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Comment by M4v3R | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this idea is that with current Bitcoin protocol implementation it will not work. As of Bitcoin 0.8.2 the network doesn't relay transactions with "dust" outputs - transactions that are sending 0.00005430 BTC or less [1]. This check was implemented, ironically, to prevent spam, because one could flood the network with one-satoshi transactions which could take much space and bandwidth.

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2577

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As far as I understand, sending amounts smaller than the dust cutoff does not violate the network protocol. The difficulty is in finding miners who are using software that deviates from version 0.8.2 by not performing this check, and will include the micro transaction in blocks they mine. I'm only 85% confident about this though.

Yes. That's correct. You would've had to find a miner to include the transactions in the blockchain. However, in upcoming versions, setting output as OP_RETURN (which basically allows you to embed additional data) will be a standard transaction type, but immediately prunable. Hence, for the 'currency' part of Bitcoin these transactions won't form part of the bloat, but nodes that want to keep track of it, can (https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=290).

Miners will still choose whether to include them or not (being a good citizen and adding a tx fee is still recommended), but now other nodes will relay them so they can find their way to a miner. Other Bitcoin developers can correct me if I'm wrong.

Wouldn't it be possible to implement an option to send a really small amount per wallet per week? This would prevent people from flooding the blockchain, but it would still allow to send small amounts.

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