 9y agoThe difference is there is no counterparty risk. Not with the gas station, not with Visa. Admittedly that’s not a big problem with gas pumps (at least where I live, though card skimming is definitely a thing) but you can easily imagine other use-cases. For example your computer could automatically pay an untrusted WiFi hotspot per MB (and automatically pay the VPN you use to secure said untrusted WiFi hotspot) Zero counterparty risk digital microtransactions have never been possible until now. I’m pretty sure it will eventually be cryptocurrency’s killer application.
- joosters 9y agoThere's still counterparty risk: I could start paying the wifi hotspot but there is no guarantee that it will let me use what I've paid for. At any point, the next microtransaction could fail because the counterparty decides to steal my cash.
- tlrobinson 9y agoMy point is if you can make the microtransactions arbitrarily small you can make the counterparty risk negligible. If I’m sending 1 cent micropayments continuously as long as the services are being delivered (e.x. 1 cent per 1 MB WiFi, 0.1 kWh electricity, or 0.5 oz gasoline, etc) then the most that can be stolen is 1 cent, so why would they bother?