
BitWall Allows Publishers To Make Money Through Bitcoin Micropayments - sahlhoff
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/bitwall-launch/
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clarkm
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?

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jyu
Did I miss something? BitWall sits on top of Coinbase. Coinbase right now eats
transaction fees (or if it is Coinbase 2 Coinbase, then it's just an "in the
network" transaction that possibly does not need to hit the bitcoin network
and incur a transaction fee).

Satoshi Dice is an example of how not to do volume micropayments because you
incurr transaction fees. If you want to do micropayments the right way, either
you need to sit on top of someone else's payment network, or build your own.

The biggest fees right now are the hassles of opening and waiting for an
exchange account, and the associated exchange fees associated with converting
$ to bitcoin, and bitcoin to $. With something like BitWall, you can start
accepting and spending bitcoin without the hassles of dealing with an
exchange.

~~~
nicmeliones
jyu, thanks for providing clarity there. I'm the CEO of BitWall, and to
reiterate what you said - transactions from readers to merchants on BitWall
are off blockchain (i.e. in-network), meaning we can power them with 0
transaction fees because of our integration with Coinbase.

~~~
ixcyth4
What coinbase has implemented is not off-the block-chain microtransactions.
Basically, they are just moving money between two coinbase accounts. So looks
like only Coinbase users can use your service, if others use it they will end
up flooding the block-chain.

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jacques_chester
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.

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dobbsbob
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
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.

