The TRUTH about micropayments | What Kind of Internet Do You Want? (Season 2, Episode 1)
Channel: Open Index Protocol
Date: 29/06/2021

Micropayments may be the most controversial topic in the (technical) history of the internet. Micropayments for web monetization have been discussed since the very beginning of the web, there was even space left in the specification (code 402) because it was assumed they would become part of the protocol. And yet, 30 years later, micropayments have still not caught on. 

Thought leaders like Clay Shirky & Nick Szabo laid out strong arguments for why micropayments would never succeed 20 years ago, but could blockchain micropayments change this? Could micropayments using cryptocurrency be the solution? Can blockchain & distributed public ledgers like Bitcoin change this future technology and help contemporary media and digital content creators find alternative funding? 

New micropayment payments technology and web monetization applications like Coil are getting lots of attention from cryptocurrency news as the future of web 3.0.

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Special thanks to Grant for the Web for supporting this episode. Grant for the Web is a fund to boost open, fair, and inclusive standards and innovation in Web Monetization.

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Links
Ted's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTedNelson

Micropayments Demos:
https://youtu.be/imnOPo588rM
https://youtu.be/CKPmRLNjzeY
https://youtu.be/T9ZG-CcuaYQ

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Research:

The case against micropayments by Clay Shirky 
https://archive.is/LFUW4

Micropayments and Mental Transaction Costs by Nick Szabo 
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-mental-transaction-costs.pdf 

The case against micropayments by Andrew Odlyzko
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/case.against.micropayments.txt 

“The Case Against Micropayments” — From Fear and Surprise to The Comfy Chair by Richard Reisman
https://rreisman.medium.com/the-case-against-micropayments-from-fear-and-surprise-to-the-comfy-chair-e00bb81a696c 

The Future of Micropayments 2020 conference 
https://youtu.be/IykHlRfMskE 

Jaron Lanier on connected media & universal micropayments 
https://youtu.be/p1G3DHTLy3s 

Ooyala says micropayments loom large 
https://youtu.be/wiwoDl_LmU8 
Bismarck Lepe (founded Ooyala, formally at as google Senior Product Manager responsible for the development and launch of monetization products for the Google AdSense network

Blendle: Alexander Klopping June 10th 2015  
https://youtu.be/CyMXTslg130 

The case for micropayments by Jakob Nielsen 
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ 

Weaving the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee 

Microsoft Way book

W3C proposal https://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-Micropayment-Markup-19990825/

Chris Dixon podcast 

Loan Shark image by James Yang https://www.wsj.com/articles/loan-shark-a-name-borrowed-to-deliver-a-financial-bite-11558643116