I've seen this "public timestamping" use case before, which is a very interesting exploitation of BitCoin's mechanic.
It is curious, though, that it bears a micro-cost, even at a thousandth of a penny. I've often heard it said that BitCoin is unique as a currency in that the total quantity is inherently fixed; but in fact, it's destined to ever-so-slowly dwindle over time, whether due to public ledger uses, or the loss/destruction of private keys.
One-off transactions won't register as a blip, it's possible that some future use case might run at such a staggering scale (stock market micro-transactions?) that it leads to a financial tragedy of the commons and deflation runs rampant.
Not being doom-and-gloom, just an interesting thing to think about. Just as we now marvel at the naiveté of thinking that 4 billion IP addresses or 64K of RAM would be more than enough, I wonder if someday we'll look back the same way on the minimum transaction of 0.0000001 BTC.
It is curious, though, that it bears a micro-cost, even at a thousandth of a penny. I've often heard it said that BitCoin is unique as a currency in that the total quantity is inherently fixed; but in fact, it's destined to ever-so-slowly dwindle over time, whether due to public ledger uses, or the loss/destruction of private keys.
One-off transactions won't register as a blip, it's possible that some future use case might run at such a staggering scale (stock market micro-transactions?) that it leads to a financial tragedy of the commons and deflation runs rampant.
Not being doom-and-gloom, just an interesting thing to think about. Just as we now marvel at the naiveté of thinking that 4 billion IP addresses or 64K of RAM would be more than enough, I wonder if someday we'll look back the same way on the minimum transaction of 0.0000001 BTC.