Visa head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, envisions Bitcoin Satoshis as the internet native unit of account for transactions less than 1 cent. Sheffield made this claim through series of tweets, spurred on by a recent tweet by Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO.

1/ Fantastic thread from @brian_armstrong that got me thinking a lot about the relationship between dollars, cents, and sats and the consumer value proposition of Bitcoin micropayments enabled by the Lightning Network https://t.co/F8iWZuvc2D — Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) February 16, 2020

During Armstrong’s storm of tweets, he made a positive argument about Bitcoin’s capacity for micropayments using the lightning network.

He pointed out that, there is nothing that one can buy online for less than a penny, using dollars. Even with Bitcoin’s volatility and exponential growth, Sheffield believes users can still make micropayments in BTC, which can’t be made with dollars.

Rewards earned through video streaming, tip influencers or remove ads, usually cost a small amount of Satoshis. Sheffield noted that, if these small payments on the internet stays for long, we may see several internet users, even those without bitcoin knowledge, using Satoshis to pay for online content.

22/ You could imagine a consumer who doesn't care about or understand Bitcoin and keeps their digital wallet balance in dollars, could still know what a sat is and conduct dozens of sat denominated transactions online in addition to a few dollar denominated transactions each day. — Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) February 16, 2020

Sheffield believes that since the payment amounts could be as little as a 100th of a cent, users won’t mind buying or spending it. He added that the mental transaction costs of making such minimal purchases will not cost a drastic change in online behavior, like it might if paid in cents.

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