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One of the cooler takes of Bitcoin or "crypto" is that you can use native tokens to pay for visiting websites. A browser plugin combined with a lightning wallet

One of the cooler takes of Bitcoin or "crypto" is that you can use native tokens to pay for visiting websites. A browser plugin combined with a lightning wallet for instance could enable a website to request a payment of any amount of Satoshis to view the site, or it will redirect you to a 402 error page. This generates a way of monetizing content without the need for ads or tracking.

koonsolo 4y ago
But then you need something like Nano instead of Bitcoin, which has 0 fees. Ideal for such micro transactions.
dmtryshmtv 4y ago
This is implemented in the Brave browser.
freddie_mercury 4y ago
I'm not sure something that actively incentivises writers blather on endlessly, bury the lede, split their content over dozens of pages, slightly raising the price knowing that people will become densensitised to reading your per page costs, lock final review scores behind more expensive paywalls than the lower priced intro pages, and who knows what other dark patterns will be invented all while forcing me to make a determination every fifteen seconds on "is this worth the price they just asked?" is supposed to be a cool thing. If you thought recipe articles were terrible today, just wait until you have to pay 0.01 for their life story and then 0.03 for the ingredients only to discover that it will cost you another 0.15 for the actual instructions.
Dylan16807 4y ago
Micropayments existed long before bitcoin and adding a blockchain mostly just makes them more awkward.
ETH_start 4y ago
Crypto in general yes, but the lightning network specifically no. It's utterly impractical for most users, unless you use a third party hosted wallet, in which case almost all the benefits of crypto, like anti-lock-in and jurisdiction-agnoticism, go away. Crypto-powered micropayments could potentially massively boost revenue for content creators, including socially valuable platforms such as news sites.
CyberDildonics 4y ago
Bitcoin has a throughput of 1 KB/s for the entire world, so it will never be used for micro transactions.

koonsolo 4y ago

But then you need something like Nano instead of Bitcoin, which has 0 fees. Ideal for such micro transactions.

dmtryshmtv 4y ago

This is implemented in the Brave browser.

freddie_mercury 4y ago

I'm not sure something that actively incentivises writers blather on endlessly, bury the lede, split their content over dozens of pages, slightly raising the price knowing that people will become densensitised to reading your per page costs, lock final review scores behind more expensive paywalls than the lower priced intro pages, and who knows what other dark patterns will be invented all while forcing me to make a determination every fifteen seconds on "is this worth the price they just asked?" is supposed to be a cool thing. If you thought recipe articles were terrible today, just wait until you have to pay 0.01 for their life story and then 0.03 for the ingredients only to discover that it will cost you another 0.15 for the actual instructions.

Dylan16807 4y ago

Micropayments existed long before bitcoin and adding a blockchain mostly just makes them more awkward.

ETH_start 4y ago

Crypto in general yes, but the lightning network specifically no. It's utterly impractical for most users, unless you use a third party hosted wallet, in which case almost all the benefits of crypto, like anti-lock-in and jurisdiction-agnoticism, go away. Crypto-powered micropayments could potentially massively boost revenue for content creators, including socially valuable platforms such as news sites.

CyberDildonics 4y ago

Bitcoin has a throughput of 1 KB/s for the entire world, so it will never be used for micro transactions.