Micro-Payments will change your life. (Part 1)

No one likes to spend more than they have to on anything, period.

I feel like that is a fair generalisation to make for the vast majority of the global population. You’re here on Steemit, a platform which embraces the potential of Cryptocurrency and all that it brings, so once again, I believe it fair to assume you’re a supporter of crypto.

To state the obvious - cryptocurrency has got to be one of the most significant developments the financial sector has seen in recent history. The emergence of the broader digital asset marketplace will affect many aspects of how the majority of us transact on a daily basis. One of the more apparent features of crypto is simply the speed at which transactions can take place. This acceleration is largely facilitated by a significant reduction of the administrative overhead necessary to prevent double spending of currency. It’s at this point, that the old adage ‘Time is Money’ comes into play; transactions with large administrative load, require higher fees per transaction.

I would argue that the minimum viable transaction amount, (or the smallest unit of money consumers are willing to pay a transaction fee to send) in any financial system is directly related to the fee cost per transaction. For a little context, I currently live in Australia - here, I still regularly encounter cafe’s and retailers with minimum eftpos requirements of $10 or higher. What this says to me, is that the bank fees on eftpos transactions are so high that a cafe would rather risk losing a portion of their smaller sales than pay extra fees to their eftpos provider. Isn’t that crazy?! This is a fairly good indication of the minimum viable transaction amount, certainly it is a matter of dollars not cents.

Stepping back into the crytpo world; we’ve seen the transaction fees on the Bitcoin network rise dramatically over the last few years, dragging the minimum viable transaction amount upward with it. However, there are new crypto tokens and currencies becoming widely recognised all the time with much smaller transaction fees. As such in this article my observations are not limited to any one currency.

A reduction in the fees attached to card based transactions will allow businesses, like the cafe I mentioned before, to accept smaller amounts and more importantly remove a point of friction between themselves and their customers. This, however is not even the tip of the micro-transaction iceberg. Having the ability to transact very small sums of money almost instantly at low cost is going to fundamentally change the way in which we pay for goods and services. One of the simplest and most prevalent examples is that of electricity distribution:

Typically, a large quantity of electricity is produced by one or a small number of sizeable production stations for a give geographical catchment area. These could be using coal, nuclear, wind, solar or any other method for power production. A sprawling distribution network of substations and huge runs of cable is then needed to get the electricity to you, the consumer. One of the most apparent issues with this system is the power lost in transit between the producer and the consumer. Another issue is the supply vs. demand conundrum; it’s difficult for the power producers to accurately predict peaks, or troughs, in the demand for electricity (machine learning anyone?) and even more difficult to react quickly to a change in demand. These factors contribute to huge inefficiencies in the power production and distribution industry which equals wasted power, which in turn leads to wasted money, naturally causing inflated electricity prices for consumers. You purchase all your electricity from a single provider at a predefined rate - this lost energy is the price with pay for a centralised system.

Now, lets consider a decentralised network of smaller electricity producers fuelled by micro-payments. Now instead of buying bulk amounts of electricity from one provider you can purchase smaller units of electricity on an as needs basis from any nearby provider with available stock and reasonable pricing. This provider could be your neighbour who has excess solar power because the sun is out, it could be a farm with wind turbines two suburbs across or a battery bank in the factory down the street. Much like cryptocurrency facilitates micro-payments by reducing fees, a distributed power grid allows for a smaller minimum viable power unit for purchase because line loss and overall electricity wastage is greatly reduced.

The way in which we pay for resources and the way in which consume them follow disparate methodologies where payment always wins out in favour of efficiency and reducing wastage. Smaller viable payment amounts will allow for smaller viable resource amounts which I believe will serve to reduce overall wastage.

Anyway, I hope I’ve given you some food for thought and that you enjoyed Part 1 of my micro-payments series. Watch this space for more articles in this series.
Comments are greatly appreciated, I will do my best to respond!