Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hultner 3487 days ago
So are true microtransactions currently infeasible due to transactions fees exceeding even CC-rates?

I believe that were of mayor concern last time I checked up.
3 comments
tylersmith 3487 days ago
The position of Bitcoin Core is that fees should be high and microtransactions should be infeasible, except on Blockstream's Lightning Network. The reason is that decentralization has costs and they believe fees need to be high to pay for it.
link
kobeya 3487 days ago
Lightning was not invented by Blockstream, nor is Blockstream the majority player in that space either. They're just paying two open source developers (Rusty Russell and Christian Decker) to work on it. The original creators of Lightning have their own company, and there are at least five other competing implementations. BitFury employs more lightning developers than Blockstream and LightningCo combined.
link
RustyRussell 3487 days ago
To be fair, the position of Core is more: "we don't know how to scale significantly without further threatening decentralization". The rest is a corollary of that.
link
hultner 3487 days ago
What is the Blockstream's Lightning Network and how does it correlate with bitcoin?

How will bitcoin attract customers from traditional payment options if fees are higher?

link
out_of_protocol 3487 days ago
That's level 2 solution, implemented on top of Bitcoin (you need to create bitcoin transactions to start interacting with LN and consequent "good" transactions are almost free).

One thing - it is not actually implemented in full and therefore can not be used in vivo.

link
kobeya 3487 days ago
Microtransactions were never feasible on 1st-layer bitcoin. 2nd-layer solutions like payment channels make them practical.
link
zeven7 3487 days ago
https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ currently recommends around $0.17 per transaction.
link
hultner 3487 days ago
That's a lot more then I though, is that even reasonable?

With today's digitalization even stock trading is commonly available at $0.1 in courtage fee, is it really feasible bitcoin to use double that if broad adoption is appreciated? Or is that not a prioritized goal?

What stance does the bitcoin foundation take or whichever is the highest authority talking on behalf of the community?

link
zeven7 3487 days ago
> What stance does the bitcoin foundation take or whichever is the highest authority talking on behalf of the community?

From what I undertand, it's not a goal for Bitcoin Core (lead dev team for the official client). They want to make Bitcoin a "settlement layer" that serves as a foundation for other things to be built on top of. Lightning network[1] would be the layer built on top that supports microtransactions.

There are others who believe that Bitcoin should be able to scale to support microtransactions and other features itself.

There's a very large controversy in the community over this.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lightning_Network

link