It’s safe to say that the impact of Bitcoin’s meteoric rise towards the final weeks of 2017 has reverberated around the crypto industry.
The currency’s peak price of $19,974.18 on 17th December last year may have dwindled somewhat in the months that followed, but it still to this day signified the moment when the world sat up and took note of the potential that cryptocurrencies hold.
Image Source: CoinMarketCap
Blockchain was a significant beneficiary of Bitcoin’s rise, but the subject of micropayments went largely under the radars of the mainstream.
Micropayments are typically defined as a small value transaction of less than ten dollars, and while many micropayment schemes have failed in the past, the arrival of blockchain technology alongside a burgeoning crypto market promises to provide a solid foundation for giving the payment method a new lease of life in the modern age.
While the value of Bitcoin has dwindled in the months following its surge, JP Morgan Analyst Sri Oddiraju is confident that the arrival of Lightning Network will enable the cryptocurrency to support seamless microtransactions, which will reinvigorate the payment method moving into the future.
Lightning Network leverages cutting-edge blockchain technology to enable instant payments at an exceptionally low transaction cost. Transactions can also be seamlessly set up across different blockchains.
Image Source: BitInfoCharts
Lightning Network promises to be a gamechanger for businesses looking to harness the power of micropayments. Though today a significant competitor in micropayment technology is Litecoin (LTC).
With a relative value of $38 per LTC, Litecoin is a powerful currency when it comes to microtransactions. The cryptocurrency has already adopted Segwit, which greatly increased the number of transactions that the coin can process at a time - making it ideal for large-scale usage as a facilitator of micropayments.
But what of the industries that can benefit best from the likes of Litecoin and a Bitcoin enhanced by Lightning Network? Here, we take a look at three markets that can be fully revived by the arrival of cryptocurrency micropayments.
Easier digestion of media
Image Source: Statista
As the circulation of newspapers, among other forms of print media, continue to fail in competing with the juggernaut of the internet, microtransactions have risen to the fore as a potential solution generating revenue on a scale that readers will be happy with.
While some newspapers, like the New York Times of the US and Financial Times in the UK have embraced the use of a paywall to drive sales online, other outlets are considering the option of charging users a small price based on the articles they read.
Software startup, Blendle, aims to ‘do for journalism what iTunes did for music’, by pricing individual articles from between 22 cents to a little over one dollar per piece.
The logic behind Blendle’s ambitions is that the choice of allowing users to pay for only the content they want to see will be a more attractive proposition than going to the trouble of purchasing a subscription outright.
Ravi Somaiya, of The New York Times, wrote that business model for Blendle’s micropayments platform, and “the ability for readers to quickly buy individual articles with a minimum of form-filling, have long been a hope for a beleaguered news industry struggling to make ends meet online.”
Vending machine revival
The vending machine market is experiencing a similar decline to that of print media. While the industry is being leveraged by commercial machine installations, lower levels of public spending on snacks led to the disappearance of vending machines from 134,000 locations across the US between 2007 and 2010 - with sales sinking by over 11% in the same timeframe.
In a bid to curb this, businesses have scrambled to create their own cryptocurrency vending machines capable of accepting micropayments for its content.
‘Dash N’ Drink’ is the brainchild of Dustin Eward and Jeremy Maus, and is a vending machine powered solely by Dash (DASH) transactions.
Image Source: Investing.com
Utilising the InstantX technology that enables purchases via Dash to take place securely without the need for block confirmation, the Dash N’ Drink is capable of providing users with goods in return for their cryptocurrency investments.
While the crypto industry is filled with adopters, there are precious few outlets for them to spend their currency, and the implementation of crypto-literate vending machines can set users up with the chance to buy practical items in the form of everyday microtransactions.
Crypto vending machines may not only be the shot in the arm that the vending industry needs but could add an imperative layer of practicality to cryptocurrency investors.
Reinvigorated jobs market
The world is becoming increasingly freelance, and platforms like Humans.net have been swift to spot the trend of existing job market platforms failing to address the needs of its users.
The solution was to create a large-scale peer-to-peer ecosystem where machine learning is capable of finding willing workers and match them up with ideal prospective employers.
As part of the plan, such platforms will be wholly decentralised, with no middleman fees to pay and no commission. Instead, cryptocurrency will be used through website activity and then either exchanged or spent on one of the ecosystem’s many outlets - where microtransactions can be used for entertainment purchases, or within a large scale marketplace, or even in arranging meetings with business professionals or influencers.
While the plan is ambitious, it highlights the deep potential that microtransactions carry for the future of the jobs market, gig economy, and beyond. While the dust has barely settled on the Bitcoin surge of last year, it looks like it’s micropayments that hold the potential of dragging decaying industries towards a brighter future.