Lowering Transfer Fees

[jakub]

This is mind blowing.  You can't judge the fees without the referral system working for several months. No other coin has a mechanism to pay merchants to go to the trouble of educating their user base to pay them in crypto.  We do.  That is unique and it is a chance (not a guarantee) that it we succeed where all other alts have failed.

Geo-pricing is just another level of confusion to add to the worlds most complicated product.  Lets not shall we.

[BTSdac]

to be fair - the only reason why the high fees are needed are because of the not working referral system!

the prices right now are fine with western world, but to get popular in other region we should lower the fees on the small end (small transaction).

if just reduce the transfer fee , it any a little influence to  referral system!

[bitmarket]

This is mind blowing.  You can't judge the fees without the referral system working for several months. No other coin has a mechanism to pay merchants to go to the trouble of educating their user base to pay them in crypto.  We do.  That is unique and it is a chance (not a guarantee) that it we succeed where all other alts have failed.

Geo-pricing is just another level of confusion to add to the worlds most complicated product.  Lets not shall we.

[fav]

A simple change in the GUI / billing / transfer page can make it looks like the sender is paying no fees.

I'd strongly advise against such tricks. I personally hate it when there are hidden costs not clearly stated and prefer to pay the fee than be cheated and discover it later on.
It would make us no different from the corporate culture where the general mindset is to be nice to the customer and then screw him behind the scenes.
Please, don't do it.

the merchant/receiver would pay the fee, not you as a customer. seems like all major payment services do it like this, why should we reinvent the wheel here?

edit: but it probably can't work like this. you could micro tx spam people and make them pay 40bts as fee... that's a weak point

[jakub]

If we are in the exchange business then transfers can be nearly free because we make our money on exchanges.

But if we are in the exchange business we should make sure we that at this initial stage we have trading fees lower than any significant competition. In that respect I'd agree with clayop:

As an ecosystem, the crux of current BTS is its exchanges. To promote trades in DEX, lowering trade fees is quite needed. Think about other exchanges that should attract new customers. "Zero trade fee" is very attractive. While zero fee is not feasible for us, very low level of trade fees (say 1 BTS for non-lifetime members) can attract traders and expand our ecosystem. Then we can slowly increase our trade fees. Even Apple music provides "3 month free trial" for new customers.

And we definitely need to be in the exchange business because we badly need liquidity. Liquidity for SmartCoins is the very basis of our business and without liquidity we are nothing - we have no product to sell, as Method-X rightly put it:

Market making seems to be the elephant in the room not being addressed by the developers. There has been so much talk about creating a pretty GUI and not enough talk about how to actually get liquidity. Honestly, the GUI is pretty sweet right now and will only get better. You can make a GUI that looks like Apple themselves created it but it'll still be useless without liquidity.

[jakub]

We've had feeback from South America (ElMato) , Eastern and Southern Europe (Noisy and Liondani) and China (Alt + many many more)  saying the fee is too high for their market.

@Empirical, this is quite ridiculous to make such arguments - drawing important pricing strategy conclusions from personal perspectives of single individuals from a given region who (I assume) have no professional background in this area (neither do I for that matter).

The only thing which is valid in our case is some sort of market research, or if we cannot have it - use rational arguments, not subjective points of view.
I'm from Eastern Europe and I don't agree with Noisy. Will this cancel out with Noisy?

Anyway, the pseudo market research poll that I created seems to contradict your point:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19328.0.html

[jakub]

A simple change in the GUI / billing / transfer page can make it looks like the sender is paying no fees.

I'd strongly advise against such tricks. I personally hate it when there are hidden costs not clearly stated and prefer to pay the fee than be cheated and discover it later on.
It would make us no different from the corporate culture where the general mindset is to be nice to the customer and then screw him behind the scenes.
Please, don't do it.

[jakub]

Do stealth transfers cost extra? They should.

They do.

[Shentist]

I would urge the community to keep transfer fees in the US the same.  I think regional pricing is a good idea. 

As someone who is building a real US-based payments business on top of Bitshares the transfer fees are important to keep the business sustainable.   Otherwise it will probably take hundreds of millions of VC money, hundreds of millions of users, 10 years to even get the cash flow in the black, much less pay back the cost of capital.  Free or close to free is not a great business model unless you plan to show a 30-sec video ad before you send every payment.  I'm certainly not interested in pursuing a business like this.  I would argue without the payments side, the exchange side is far less valuable. 

We shouldn't compete with other cryptos on cost.  Bitcoin and other cryptos are already essentially 'free'.  But ask yourself how are business that build on those ecosystems going to grow?  What is the revenue business model of anyone who builds on other cryptos?  I would tell you most have no sustainable business model. 

We can do well with peer to peer payments, but this should be a secondary focus because the perception and reality for the mainstream public is that payments are already free.  I would even recommend Venmo, Square cash, traditional online bank transfers via email/phone # as much better solutions for the average consumer.  I'm saying this as a competitor to those payment solutions.  We are naturally going to need and get a good % of unbanked, anti-bank, be-your-own-bank crowd that don't like traditional solutions and the fees aren't going to be a deal breaker.

We should be focused on merchants.  They are desperate for a solution because they have to pay 3 - 8% transaction fees,  annual/monthly fees,  hidden fees,  and deal with the headache of chargebacks.   When I tell merchants the cost for them is  20 cents  they are immediately sold.  The question I get from merchants is why and how are we so cheap?  I got a question from a merchant (who actually worked in payment processing before) about if we are going to be around in the future because 20 cents doesn't sound sustainable for any payment business.   I agree.   I assume if we want we can structure payments so that merchants are 'paying' the cost so that should allow users to feel like they aren't paying anything in transaction fees. 

I think low transfer fees will also render the referral system ineffective.   There would be very little reason to upgrade memberships and people won't be incentivized by getting a few cents trickling in each month from referrals.

This is a very good perspective.   The fees are already very low from a merchants perspective.  A simple change in the GUI / billing / transfer page can make it looks like the sender is paying no fees.

great idea! 

in the past i proposed the fees should be paying the reciever, so accounts like poloniexwallet etc. are in need to get lifetimemembers. In the backend you can split the fees between sender and reciever. it is
the same principle how creditcards apply the fees. never show them to the user, just to the merchants.

this way you can increase the lifetime member out and just charge a yearly fee.

[Method-X]

Do stealth transfers cost extra? They should.

[fav]

I would urge the community to keep transfer fees in the US the same.  I think regional pricing is a good idea. 

As someone who is building a real US-based payments business on top of Bitshares the transfer fees are important to keep the business sustainable.   Otherwise it will probably take hundreds of millions of VC money, hundreds of millions of users, 10 years to even get the cash flow in the black, much less pay back the cost of capital.  Free or close to free is not a great business model unless you plan to show a 30-sec video ad before you send every payment.  I'm certainly not interested in pursuing a business like this.  I would argue without the payments side, the exchange side is far less valuable. 

We shouldn't compete with other cryptos on cost.  Bitcoin and other cryptos are already essentially 'free'.  But ask yourself how are business that build on those ecosystems going to grow?  What is the revenue business model of anyone who builds on other cryptos?  I would tell you most have no sustainable business model. 

We can do well with peer to peer payments, but this should be a secondary focus because the perception and reality for the mainstream public is that payments are already free.  I would even recommend Venmo, Square cash, traditional online bank transfers via email/phone # as much better solutions for the average consumer.  I'm saying this as a competitor to those payment solutions.  We are naturally going to need and get a good % of unbanked, anti-bank, be-your-own-bank crowd that don't like traditional solutions and the fees aren't going to be a deal breaker.

We should be focused on merchants.  They are desperate for a solution because they have to pay 3 - 8% transaction fees,  annual/monthly fees,  hidden fees,  and deal with the headache of chargebacks.   When I tell merchants the cost for them is  20 cents  they are immediately sold.  The question I get from merchants is why and how are we so cheap?  I got a question from a merchant (who actually worked in payment processing before) about if we are going to be around in the future because 20 cents doesn't sound sustainable for any payment business.   I agree.   I assume if we want we can structure payments so that merchants are 'paying' the cost so that should allow users to feel like they aren't paying anything in transaction fees. 

I think low transfer fees will also render the referral system ineffective.   There would be very little reason to upgrade memberships and people won't be incentivized by getting a few cents trickling in each month from referrals.

This is a very good perspective.   The fees are already very low from a merchants perspective.  A simple change in the GUI / billing / transfer page can make it looks like the sender is paying no fees.

great idea! 

[Shentist]

to be fair - the only reason why the high fees are needed are because of the not working referral system!

the prices right now are fine with western world, but to get popular in other region we should lower the fees on the small end (small transaction).

[clayop]

As an ecosystem, the crux of current BTS is its exchanges. To promote trades in DEX, lowering trade fees is quite needed. Think about other exchanges that should attract new customers. "Zero trade fee" is very attractive. While zero fee is not feasible for us, very low level of trade fees (say 1 BTS for non-lifetime members) can attract traders and expand our ecosystem. Then we can slowly increase our trade fees. Even Apple music provides "3 month free trial" for new customers.

[clayop]

set 5BTS as a minimum transfer fee, transfer of BTS, CNY and some other assets need to pay this minimum fee.
transfer of USD and some other assets need to pay $0.2.
to get a regional based fee rule is good idea,  as the business cultures in different regions are so different, keeping same may cause the community fall in endless debate and split.

5BTS transfer fee also make the lifetime memeber senseful. in China users hate high fee, but they may pay for lifetime member under 5BTS transfer fee condition. under $0.2 transfer fee condition what they think most may be "should I exit?"

I already paid 10000 BTS for one lifetime member, such a lifetime member price is acceptable, but the high transfer fee may make China users disappointed ans leave, this is what I really worry.

If different fee for each assets possible, 0.03~0.1 RMB transfer fee for CNY is acceptable while the fee for USD keeps $0.2.

[bitcrab]

set 5BTS as a minimum transfer fee, transfer of BTS, CNY and some other assets need to pay this minimum fee.
transfer of USD and some other assets need to pay $0.2.
to get a regional based fee rule is good idea,  as the business cultures in different regions are so different, keeping same may cause the community fall in endless debate and split.

5BTS transfer fee also make the lifetime memeber senseful. in China users hate high fee, but they may pay for lifetime member under 5BTS transfer fee condition. under $0.2 transfer fee condition what they think most may be "should I exit?"

I already paid 10000 BTS for one lifetime member, such a lifetime member price is acceptable, but the high transfer fee may make China users disappointed ans leave, this is what I really worry.