Reasons for Lowering Fees

[38PTSWarrior]

No to percentage based fees. People like the idea that it is like it is. Easy for marketing. Maybe gonna change mind but WU also makes perc. Based and it's annoying and not nice

[jakub]

I'm not a fan of percentage based fee's.  The fee's are paying for the cost of doing the work to process the transaction.  It doesn't cost, computer power wise, anymore to process a $.01 transaction or a $1 million dollar transaction.

I think there may be a better answer to micropayments, other than percentage based fees.  Percentage based fee's are really a legacy form of tax, and we should look at some alternative and innovative forms of fees while we are still young.

Thinking in terms of costs is a mistake.
It just happens that we have a technology where sending $.01 costs the same as sending $1 million.
But the user does not care about technology. We do but the final user does not.

We need to think in terms of perceived usefulness.
That's why percentage based fees do make sense.

Charging percentage based fees just links us back to legacy finance...  There is no advantage in crypto if it is going to cost me $1000 to buy $100,000 of something whether I use cash or crypto.

Low fee's and less friction is crypto's biggest selling point.  Let the merchants charge percentage based fee's if they find they can still sell their products and services with it.

I agree, paying a fee of $1000 to send $100,000 does not make any sense.

Percentage-based fess (at least in my understanding) need to have a floor and a cap.
For me percentage-based fess are needed to let us make profit on big transfers while we forgo revenue on smaller ones.
As a result we earn money in areas where users can accept it and use those profits to subsidize areas where users will not tolerate higher fees.

[Bhuz]

I'm not a fan of percentage based fee's.  The fee's are paying for the cost of doing the work to process the transaction.  It doesn't cost, computer power wise, anymore to process a $.01 transaction or a $1 million dollar transaction.

I think there may be a better answer to micropayments, other than percentage based fees.  Percentage based fee's are really a legacy form of tax, and we should look at some alternative and innovative forms of fees while we are still young.

So tell us what it might be.

Maybe: "Rate Limiting Transactions", point 1.0 of the "BitShares Development Proposals by BunkerChain Labs and Cryptonomex, Inc".
IF someone can retrieve the older/not edited version of this document, we could better evaluate that proposal.
Document--> https://docs.google.com/document/d/12hWyasMJ5mL1fboAt9ZK8FEf0c7o_q-1bwm5ItsLNGo

[lil_jay890]

I'm not a fan of percentage based fee's.  The fee's are paying for the cost of doing the work to process the transaction.  It doesn't cost, computer power wise, anymore to process a $.01 transaction or a $1 million dollar transaction.

I think there may be a better answer to micropayments, other than percentage based fees.  Percentage based fee's are really a legacy form of tax, and we should look at some alternative and innovative forms of fees while we are still young.

Thinking in terms of costs is a mistake.
It just happens that we have a technology where sending $.01 costs the same as sending $1 million.
But the user does not care about technology. We do but the final user does not.

We need to think in terms of perceived usefulness.
That's why percentage based fees do make sense.

Charging percentage based fees just links us back to legacy finance...  There is no advantage in crypto if it is going to cost me $1000 to buy $100,000 of something whether I use cash or crypto.

Low fee's and less friction is crypto's biggest selling point.  Let the merchants charge percentage based fee's if they find they can still sell their products and services with it.

[jakub]

I'm not a fan of percentage based fee's.  The fee's are paying for the cost of doing the work to process the transaction.  It doesn't cost, computer power wise, anymore to process a $.01 transaction or a $1 million dollar transaction.

I think there may be a better answer to micropayments, other than percentage based fees.  Percentage based fee's are really a legacy form of tax, and we should look at some alternative and innovative forms of fees while we are still young.

Thinking in terms of costs is a mistake.
It just happens that we have a technology where sending $.01 costs the same as sending $1 million.
But the user does not care about technology. We do but the final user does not.

We need to think in terms of perceived usefulness.
That's why percentage based fees do make sense.

[lil_jay890]

I'm not a fan of percentage based fee's.  The fee's are paying for the cost of doing the work to process the transaction.  It doesn't cost, computer power wise, anymore to process a $.01 transaction or a $1 million dollar transaction.

I think there may be a better answer to micropayments, other than percentage based fees.  Percentage based fee's are really a legacy form of tax, and we should look at some alternative and innovative forms of fees while we are still young.

So tell us what it might be.

I'm not sure what it will be exactly, but I don't want us to think that % based fees are the best or only solution.

[Akado]

Set a special kind of account. User pays a fee to get it similar to lifetime membership. Has extremely low fees. Only allows small transactions. That allows for micro payments. Still can be used to spam the network though.

Maybe add some kind of restriction where those type of accounts can perform more than X amount of transactions per second. 1 per second seems fine by now. Only way to spam the network would be to have 1000s of accounts of that type and have them all perform transactions at the same time but if members have to pay a fee to register then that makes the attack way way more difficult. No one will pay a fee of 5k bts or 10k bts thousands of times.

This also doesnt make life time membership obsolete since it still has more advantages like no restriction on the amount of bts per transaction, referral program, etc members could even have them both on the same account

[onceuponatime]

I'm not a fan of percentage based fee's.  The fee's are paying for the cost of doing the work to process the transaction.  It doesn't cost, computer power wise, anymore to process a $.01 transaction or a $1 million dollar transaction.

I think there may be a better answer to micropayments, other than percentage based fees.  Percentage based fee's are really a legacy form of tax, and we should look at some alternative and innovative forms of fees while we are still young.

So tell us what it might be.

[lil_jay890]

I'm not a fan of percentage based fee's.  The fee's are paying for the cost of doing the work to process the transaction.  It doesn't cost, computer power wise, anymore to process a $.01 transaction or a $1 million dollar transaction.

I think there may be a better answer to micropayments, other than percentage based fees.  Percentage based fee's are really a legacy form of tax, and we should look at some alternative and innovative forms of fees while we are still young.

[kenCode]

Yet another reason to go to % based fees and allowing for transactions as low as 2 BTS (for example, the donation button in our mobile wallets). Our Smartcoins POS systems will allow people to buy everything from a single pack of chewing gum all the way up to a Ferrari and beyond. Percentage based fees must be implemented ASAP, please!
 
RE: https://news.bitcoin.com/dash-powered-soda-machine-to-debut-at-miami-bitcoin-conference/
"Also, the fee to purchase from the Dash N’ Drink machine is one of the lowest for any crypto, at only 3 cents per InstantX transaction. After the upcoming Dash Evolution release, this fee will be omitted for most transactions."
 
If DASH can do it, why can't we?

[Empirical1.2]

@merivercap

How many merchants accept crypto payments without the additional services of a payment processor?

The transfer fee by itself may be competitive for merchants in isolation. The question is how easily & frequently can merchants get
BTS/Smartcoin payments into their traditional bank account and what is the total round-trip cost? That is the service you are competing with in the merchant space. 

BitShares/Partner would have to offer both a BitPay type competing service and do it for less than BitPay https://bitpay.com/pricing

Without that service you have limited value to most merchants.

Yes gateway functionality for merchants are vital.  We can be a processor like BitPay & Coinbase, but essentially they both act as a gateway and so we just have to connect merchants with gateways.   We can use CCEDK, BunkerLabs and other gateways as they come online and provide the same type of service very easily.   We can even partner with BitPay/Coinbase who have merchant relationships and convert via Bitcoin ..or partner with other traditional merchant processing companies like Heartland.   There are a variety of different business models you can use...Bitpay/Coinbase have raised tens of millions so they have much more flexibility,... they both essentially charge 1% for larger businesses, but make it free for smaller ones...  (Despite raising $30 million Bitpay doesn't seem to be in great shape partly because people really just don't spend Bitcoin.)  Bitcoin is volatile and people don't like spending it so I don't think Bitcoin processors are a direct competitor.  Smartcoins are far more convenient and have far more potential than Bitcoin in the payment space.

Yeah, I mostly agree.

The point is until BTS/Partner has an automated BTS to bank processor in place, BTS won't be particularly appealing to merchants imo.
The round-trip cost is also likely to be circa 1% + $0.2, so probably a little bit more than accepting payment for Bitcoin.

So focusing on merchants as a key market to gaining traction right now might not be that successful especially when we don't have a big userbase who will use BTS to buy their products and services yet either.

The referral programme could sweeten the deal & make it more appealing once a partner processor is in place though.

[merivercap]

@merivercap

How many merchants accept crypto payments without the additional services of a payment processor?

The transfer fee by itself may be competitive for merchants in isolation. The question is how easily & frequently can merchants get
BTS/Smartcoin payments into their traditional bank account and what is the total round-trip cost? That is the service you are competing with in the merchant space. 

BitShares/Partner would have to offer both a BitPay type competing service and do it for less than BitPay https://bitpay.com/pricing

Without that service you have limited value to most merchants.

Yes gateway functionality for merchants are vital.  We can be a processor like BitPay & Coinbase, but essentially they both act as a gateway and so we just have to connect merchants with gateways.   We can use CCEDK, BunkerLabs and other gateways as they come online and provide the same type of service very easily.   We can even partner with BitPay/Coinbase who have merchant relationships and convert via Bitcoin ..or partner with other traditional merchant processing companies like Heartland.   There are a variety of different business models you can use...Bitpay/Coinbase have raised tens of millions so they have much more flexibility,... they both essentially charge 1% for larger businesses, but make it free for smaller ones...  (Despite raising $30 million Bitpay doesn't seem to be in great shape partly because people really just don't spend Bitcoin.)  Bitcoin is volatile and people don't like spending it so I don't think Bitcoin processors are a direct competitor.  Smartcoins are far more convenient and have far more potential than Bitcoin in the payment space. 

[cube]

Bitcube will post an arbitration. Hopefully we can understand each other and make a better plan.

I share my thoughts in a new post here - https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20019.msg257241.html#msg257241

[Moon]

Bitcube will post an arbitration. Hopefully we can understand each other and make a better plan.

   voted

[clayop]

Bitcube will post an arbitration. Hopefully we can understand each other and make a better plan.