The chief scientist of blockchain firm nChain, Craig Wright, has indicated that Bitcoin could one day emerge as a major means of making automated payments for subscription services, similar to Patreon.
Asked by YouTuber ‘Philosophie Workout’ whether it would be possible to pay for subscription services such as Patreon on a regular basis, Wright answered in the affirmative. According to Wright this would require the use of smart contracts. Wright said:
What we need are people creating new apps, new smart contracts, new formats…
nChain’s chief scientist then added that with pre-signed transactions on Bitcoin it is possible for subscribers to automate the payments they need to make to subscription services allowing content creators to benefit from the work.
Why Not?
Wright also dismissed those who have previously said that this is an impossible task.
It can’t be done, people say. Well, of course it can. You just need to have a different template. I need to have one where it is signed to you so I pay 0.1 BTC every month. Or I can have a tokenized amount of US dollars that get paid to you every month or bitcoin. All these things are possible. But someone just needs to start thinking that they are possible and allowable…
This comes less than a month since Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision), which is backed by Wright, split from Bitcoin Cash. The nChain chief scientist indicated that the in two years Bitcoin SV will be processing terabyte-sized blocks.
Craig Wright Claims Bitcoin SV Will Process 1TB Blocks in Two Years https://t.co/Esjepom8Ub
— CCN (@CryptoCoinsNews) December 2, 2018
Wright prefers increasing block sizes as a scaling solution and has been vehemently opposed to other workarounds such as Lightning Network that take transactions off-chain.
Lightning Network’s Routing Problem
Last month Wright criticized Lightning Network and claimed that the scaling solution has a major weakness which will surface in 2019. On live radio, Wright accused the proponents of the Lightning Network of ignoring the ‘routing problem’ (essentially low success rates for transactions as the amount gets larger):
It’s a joke. That’s an easy way to put it. I mean, they keep ignoring the fact that the routing problem is actually insurmountable. You’ll never get around it. And worse than that, it has a major flaw that will be discovered next year.
Lightning Network’s routing problem received prominent media coverage mid this year following a report by digital assets newsletter Diar. According to the study, when sending a payment of a few dollars the probability of success is 70% while when the amounts are under 200% the probability of success falls dramatically to 1%.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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