Bitcoin and Machine-to-Machine Payments: The Internet of Value

As machines become more autonomous, they will need to pay for resources in real-time. Bitcoin’s Lightning Network enables microtransactions between machines at a scale and speed previously impossible. This is the Internet of Value — and it’s already starting.

The M2M Payment Problem

Consider an autonomous electric vehicle:

Energy consumption: The car drives, uses electricity. It needs to pay for charging at any station, in any country, instantly.

Toll roads: Autonomous vehicles will pay tolls automatically. No human stopping, no credit card. Machine-to-machine payment.

Maintenance: The car schedules its own service, pays for repairs, orders parts. All automatically.

Insurance: Pay-per-mile insurance requires the car to transmit mileage data and pay premiums. Automated.

Data storage: The car stores data in edge computing nodes. Pays for storage and bandwidth.

Currently, none of this is practical at scale because payment infrastructure can’t handle millisecond-level, sub-cent M2M transac