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If payments had been built into the structure of the internet, they could have been done in an optional way. Per memory, that's how the original RFCs looked? W
by ethbr0 6y ago
If payments had been built into the structure of the internet, they could have been done in an optional way. Per memory, that's how the original RFCs looked?
Which means you still would have had free content, as well as paid.
The fascinating historical bit is when you follow the cross-border issue... it would have required efficient, scalable (small to large amounts) international monetary transfers between individuals.
And that would have been as, or more, transformational than the internet.
CoL arbitrage. Individual international mobility. Remittance fee slashing. In the late 1980s. The mind boggles.
- pjc50 6y ago> it would have required efficient, scalable (small to large amounts) international monetary transfers between individuals. That would have caused it to face even bigger barriers to adoption, surely? The UK only just abolished capital controls in 1979: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_Controls_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_Controls_in_the_Unite... The current cryptocurrency system (cryptography itself was subject to arms control until 1991!) relies on being able to use a credit card to transfer real money to a (usually foreign) exchange, do some transactions, and then receive a wire back with the real money. All of which are products of the Internet itself.
- ethbr0 6y agoIt would have! But the other way to look at it is that the benefit of the internet was so great over what came before, that it might have had a chance of succeeding!