Comment by trollbridge

11 days ago

Something like BAT isn't that wasteful, and without crypto you'd be stuck never getting paid by bad actors in the scheme.

10 comments

trollbridge

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gessha  11 days ago

But why exactly does it have to be on an append-only ledger where transactions are processed/validated for a fee? Why can’t it be a more conventional transaction processor like VISA on top of the banking system?

  • __MatrixMan__  11 days ago

    Because conventional transaction processors can be compelled to shut off payments to publishers whose content offends the powerful. Just look at what happened to wikileaks.

    • troyvit  10 days ago

      Seriously. Conventional transaction processors are the problem, not the solution. They can pick favorites and shut off payments for non-favorites, change their TOS, hit you with surprise transaction fees, randomly suspend your account, insert middlemen, etc. etc.

    • onesociety2022  10 days ago

      Crypto is not going to save you there. If some country like India wants to ban content from some publishers, they can do so by just asking their ISPs to ban all traffic to said publishers. Whether the publisher accepts micropayments on crypto rails or conventional rails is immaterial. They are not going to be able to distribute their content anymore and hence not get paid either.

  • dboreham  11 days ago

    Because Visa doesn't (hasn't) wanted to do microtransactions, ever, since the beginning of the internet.

    • tzs  11 days ago

      You still don't need cryptocurrencies.

      You just need a middleman that aggregates micropayments into large enough amounts to work with non-micropayment systems.

      Some might object to having to get middlemen involved, but the thing is that even with cryptocurrency payments you are going to need middlemen because the web is international.

      If your website is directly charging crawlers to crawl and you get crawled and paid by any crawler from another country, congratulations! You are now engaged directly in international trade and have a whole slew of regulations to deal with, probably from both your country and the country the crawler is from.

      If you go through a middleman you can structure things so it is the middleman that is buying crawler access from you. Pick a middleman in your country (or anywhere in the EU of you are in the EU) and most of your regulatory headaches go away.

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