And the publishers can quantify how much it gets.

With the volatility of crypto assets this is not a viable solution for the publisher, especially because readers who have an ad-blocker installed are likely to block the mining script as well.

This is a publicity stunt. Nothing more, nothing less.

In practice, people have been wishing for a well-functioning micropayment system for well over twenty years and the best we have to show for it is PayPal. Flattr seemed like a good idea, mostly, but for some reason it tanked, too (AFAIK).

Either people are not interested in creating one that works, or the problem is really, really hard.

I agree but until that exists this is the best thing we have. It's the only way you can pay cents without doing anything else than click a button.

    Better to evolve a micropayments model that works