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BitWall Allows Publishers To Make Money Through Bitcoin Micropayments

44 points by sahlhoff 13y ago

jacques_chester 13y ago
The law requires the first HN comment to be negative. Here goes. BitWall is on my radar because my long-term startup project is, indirectly, a competitor. Paywalls are tricky because they only work for a handful of sites. My expectation is that they don't work for the long tail; but it's the long tail where almost every website lives. In practice, use of paywalls shapes up to be a niche business model. So when you multiply one niche (paywalls) by another niche (bitcoin), I can only suspect that they will be in for a hard ride. Especially since nothing stops the other white-label paywall platforms from adding bitcoin to their currency roster.
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  Considering bitpay is only charging .99% fee (or no fee to be paid out in coins) you could easily add it to whatever you're doing especially since they have no monthly minimums or other costs, or just roll your own solution easily. Also, why is there no concrete information on their site (bitwall) on what fees they charge forcing you to contact sales. Arrgh
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    I think the low percentage is attractive, but I disagree with "you could easily add it". It will be strongly contingent on each publication's technical environment.
  - Atlas 13y ago
    The challenge in using Bitpay is that you have to then source the Bitcoin from somewhere else. Because this is on Coinbase, you at least stay with one money vendor.
  - nicmeliones 13y ago
    dobbsbob, we are planning on using a subscription model but are still doing market research to figure out the right price point. It's still early, but we'll try to get that posted ASAP. In the meantime we are offering the service for free.
clarkm 13y ago
I really wish articles would stop repeating the blanket claim that Bitcoin payments have lower fees than traditional transactions. While true in many cases, it is definitely not true with regard to micropayments. At the protocol level, Bitcoin is horrible for micropayments. Don't get me wrong, Bitcoin is great for some things like moderately-sized international payments, but is not designed for frequent small payments. The recommended fees are already too high for this to be practical. And if such small payments become common, they would flood the blockchain, driving fees up further as a result. If you want to see how this has played out before, look at Satoshi Dice. How does BitWall address this problem?
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  The fees to transfer bitcoin are nothing compared to the fees to get bitcoin. You need to be really savvy and find a local trader or else you are paying funding fees, trading fees and withdraw fees. Even on localbitcoin prices are usually marked up above the current exchange rate over multiple points of exchange. The biggest advantage to bitcoin is painless refunds, and of course no central authority to regulate anything.
- ewillbefull 13y ago
  Depends on what you define as 'small'. The smallest amount you can send (right now) is about $0.007 at current prices, which is pretty small for most purposes, especially content monetization. It is smaller than any alternatives by a large margin.
  - nwh 13y ago
    You missed the point. Yes you can receive many small payments, but to spend them again will cost me almost as much again in fees. Combining lots of small inputs is not efficient.
    - VMG 13y ago
      Why not? A single transaction can have many different inputs. A receiver of many micropayments can bundle many separate addresses into one. Anonymity might be an issue then, but the transaction isn't.

44 points by sahlhoff 13y ago

The law requires the first HN comment to be negative. Here goes. BitWall is on my radar because my long-term startup project is, indirectly, a competitor. Paywalls are tricky because they only work for a handful of sites. My expectation is that they don't work for the long tail; but it's the long tail where almost every website lives. In practice, use of paywalls shapes up to be a niche business model. So when you multiply one niche (paywalls) by another niche (bitcoin), I can only suspect that they will be in for a hard ride. Especially since nothing stops the other white-label paywall platforms from adding bitcoin to their currency roster.

dobbsbob 13y ago
Considering bitpay is only charging .99% fee (or no fee to be paid out in coins) you could easily add it to whatever you're doing especially since they have no monthly minimums or other costs, or just roll your own solution easily. Also, why is there no concrete information on their site (bitwall) on what fees they charge forcing you to contact sales. Arrgh
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I think the low percentage is attractive, but I disagree with "you could easily add it". It will be strongly contingent on each publication's technical environment.
- Atlas 13y ago
  The challenge in using Bitpay is that you have to then source the Bitcoin from somewhere else. Because this is on Coinbase, you at least stay with one money vendor.
- nicmeliones 13y ago
  dobbsbob, we are planning on using a subscription model but are still doing market research to figure out the right price point. It's still early, but we'll try to get that posted ASAP. In the meantime we are offering the service for free.

clarkm 13y ago

I really wish articles would stop repeating the blanket claim that Bitcoin payments have lower fees than traditional transactions. While true in many cases, it is definitely not true with regard to micropayments. At the protocol level, Bitcoin is horrible for micropayments. Don't get me wrong, Bitcoin is great for some things like moderately-sized international payments, but is not designed for frequent small payments. The recommended fees are already too high for this to be practical. And if such small payments become common, they would flood the blockchain, driving fees up further as a result. If you want to see how this has played out before, look at Satoshi Dice. How does BitWall address this problem?

dobbsbob 13y ago
The fees to transfer bitcoin are nothing compared to the fees to get bitcoin. You need to be really savvy and find a local trader or else you are paying funding fees, trading fees and withdraw fees. Even on localbitcoin prices are usually marked up above the current exchange rate over multiple points of exchange. The biggest advantage to bitcoin is painless refunds, and of course no central authority to regulate anything.
ewillbefull 13y ago
Depends on what you define as 'small'. The smallest amount you can send (right now) is about $0.007 at current prices, which is pretty small for most purposes, especially content monetization. It is smaller than any alternatives by a large margin.
- nwh 13y ago
  You missed the point. Yes you can receive many small payments, but to spend them again will cost me almost as much again in fees. Combining lots of small inputs is not efficient.
  - VMG 13y ago
    Why not? A single transaction can have many different inputs. A receiver of many micropayments can bundle many separate addresses into one. Anonymity might be an issue then, but the transaction isn't.