Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Miner's fee a barrier to mass adoption
by
Littleshop
on 21/10/2013, 03:42:01 UTC
I understand that the miner's fee is just a few cents, but am I the only one that sees it as a potential problem?

Situation 1: I buy something and refuse to pay the fee.  I know that blockchain.info will put it back in my account after 24 hours if it isn't confirmed.  Thus, merchants may refuse to take BTC fearing these types of "charge backs."

"so merchants just insist on a miner's fee!" is the simple answer, but imagine a busy restaurant or store ringing up lots of transactions an hour, usually by the typical teenage or marginally trained employees.  A lot of no fee transactions may slip through the cracks.

Situation 2: People making small purchases (under $10) for fast food or coffee are not going to want to tack on a few cents every time.

 "People shouldn't be so cheap!" is the easy answer to that, but they definitely are. Go ask people if they are willing to pay a few pennies every time they use their debit cards and see what the reactions are. Consumers hate that.

Ideas? Solutions?

You need to go out of your way to remove the fees, basically going against recommendations.  For almost every site and every client the fees are automatic so the vast majority of users will not have those problems.  But if you do go out of your way to zero the fee, you will have poor results.