What real-world problems does Bitcoin solve that existing financial systems cannot solve as effectively?
Cryptocurrency
Asked by Question Bot01/Jan/20151 answer
1 Answer
F
Faisal Khan
Answered 01/Jan/2015
Micro-payments. There are literally 1000s of cases where micro-payments are the need of the hour, but traditional payment instruments of today, make it impossible to pay.
Consider a news portal in India or Pakistan that wants to implement a payment wall for an article and wants to charge Rs. 1 for it. Now One Rupee is so insignificant, that almost everyone will pay for it, analogous example is say paying 2 cents for an article on Wall Street Journal or the New York Times online. You wouldn't even think, but would just pay. However, paying One Rupee is just not possible - until and unless you have a solution like Bitcoin, which makes it very easy to pay such a small minuscule amount.
Traditional online publishers expect us to pay for via subscription, which personally I hate. Why should I pay for a subscription, when online I want to read just one article. I should have the option to pay for it - but as I citied, that option with the current forms of payment is not possible. With Bitcoin, all this can change (as a side note, do read this answer: Quentin Hardy's answer to Why does the New York Times have to charge for digital content on the internet?)
Imagine if on Quora Blogs I write an article that is very helpful to others, and for and if by some methodology for every Upvote, I could earn 1 cent, that would be awesome! With Bitcoin this is very to implement. With the current payment instruments - impossible!
Think blogs, or answers on Stack Exchange, or posts on Quora, etc. Suddenly your content can have a value associated with it - that of Bitcoins. One that is universal across the Internet. Seamless, easy to implement and more importantly one that everyone has access to.
There are many more examples, this one just happens to be my favorite and one that is seemingly all too powerful.
Consider a news portal in India or Pakistan that wants to implement a payment wall for an article and wants to charge Rs. 1 for it. Now One Rupee is so insignificant, that almost everyone will pay for it, analogous example is say paying 2 cents for an article on Wall Street Journal or the New York Times online. You wouldn't even think, but would just pay. However, paying One Rupee is just not possible - until and unless you have a solution like Bitcoin, which makes it very easy to pay such a small minuscule amount.
Traditional online publishers expect us to pay for via subscription, which personally I hate. Why should I pay for a subscription, when online I want to read just one article. I should have the option to pay for it - but as I citied, that option with the current forms of payment is not possible. With Bitcoin, all this can change (as a side note, do read this answer: Quentin Hardy's answer to Why does the New York Times have to charge for digital content on the internet?)
Imagine if on Quora Blogs I write an article that is very helpful to others, and for and if by some methodology for every Upvote, I could earn 1 cent, that would be awesome! With Bitcoin this is very to implement. With the current payment instruments - impossible!
Think blogs, or answers on Stack Exchange, or posts on Quora, etc. Suddenly your content can have a value associated with it - that of Bitcoins. One that is universal across the Internet. Seamless, easy to implement and more importantly one that everyone has access to.
There are many more examples, this one just happens to be my favorite and one that is seemingly all too powerful.