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I've heard it argued that a huge flaw of the big protocols like HTTP is that they chose to be entirely unopinionated about payments. Apparently standards bodies

I've heard it argued that a huge flaw of the big protocols like HTTP is that they chose to be entirely unopinionated about payments. Apparently standards bodies did discuss standards for microtransactions, for example W3C's abandoned efforts: https://www.w3.org/ECommerce/Micropayments/ https://www.w3.org/ECommerce/Micropayments/

SkyMarshal 5y ago
Being opinionated about payments is not the same thing as building a speculative digital currency into your protocol.
giantrobot 5y ago
When HTTP was first developed there was literally no available mechanism for micro-transactions. If HTTP had been opinionated about micro-transactions it would have been stuck with Beenz [0] or Flooz [1]. Personally I don't want an application layer protocol, especially a global standard, to be opinionated about payment methods. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com