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It's a great use-case for Cryptocurrencies: low transaction fees to send micro-amounts of goods across the network. That seems like part of what Brave is tryin

It's a great use-case for Cryptocurrencies: low transaction fees to send micro-amounts of goods across the network. That seems like part of what Brave is trying to do with the BAT: Use BAT split among websites based on the amount of time you spend on each site. I'd rather see a self contained library that allows websites to easily insert a button which lets you tip 0.02c or whatever to them with a single click. No idea what you'd need to do to create something like that, but it seems like a really compelling way to get people to spend on sites they like. A tiny amount of pennies sent via crypto with the press of a single button could be a sizable stream when you've got scale to it.

noxToken 8y ago
Wouldn't the volatility of cryptocurrency be a reason that companies wouldn't want this as a primary method? Don't get me wrong, the value of USD, GBP, or YEN can rise and fall relatively quickly. The conversion rate of GBP to USD dropped from about 1.40 GBP/USD to 1.20 GBP/USD in the span of a year. But cryptocurrencies can cause devastating losses. BTC dropped nearly 30% from Dec 2017 to late Jan 2018, and it has been on the decline ever since. It seems that the only way for a business to confidently convert BTC into the 0.25 USD would be to do nightly-ish transactions. I'm familiar but not well versed in BTC operations. I don't know how much overhead (fees) would go into nightly transactions, and how much the fees would rise with the volume of each transaction.
- thisisweirdok 8y ago
  >Wouldn't the volatility of cryptocurrency be a reason that companies wouldn't want this as a primary method? Correct. There are so many cryptocurrencies out there, and scams are so widely perpetrated that it's absolutely insane to keep any significant amount of money in it. In the case of MTGOX it's like the world's largest bank just blinked out of existence. A company could be insolvent overnight. At least most major governments have incentive to keep their shit together for fear of a societal collapse.
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    Mt. Gox was a Magic: The Gathering trading platform that accidentally ended up being "the largest bank in crypto". So Mt. Gox shares more in common with early, early banks, of which many did fail. At any rate, the current dominant examples like Coinbase do not seem to share the same problems as Mt. Gox and having watched a security presentation by one of their executives, I believe they have great practices to prevent hacks.
    - thisisweirdok 8y ago
      Sure, but are they backed by the FDIC or anything equivalent? (no) What happens if they are compromised? (your money is gone forever).
      - chrisco255 8y ago
        Actually yeah Coinbase is an FDIC insured bank. Any USD you have on there is insured.
- crowbahr 8y ago
  Part of why the overhead doesn't matter here is because bitcoin wouldn't be used: It'd be some other crypto, like BAT (which is what Brave uses). The goal would be to make this a ubiquitous system (which is what Brave is trying) where users would have a wallet of BAT where each "coin" represents a small easy to exchange tip. Users can buy BAT wherever, recharge their wallet and tip micro amounts to websites. Brave currently just has a BAT wallet with recharging that doles out a percentage of each token to whatever websites you visited based on amount of time spent there. If the system is ubiquitous enough, the volatility will go down as more people are seeking to purchase the coins. The coins will have a limited supply which is subject to a minimal amount of inflation as defined by the group which works on it.
  - noxToken 8y ago
    In this case, would the only use of BAT (or something similar) be avoiding transaction fees as a high percentage of small transctions? For example, Visa charges 1.5% of the transaction + $0.10. The transaction fee on a $0.25 micropayment would be $0.10375 - a hair above 40% of the transaction. Otherwise, what is the value add of BAT compared to storing payment information with a vendor or someone like Stripe?
- chrisco255 8y ago
  Somehow Overstock.com has been accepting BTC as payment for several years and they've been more than enthusiastic about it. https://help.overstock.com/help/s/article/Bitcoin https://help.overstock.com/help/s/article/Bitcoin https://www.overstock.com/blockchain https://www.overstock.com/blockchain Not sure whether they are instantly selling the coin or keeping part of it or what. I suppose it would depend on a company's risk tolerance. In the case of digital content, I might be willing to accept the volatility risk in exchange for access to a relatively untapped market and supporting a censorship-resistant monetization platform. Stable coins, like DAI and USDC also offer many of the benefits of crypto ecosystem with nearly zero volatility relative to the dollar.
  - noxToken 8y ago
    I read it as news sites using cryptocurrency as a primary method to avoid high transaction fees. When it's a secondary method, it can be used as a way to invest in a growing market. You can potentially react to volatile changes in a currency if it's part of an investing strategy without worrying if your company will fold overnight. If it's your primary means of accepting payment, then your income is essentially tied to the volatility unless you cash out immediately. Stable coins would be the obvious solution, but then I wonder what's the drop rate of someone who is only familiar with BTC and not other coins?
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
In fact it's not a good use-case for Cryptocurrencies because as it stands today, it takes approximately 10 minutes to resolve a transaction in Bitcoin. You can explain this problem away with appeals to floating networks that ride on top of bitcoin, eth, like lightning etc...however it's unclear why those would be any better than a lower cost ACH or other debit processing system.
- humbledrone 8y ago
  Check out IOTA. In theory (and so far in practice) it solves the problems you describe. It does not yet have as solid a theoretical foundation as blockchain currencies, though, so there's higher risk that it turns out to have some flaw that nobody's seen yet.
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    Or just work out some hack around the existing transaction fee systems.
- crowbahr 8y ago
  It's not a transaction though, it's a donation. Time to resolve is nothing here, it's fire and forget. On top of that ACH or other systems require you to put in real banking information rather than having it be a separate wallet you use to pay. It allows a more complete separation from payment processors.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  I tire of saying this in response to people who believe that credit and debit cards are "instant" but they're not. They take up to a day or two to process and clear and for money to actually change hands. The only thing that's instant is the check to see if you have the funds to cover the transaction. In this case even BTC's on-chain processing of 10 minutes is pretty darn fast. As you said, other crypto solutions including Lightning Network, ETH, etc are faster and will be able to scale to orders of magnitude more transactions in the near future.
- lavezzi 8y ago

noxToken 8y ago

Wouldn't the volatility of cryptocurrency be a reason that companies wouldn't want this as a primary method? Don't get me wrong, the value of USD, GBP, or YEN can rise and fall relatively quickly. The conversion rate of GBP to USD dropped from about 1.40 GBP/USD to 1.20 GBP/USD in the span of a year. But cryptocurrencies can cause devastating losses. BTC dropped nearly 30% from Dec 2017 to late Jan 2018, and it has been on the decline ever since. It seems that the only way for a business to confidently convert BTC into the 0.25 USD would be to do nightly-ish transactions. I'm familiar but not well versed in BTC operations. I don't know how much overhead (fees) would go into nightly transactions, and how much the fees would rise with the volume of each transaction.

thisisweirdok 8y ago
>Wouldn't the volatility of cryptocurrency be a reason that companies wouldn't want this as a primary method? Correct. There are so many cryptocurrencies out there, and scams are so widely perpetrated that it's absolutely insane to keep any significant amount of money in it. In the case of MTGOX it's like the world's largest bank just blinked out of existence. A company could be insolvent overnight. At least most major governments have incentive to keep their shit together for fear of a societal collapse.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  Mt. Gox was a Magic: The Gathering trading platform that accidentally ended up being "the largest bank in crypto". So Mt. Gox shares more in common with early, early banks, of which many did fail. At any rate, the current dominant examples like Coinbase do not seem to share the same problems as Mt. Gox and having watched a security presentation by one of their executives, I believe they have great practices to prevent hacks.
  - thisisweirdok 8y ago
    Sure, but are they backed by the FDIC or anything equivalent? (no) What happens if they are compromised? (your money is gone forever).
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      Actually yeah Coinbase is an FDIC insured bank. Any USD you have on there is insured.
crowbahr 8y ago
Part of why the overhead doesn't matter here is because bitcoin wouldn't be used: It'd be some other crypto, like BAT (which is what Brave uses). The goal would be to make this a ubiquitous system (which is what Brave is trying) where users would have a wallet of BAT where each "coin" represents a small easy to exchange tip. Users can buy BAT wherever, recharge their wallet and tip micro amounts to websites. Brave currently just has a BAT wallet with recharging that doles out a percentage of each token to whatever websites you visited based on amount of time spent there. If the system is ubiquitous enough, the volatility will go down as more people are seeking to purchase the coins. The coins will have a limited supply which is subject to a minimal amount of inflation as defined by the group which works on it.
- noxToken 8y ago
  In this case, would the only use of BAT (or something similar) be avoiding transaction fees as a high percentage of small transctions? For example, Visa charges 1.5% of the transaction + $0.10. The transaction fee on a $0.25 micropayment would be $0.10375 - a hair above 40% of the transaction. Otherwise, what is the value add of BAT compared to storing payment information with a vendor or someone like Stripe?
chrisco255 8y ago
Somehow Overstock.com has been accepting BTC as payment for several years and they've been more than enthusiastic about it. https://help.overstock.com/help/s/article/Bitcoin https://help.overstock.com/help/s/article/Bitcoin https://www.overstock.com/blockchain https://www.overstock.com/blockchain Not sure whether they are instantly selling the coin or keeping part of it or what. I suppose it would depend on a company's risk tolerance. In the case of digital content, I might be willing to accept the volatility risk in exchange for access to a relatively untapped market and supporting a censorship-resistant monetization platform. Stable coins, like DAI and USDC also offer many of the benefits of crypto ecosystem with nearly zero volatility relative to the dollar.
- noxToken 8y ago
  I read it as news sites using cryptocurrency as a primary method to avoid high transaction fees. When it's a secondary method, it can be used as a way to invest in a growing market. You can potentially react to volatile changes in a currency if it's part of an investing strategy without worrying if your company will fold overnight. If it's your primary means of accepting payment, then your income is essentially tied to the volatility unless you cash out immediately. Stable coins would be the obvious solution, but then I wonder what's the drop rate of someone who is only familiar with BTC and not other coins?

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

In fact it's not a good use-case for Cryptocurrencies because as it stands today, it takes approximately 10 minutes to resolve a transaction in Bitcoin. You can explain this problem away with appeals to floating networks that ride on top of bitcoin, eth, like lightning etc...however it's unclear why those would be any better than a lower cost ACH or other debit processing system.

humbledrone 8y ago
Check out IOTA. In theory (and so far in practice) it solves the problems you describe. It does not yet have as solid a theoretical foundation as blockchain currencies, though, so there's higher risk that it turns out to have some flaw that nobody's seen yet.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  Or just work out some hack around the existing transaction fee systems.
crowbahr 8y ago
It's not a transaction though, it's a donation. Time to resolve is nothing here, it's fire and forget. On top of that ACH or other systems require you to put in real banking information rather than having it be a separate wallet you use to pay. It allows a more complete separation from payment processors.
chrisco255 8y ago
I tire of saying this in response to people who believe that credit and debit cards are "instant" but they're not. They take up to a day or two to process and clear and for money to actually change hands. The only thing that's instant is the check to see if you have the funds to cover the transaction. In this case even BTC's on-chain processing of 10 minutes is pretty darn fast. As you said, other crypto solutions including Lightning Network, ETH, etc are faster and will be able to scale to orders of magnitude more transactions in the near future.
lavezzi 8y ago