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Ron Rivest Suggests Probability-Based Micropayments

Posted by timothy on from the for-large-values-of-maybe dept.

Karl J. Smith writes "Rivest has solved the micropayments problem with encryption and statistics. You throw away some transactions so that you don't have to pay bank fees, and process the rest. Hiawatha Bray has written an article and Rivest's new company is PepperCoin."

2 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. What a strategy by expro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, that is the way to make micropayments take off: patent them.

  2. Re:Nice idea but... by James_Duncan8181 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It is a neat idea, but what does it do that a prepayment card does not? Think beenz.com or similar. This also pays in bulk - the customers pay for the web currency and beenz pay the merchant for all purchases in one lump sum, so fees are not an issue.

    Same old, same old?

    --
    "To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."