Quote from: CoinHunter on May 13, 2012, 01:17:08 AM

With Bitcoin there is no fixed transaction fee, miners can charge whatever they want. So if a miner charges you 100 BTC to send a transaction then you have to pay. Luke-jr is currently doing this with coiledcoin, so it's not a theoretical thing, it's actually happening. Anyone can mine but if you don't have enough power it could take you 5 years to mine a block and not be charged 100 BTC. So if your life savings are less than the transaction fee then it's essentially like losing your life savings if you ever wanted to actually spend them. This isn't true right now in Bitcoin, but it could potentially happen because transaction fees in Bitcoin are not fixed.

If Bitcoin ever moves to the same protocol as MicroCash (which it probably needs to for performance reasons if its successful) then it will have to move to account fees also. Otherwise it could be spammed to death. So comparing two different protocols, they both have advantages and disadvantages. Obviously some people familiar with how Bitcoin works aren't too comfortable with the idea of daily account fees but there's no other alternative if you want to move to the same account protocol that MicroCash uses.

It is happening in CoiledCoin, but not Bitcoin. Why? While you are technically correct, every miner on the planet could collude and charge 100BTC for every transaction. But since the miners are Bitcoin, you would have to say it is not collusion but a decision to enforce a new rule. Unlikely, but possible.

For the sake of argument, let us say that all of a sudden every transaction fee must be higher than 100BTC. As a result fewer people submit transactions to these miners and the transactions requests with fees under 100BTC begin to pile up. Pretty soon any miner (not in the 100BTC cabal) who finds a block stands to gain tremendously if they processed these rejected transactions. Market forces insure that it is worth someone's while to process transctions. While it is technically possible for the entire human race to suddenly no longer desire money, the Bitcoin protocol did not feel it need a special case to handle this.

I hope your 100BTC Myan apocalypse vision comes to pass, I stand to gain tremendously if suddenly every other human on the planet stops valuing money. Cheesy