[porter]

The reason why you carry cash is because you sometimes find yourself in situations where a credit card won't work - tipping the valet, vending machines, car washes, etc.

In what cases will bitcoin be better for small transactions online than a credit card? I'm at a loss for examples.

[robinhoode]

Micropayments is one obvious example. Credit card fees make micropayments very difficult. I'm sure there are workarounds, but that's only one possible use-case for Bitcoin. There are more that have yet to be invented.

[cdixon]

I think the original Bitcoin paper said it well: "small casual payments."

To pay online right now, you have to decide: 1) do I trust this vendor 2) do I want to fill out this form with all my info

Generally this (plus transaction fees) only make sense for transactions above $10.

The vendor responds by trying to build a relationship with you- by building brand trust and by pushing you toward an ongoing relationship (recurring payments, creating an account etc). This is why "cards on file" is considered a major business asset online.

As a result, any online service that doesn't make the cut is forced to resort to an advertising based business model.

[steveklabnik]

> I think the original Bitcoin paper said it well: "small casual payments."

You can see this with the tipping culture on Reddit. It's helped Dogecoin really take off, because it's pretty trivial to send a small, casual payment to someone.

[conception]

Really small transactions (eg the reddit bitcoin tipbot, small website donations, payment for content) for one. iTunes tries it aggregate transactions to lower credit card fees, with bitcoin, you wouldn't need to do that.