

Why Bitcoin should replace the like button - dcawrey
https://www.zapchain.com/a/DG2uz1HfXc

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TheCoelacanth
I don't get why people keep bringing up bitcoin as a way of handling
microtransactions. It simply doesn't scale for that.

Bitcoin, with the current block size of 1 MB, can handle a maximum of 7
transactions per second (about 600k per day). Facebook supposedly get 2.7
billion likes per day. To scale to handling that many transactions, bitcoin
would either need to increase the block size to 4.5 GB or be completely re-
architectured.

~~~
pc2g4d
Wouldn't use of the Payment Protocol address the blockchain scalability
concern? Maybe the "Tip" button could really be a payment protocol URL or
something along those lines.

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c_prompt
It's hard enough to get people to try something completely different. Applying
the idea of "value transfer" to social media isn't just a completely foreign
concept to most - it drives at the heart of a person's philosophy.

When planning valME.io, which is based on your idea of value transfer [1],
using bitcoin instead of karma (which is then converted to bitcoin) was
considered. The problem was pricing transactions given bitcoin's volatility
might create a negative marketing image. If we were going to start suggesting
a different philosophical view on social media content, we wanted to tread
lightly.

For example, we only wanted to charge US $0.02 for a post and US $0.01 for a
comment so that the barrier to entry was low and, pretty much, all profit went
to the content contributor. We also wanted consistency across what an upvote
and downvote meant (earning or losing US $0.01).

However, because so many people would likely be unfamiliar with bitcoin, it
was thought the volatility would send a marketing message of unstable costs
and earnings. As a blogging and forum platform targeting non-technical users
who traditionally make their money via advertising, we didn't want to dissuade
them.

"Imagine giving away a couple of cents for a funny meme, 10 cents for a video
you enjoy or a dollar for an article that changed your views.If you made a
video with 200.000 views and 20.000 people gave you, on average,10 cents; you
would get 2000 dollars for the video."

We realized that, just as you said, people would want to give more than just
pennies here or there. So we created karma tipping that allowed you to award
someone any amount. But we used karma throughout to foster a comfortable and
familiar feeling of consistency. Cashing out karma for bitcoin occurs less
frequently and, thus, eases a non-technical person into it.

Although I agree that bitcoin makes microtransactions much more practical, the
volatility and (still somewhat) limited usage makes it difficult to target
non-technical users. If you use concepts they're already familiar with (e.g.,
upvotes, likes, karma), and then convert to bitcoin, my belief is that it will
help lower barriers. Time will tell.

[1] [https://valme.io/c/gettingstarted/faq/kqqqs/how-valme-
works/](https://valme.io/c/gettingstarted/faq/kqqqs/how-valme-works/)

