Comment by 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?

9 comments

gessha

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__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.

    • imiric  11 days ago

      A middleman is not strictly required for cryptocurrencies. Regulations around them and how international transactions are taxed will depend on each country, just like anything else. These matters can be handled by lawyers and accountants as usual.

      While I agree that cryptocurrencies are not strictly required for this, the infrastructure already exists to support micropayments, and is well understood and trusted. What infrastructure could support the same use cases for fiat micropayments? Would it be as low friction to setup and use as cryptocurrencies are today? Would it be decentralized and not depend on a single company?

      I'm as tired as anyone else about the cryptocurrency hype and the charlatans and scammers it has enabled. But I also think it's silly to completely ignore the technology and refuse to acknowledge that it has genuine use cases that no other system is well suited for. Micropayments and powering novel business models on the web is one clear example of that.

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    • PinkSheep  11 days ago

      "I" pick a middleman like VISA and my regulatory headaches begin with THEIR policies on top of regulatory headaches.