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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

I think we really need microtransactions. Pay $0.05 to read this article? Sure. Whoever figures out the infrastructure for that (seems like it would be right up Stripe’s alley) is going to make trillions.

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The reason why ads work is consumers do not want to spend money now that they are conditioned to get stuff on the internet for free. Every time an article on here is posted the first comment is a link to archive.is.

I agree this would be a better model, but I don’t think it will ever happen. Maybe the Web3 stuff will catch on and this will become sustainable.

I think that we have enough hardware so that they user themselves provide the infrastructure, kind of how briar, peertube work

> Every time an article on here is posted the first comment is a link to archive.is.

Friction matters. Making an online payment is a slow 10 step procedure currently. If it was a single effortless click it would certinaly be used more. Kind of how arcade machines worked

That’s actually a really good point. I think I would be much more open to loading $100/mo or whatever into some account and then just one click “show me this article”. It could even use the same ad tech we already have with impression pixels. The impression is fired and on the backend it is deducted from your account.

I guess the issue becomes you will never have one solution and each website will integrate with different payment providers. Honestly sounds like something Apple could solve with ApplePay.

Nobody have seen Brave's model?

I think consumers are not reluctant to spend money. They are just averse to the friction of doing the paying. If nanopayments for e.g. reading a news article could become totally automated and transparent, I think this would work.

We are also conditioned that the stuff on the internet is an eyes-seeking bullshit nine times out of ten and there’s no way to mark a site, a blog or a section as “never again” so that you could know it next time. All this interaction of a user with the web is monopolized by few players who fuck them up in return. So it’s hard to blame a user for their reluctance.

This won't work, because it requires the user to build a mental budget each time they go online. That is the exact opposite of how internet use has worked since its inception.

Secondly, if there really was a big opportunity in enabling micro transactions, the main players (PayPal, Visa, etc) would already have some offering available after ~25 years of paying for stuff online.

Even infamous telco billing is more palatable than microtransactions. France’s Minitel system let services bill based on time spent on a page. That’s easy to use compared with having to type in your Apple password once again to pay $0.99 or even approve a $0 app because some parents blamed their kid for buying thousands of dollars of virtual game currency.

This is sort of a thing now with Bitcoin Lightning. You already can listen to podcasts and “stream” them a certain amount of money of your choosing. Called Value For Value and part of podcasting 2.0 spec. Whether this scales to entire internet I don’t know, but kindling is there.

I know one of the goals for Lightning Network was to cut transaction fees. Did that actually work out - is it realistic to pay someone $0.05 USD-equivalent in Bitcoin using Lightning? Or do I need to use an exchange/intermediary still?

Lightning is a bit of a difficult system to host yourself. But point is you set up something akin to a running total between you and your friends. The nice thing here is that, you only lose money when you total up at the end, like clearing all transactions and merging them into one. You are becoming your own Visa/Mastercard/ACH essentially.

You can certainly use a hosted wallet with lighting which is a sane alternative. There are still fees but only on cash ins and cash outs on the total amount tallied up between you and your friends when you chose to settle up in the form of BTC transaction fees. As far as I understand there are pretty much no transfer fees.

But I am just a novice interested in this tech. So correct me if I am wrong.

The alternative would be to use big block Bitcoin fork (like Bitcoin Cash). Last time I checked, average transaction fee is $0.008.

I personally use it sometimes to pay for some services with minimal transfer fee, but BCH can't seem to win the branding game against Bitcoin.

We already have enough content farms.

At least in this situation they'd be identifying themselves up front.

And you'd be identifying yourself up front to in order to pay.

Content farms work right now because ad views can't be refunded; by the time you've loaded the page (and realized you got tricked by clickbait/spam), it's too late and they already got paid.

A micropayment system where you are able to request refunds/dispute payments will break that model.

Micro-transactions will need to be $0.0001 or $0.00001, for it to ever gain acceptance.

I've recently used Axate (www.axate.com) on a news website. You top up credit, and then pay per article.

I don't want to top up, I just want to be charged directly.

Also "Which sites are using Axate?", I don't recognize any of the sites on that list.

I don't think it will ever be feasible to be charged directly, transaction fees are just way too high (and it's only marginally better on the crypto side). A postpaid system would work I suppose, ie you pay your total at the end of the month. But postpaid usually involves a credit check (in north america at least), so prepaid is really the only universal option.

A bigger problem with paying directly is taxes. Sales taxes and VAT for online sales are often required to be collected by the seller for the buyer’s jurisdiction. If you sell your online content directly to consumers you potentially have to deal with taxes in hundreds of different jurisdictions.

Going through third parties can make it so they are the ones that handle the tax nightmare.

Maybe we 'll have it with CBDCs which, among others, won't be able to demonetize you for arbitrary reasons

This is one thing Ted Nelson was hung up on. It’s tough to solve.

Remember flattr?

I thought this was a use case for cryptocurrency! Hahaha!

You joke, but this is exactly what I was hoping Brave was doing:

- become the gateway for advertisement money

- make it opt-in and share the revenue with users that see the ads.

- make it easy for the users to redistribute this earned money with the content creators they like.

Yeah, you are going to tell me that this could be done without crypto, and I will respond that micropayments are still not solved.

I will accept a criticism about Brave sticking with the token, though - they could've gone with a stabletoken and their business model would seem a lot more legit.

15 years ago I worked at Radio Shack in a mall. A woman and her daughter were looking for a cell phone.

We sold Verizon cell phone them with a 2 year contract which got you around 400 off the price. The cheapest phone with a contract was $29.00

In the mall were kiosks that sold a slight lower model phone with a tmobile contract but it was free. She asked me if we had any free phones, I said no, and she made a noise and walked out.

$30 for something you'll have for two years and we had a better service (verizon coverage) vs free

Verizon coverage isn't important to everyone: if you don't go to rural areas, it won't be that useful to you.

My example, a real story, was to illustrate that money often drives purchase decisions even if the amount is low and the benefits better.

She didn't ask about what service we had, the benefits, etc

>She didn't ask about what service we had, the benefits, etc

Maybe she already knew and wasn't as clueless and uninformed as you assumed.

I don't want to drag this on. I didn't provide enough information because I was trying to keep it simple.

We were the only store that sold Verizon, the mall kiosks had ATT. The other variables weren't fixed and she was simply cross shopping phones. However you're right I am making assumptions, I took her huff to mean that she was focusing on the price of the phone and nothing else

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