micropayments Archives

How the website works

The website operates on a simple purchase model that is wrapped in a suspenseful way leading people into buying content. Any user who puts up content on ‘Yours’ can post anything as simple as an article, blog piece, pictures or a video and can select the point at which they want a pay wall. For viewing the content past that point, people have to pay the price and in turn, the creators of the content get paid. Ryan Charles, formerly Reddit’s cryptocurrency engineer explains:

“Everybody who posts content to Yours – including articles, video, images, audio – can pick a place in their content to put a pay wall. So, if you write a compelling article with a cliffhanger, you can hide the conclusion behind, say, a ten cent pay wall.”

Tackling the problem of micropayments

The website will offer a micropayments wallet in addition to content pay walls. This has been a technically controversial area for Bitcoin as the transactional costs of the Bitcoin network have gone up in the recent years. However, ‘Yours’ has set out to repair this problem by developing a smart contract similar to Lightning Network but doesn’t utilize Segwit. It is completely dependent on Bitcoin alone and hence is very complicated in design. Yours allows users to possess their private keys and have full custodial control over their funds at all times while being able to participate in off-chain zero fee transactions with other users.

Posting and various payment models

With the ‘Yours’ testnet launched, anybody can pay for content but not everyone can post. One has to do a one-on-one demo with the ‘Yours’ team so that they can get your real-time feedback about the experience. There are numerous models allowing individuals to get paid on Yours in addition to paywalls on content. A classic endorsement model will allow content creators to earn as users pay to upvote their content. Commenters can earn when their comments are upvoted. Individuals can also invest in a creator’s content, and earn returns on the content’s income over time.

How the platform will take off and revolutionize content writing and marketing domain is to be seen.

Right from its inception, Bitcoin’s development has been quick and promising. The world was quick to recognize its disruptive nature and Bitcoin’s adoption became fluid. While the status of Bitcoin as an adaptable universal currency still remains ambiguous, it surely has proven its utility. For economies that have been struggling, people have sought to Bitcoin as an alternate in more occasions than one. Let’s look into the situations where Bitcoin actually did better than just saving face in times of crisis:

Fears of Greece exiting Eurozone or Grexit:

In 2015, Greece was in severe recession and in a debt of nearly 1.5 billion euros to creditors. Defaulting on timely payment of the credit might have resulted in Greece leaving the Eurozone. The fears looming the Grexit prompted people to look for alternative methods to pay for Goods and Services. With the local currency inflating at phenomenal rate, there was a clear uptick in the Bitcoin trading. This was a direct result of people investing in Bitcoin so as to hold value against their currency.

20151128_btc1 — Grexit Pushing prices higher and recently Argentinian policies increasing the volumes of trading

As an alternate to monetary reforms enforced, most cryptocurrency supporters argued that Greece could have opted a digital asset model. That is Government could have used decentralized currency to pay pensioners and Government servants initially. Government assets would back this currency and hence can be repaid later. Though Greece took a different path, it is evident from trading volumes that people took to Bitcoin in the time of crisis.

Argentina and Financial repression:

Argentina has experienced the crippling effects of 2008 housing collapse and continued to feel the jitters even in the next decade. Amid the downward spiral of economic decline, the government announced stringent financial restrictions in 2011. This restricts people from buying foreign currency and to send money overseas. This financial repression made some Argentineans to adopt the cryptocurrency as an escape route from government controls.

A pleasant Government change has lead to revoking of reforms, accommodating better policies to save the country. While the economy is recovering, there is an increase in volume and number of companies operating with Bitcoin. While Bitcoin has supported people during the repressive phase, let’s see how it would help Argentina to reconstruct its economy.

Brazil and Kenya:

Rising volumes in Brazilian Bitcoin Trading

Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of soft commodities and it has been in recession for over three years. With its economy weakening, the exporters aren’t getting good value for their exports. Hence they have resorted to payments in bitcoin so as to maintain their value of profits. This resulted in the increased volumes during the harvest period of the soft commodities crop cycle.

Kenya has a high population of unbanked citizens and high micropayment transactions in mobile systems. While Government is tightening its hold on local businesses through tax monitoring, Bitcoin is instrumental in building a regulated system. Major wallets like Bitpesa are actually helping the Government to setup a regulated system. This would allow the businesses to flourish and also be monitored for tax irregularities, if any.

Hence we can see that Bitcoin indeed has been crucial in strengthening or restructuring weak economies in many cases.