There is a legit use-case in micropayments with certain crypto implementations that don't share the blockchain's massive centralisation (what else do you call "every transaction has to be accepted on one shared append-only log"?), that would allow for offline P2P transactions if you have some trust.
These cryptocurrency implementations along with some infrastructure would let you build a cheap low-cost micropayments system where you would just need to have some local trust. You could build out a federated payment network and build out infrastructure based on needs. All while avoiding the massive waste that comes from "everyone store every transaction ever"
The problem of credit card companies and the like charging really high rates still affects a lot, and "Paypal, but federated" could help tackle this with some cryptocurrency concepts in the background.
Though to be honest, I don't think this is going to happen. The communities are so focused on completely trust-free models that they don't see how they could build something extremely useful with way less cost and more utility by being more flexible on that point
cryptocurrency micropayments could potentially be much smaller. What if you could pay per packet the wifi access point forwards for you? Or pay per watt some charger gives you? Maybe nanopayments is a better name for them.
Re Paypal cost, is that micropayments to businesses? I just sent my friend $0.01 and it was free, with a linked bank account. Understood that the bank account payments take a while to settle but we're talking about micropayments so settlement time doesn't really matter
Fair point about nanopayments. But what's the win? Why split up the cost per single watt or packet? No one cares about losing one cent per day due to rounding errors
> But what's the win? Why split up the cost per single watt or packet? No one cares about losing one cent per day due to rounding errors
Honestly with this question you've summed up most of my feelings about blockchains. Humanity feels like it's become more powerful in some very specific way. We have a new tool and we're trying to figure out what it's good for.
I've pattern matched this to early reactions to the internet. Many of the critics pointed out that the internet didn't really make anything new possible, we could already quickly communicate with people across the world! But, it radically lowered the cost of that communication and put it into a format computers could use and that was enough to put companies like Blockbuster out of business.
It's really hard to work backwards from a new tool to places it could successfully be applied. And if 10 years from now we haven't found a use for nanopayments I'll admit it was a silly idea, but it sure does seem interesting.
> And if 10 years from now we haven't found a use for nanopayments I'll admit it was a silly idea
Why do you need another 10 years? Bitcoin has already been around for 10 years. The micropayment and tipping use case has been explored fully and has failed.
RE the charger, that problem has mostly been papered over because people are willing to pay a decent amount over the cost ceiling for this kind of service (China you can pay $1 or so to rent a battery charger, and that's way more than the cost of the electricity).
Though the idea of even jokingly giving miniscule amounts of money to friends has some traction in stuff like WeChat. If the systems were more open then you could run a collection system on your site pretty easily.
For (2) one of the real values is being able to carry (practically) unlimited cash with you. Right now, USD in cash is capped at $100 notes to make it inconvenient to move large quantities.
With crypto, you fly anywhere in the world with a private key in your luggage. That key could have $100 or $1,000,000,000.
Thinking of international drug smuggling, one serious problem is moving all of the cash out of the country. Crypto solves that easily.
These cryptocurrency implementations along with some infrastructure would let you build a cheap low-cost micropayments system where you would just need to have some local trust. You could build out a federated payment network and build out infrastructure based on needs. All while avoiding the massive waste that comes from "everyone store every transaction ever"
The problem of credit card companies and the like charging really high rates still affects a lot, and "Paypal, but federated" could help tackle this with some cryptocurrency concepts in the background.
Though to be honest, I don't think this is going to happen. The communities are so focused on completely trust-free models that they don't see how they could build something extremely useful with way less cost and more utility by being more flexible on that point