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Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

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Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#331

Post by servo_sausage »

bitwarrior wrote: post #164

Micropayments is something that I think the internet as a whole needs. However, I don't think the mental model people usually have isn't quite "micro" and frictionless enough. Imagine a world where your web browser essentially contains and controls your wallet. You pre-pay into that wallet, say, $20. I imagine we'll probably also refer to that as "credits" so internationalization isn't so tough. So let's pretend we h…

If I'm publishing something, I want maximum revenue.

If I can guarantee repeat customers then I can make the reader the sole focus, but if I still have to maximise based on capricious trends and search indexing, then I'll probably maximse the payment, the adds, and sell your data as well.

Subscription services are probably the only way, unless we see a consolidation of hosts with a consistent brand and quality, enough to trust a micro transaction will get something of the quality I expect.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#333

Post by exe34 »

munificent wrote: post #234

Let's say a journalist writes an excellent article about something political of serious import. I'm fine with paying for that article to get access to it. But, really, the article is a lot more useful to me if other people can access it too. Since everyone can vote, I want the whole populace to be informed, even poor people. I wonder if there is a viable business model where for each article, readers can pay to unloc…

Elon musk and Peter Thiel will just pay for all the conspiracy theories.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#335

Post by littlecranky67 »

sanswork wrote: post #172
littlecranky67 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transaction fees for bitcoin sent via the lightning network (which is a layer 2 solution) are in the "less than a cent" category and are settled in a few seconds. This is not fiction, this is i.e. how Trump made his for-the-cameras bitcoin payment during his campaign.

Lightning isn't even a good solution for most diehard bitcoin users. It's a failed project. It would take 27 years to onboard every internet user to the lightning network unless you start adding level 3 aggregators and then at that point you lose all the benefit of it being on chain at all. It would take almost 2 years just to onboard every American assuming during that time there were zero other bitcoin transactions…

You mistake is, you overestimate the amount of people who want to be self custodial. You don't need to onboard every human being in the world on-chain.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#336

Post by littlecranky67 »

sanswork wrote: post #249
fruitworks wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The throughput is arbitrarialy limited by bitcoin's current block size, which hasn't been increased since satoshi's era. Most cryptocurrencies have an adaptive block-size mechanism which allows the blocks to grow to a reasonable size which could facilitate such an onboarding of users. So it isn't a technical problem, it is just a question of bitcoin's current leadership, which is controlled by companies like blockstr…

People have been debating the blocksize for a very long time now and there doesn't seem to be any large desire to change it so while the ability to increase it exists changing anything that fundamental about bitcoin seems to be a non-starter and while that is true lightning is pointless as a solution for the masses. Even if you increase the block size 100x though you're still not improving the numbers much since my v…

It is not the blocksize. The throughput of transaction on the lightning network is not at all limited by blocksize or the bitcoin blockchain.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#338

Post by atoav »

contravariant wrote: post #104
dynm wrote: post #65

There is a lot of hate for the idea of micropayments here, so I'd like to offer a counterpoint. I use a service that provides access to a bunch of different LLMs. Each time I call an LLM I, in effect, pay a $0.001 - $0.05 for the response. (Technically, this is implemented as me having to renew earlier.) Each time I make a call, I don't know if the answer will be useful. I don't even know how much it will cost! And i…

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

A particular aspect of the discussion is also: What makes you trust that once micropayments are around ads will stop? Look at other services, like Netflix for example. They will happily have you pay and show you ads if they feel they can get away with it.

I am not at all against paying for journalism (I already do in many ways), but IMO, it would be best if there was a way to pay money to one place and then have it go to all journalistic media that deserves that name and has a track record of not being factually wrong multiple times per day.

Thinking about how journalism ought to be payed in this day and age also means to think about what kind of journalism we want to incentivise and which one we want to disincentivise. What we need is the kind that is factually correct and a check to the most wealthy and powerful people, organisations, companies and countries on earth. What we don't need is the kind that is captured by exactly those people, the kind that bends reality to stoke the lowest impulses etc.

With this in mind, we should think about how to design a incentive structure that makes that result benefitial, while all others are unsupported.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#339

Post by alfredz0x »

Relevant data point: built httpay.xyz which applies this model beyond news to any API. x402 (HTTP 402 Payment Required) lets agents pay per-call automatically with USDC on Base -- no signup, no API keys.

Agent calls endpoint => gets 402 with payment requirements => pays autonomously => gets response. 121 endpoints so far ($0.001-$0.005 each).

First real paying users came in this week. The agents paid, got the data, moved on. Exactly as intended.

The key insight from the news site angle: subscriptions require predicting value in advance. Per-call payments flip that -- you only pay for what you actually use. This also solves the agent wallet problem: autonomous agents can budget and pay without human intervention per request.

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