"Quitting Bitcoin for Stellar was a wise decision," says SatoshiPay CEO

Meinhard Benn, the CEO of SatoshiPay commented on the causes behind the choice of the Stellar network - at the expense of the Bitcoin network - and what it holds for users in a recent interview with ForkLog.

The interview took place a few weeks before the announcement that the startup sitting in Berlin would make an initial public offering for an IPO on the London Stock Exchange AIM.

The micro-payment provider and cryptocurrency processing service SatoshiPay was created in 2014. Bitcoin (BTC) was a new concept, while the Lightning community had no prospects for the future. SatoshiPay is more or less considered a veteran of the virtual currency industry.

Based on the Stellar Network Blockchain, the SatoshiPay platform offers friction-free micro-payment that helps digital publishers monetize content around the world.

However, it has experienced some difficulties with the start-up supported by VC. Knowing that transaction fees and Bitcoin costs have increased over the past 12 months, SatoshiPay has had to look for more cost-effective alternatives and revise its technology to offer the best options to users.

The developers first turned to the IOTA protocol. However, SatoshiPay eventually opted for Stellar , as the platform could not be based on two Blockchains, being currently built on Stellar.

Meinhard Benn spoke candidly during ForkLog's exclusive interview. The interview was as follows:

Stellar's choice over IOTA

ForkLog: Hi Meinhard, we'd like to get some feedback on your decision to stop working with Bitcoin. Was the choice to turn to other options a purely monetary measure?

Meinhard Benn: Indeed, the price of Bitcoin has become very expensive. We have been under a lot of pressure to adopt a cheaper registry that can meet our needs.

ForkLog: You first opted for IOTA, but then you chose Stellar. What really happened?

Meinhard Benn: We had many options and different projects. Since IOTA was in Berlin and Domenic DominikSchiener, co-founder of IOTA, was there as well, we had a discussion and ended up concluding, "Okay, let's do a proof of concept or a prototype and see if IOTA can do what we have to do. "

We needed very little money, but a lot of quick and inexpensive transactions. So we made a prototype with IOTA and concluded that we had to wait a while before we could work with his distributed ledger. The challenge of working in the browser took longer than expected. For example, it took 20 seconds for the PoW to be executed, which is not practical for us.

Most of the time, the transactions did not take place, which also explains why we could not use them. What's more, we were looking for multisignature support and digital tokens at the protocol level. In my opinion, these features are still not available within the IOTA Blockchain. For all these reasons, we decided to look for another option. We sort of put IOTA on the list of long-term observations and ended up integrating Stellar. It responds imminently to all our requirements in terms of functionality.

ForkLog: Today SatoshiPay has completely integrated Stellar?

Meinhard Benn: Of course, the integration of Stellar officially started on December 7th. Also, we have some projects in common with the foundation. They support us and give free credits to our users - up to 50 XLM, or 12 euros per user, which is great.

Stellar technology has been operating for a few years. Even if it has its limitations - or rather a limited number of functions without a particular type of virtual machine or complete Turing language - it is structurally very sophisticated. Earlier, I stated that she had multisignature support, digital tokens, and an integrated decentralized market. It suits us perfectly.

ForkLog: So, the subject IOTA is definitely closed?

Meinhard Benn: we have no concrete project. We enter the market without really worrying about distributed ledger technology. Clearly, we're introducing new tools ... dashboards and deploying features for publishers that are not so much tied to Blockchain technology. We can say that we take things as they come, without perspective of evolution.

The contributions of SatoshiPay

ForkLog: Startups announce diverse things, disruptive applied sciences and promising options. When it comes to real-world use, things get complicated. Do you think SatoshiPay has become profitable with what you have undertaken?

Meinhard Benn: We have about 1,800 dynamic publishers and writers. Those who are really excited about publishing content material are a little less numerous. But they are still curious. We generate around 100,000 digital wallets and registrations each day. No matter the fraction of the system, the payment flow on the network remains regular. So obviously the platform is honorably saturated, and we are somehow overwhelmed by the amount of use cases. We must also focus on issues of commercial legality. Some people are trying to sell films or pictures that we have to watch before, which takes a lot of time.

ForkLog: Are you really supposed to view the content that people buy and sell?

Meinhard Benn: We are in contact with the publishers. We do not allow ourselves to tell them what they can sell. Nevertheless, we must make sure of the origin of the products sold. The publisher is responsible for the type of content being marketed, but SatoshiPay has to find the black sheep and say, "Unfortunately, we have to lock your account because you have to accept that some things are illegal. Fortunately, this rarely happens and most of the content sold is perfectly legitimate.

ForkLog: What are the most popular items purchased by your customers?

Meinhard Benn: E-books and PDF for the most part. We also have blog posts on WordPress that allow free preview. Users must pay the rest of the article. It's like the "Read More" button, but for that you have to pay a small amount of money.

ForkLog: Regarding end users, how is it going? Are Paypal refills activated by SatoshiPay last year still available, or are people supposed to buy XLMs first to gain access to the things that interest them?

Meinhard Benn: Users who do not hold any Stellar are free to charge with Paypal. Stellar Lumens (XLM) are sent in a digital browser wallet. In reality, users do not have to know anything about Blockchain or cryptocurrency. It sounds like some kind of game payment where they pay with a credit card or other payment system.

People can learn about Stellar Lumens for failing to recognize crypto-currencies in general. They can see their XLM address in the Stellar network and transactions, but do not need to know more. In fact, they usually do not realize it. They just know they have to recharge 20 digital tokens and spend one or two chips on different content.

What do you think of the SatoshiPay CEO interview? Comment in the comments section below.

---

Posted from our website
with SteemPress : https://infos.link/quitting-bitcoin-for-stellar-was-a-wise-decision-says-satoshipay-ceo/

---