Obviously you are aware of this, but here is a concrete example of micropayments in practice:
When I use (for example) Vultr cloud compute (https://www.vultr.com/), I load my Vultr account with $10 via credit card. Once the money enters the account it remains there until it is spent
Then I pay 1 or 2 cents each hour for a cloud instance. At the end of each month, Vultr tells we what's due if I exceed what remains in the account. If necessary I load more money in
This kind of simple micropayment scheme (with a trusted entity holding upfront credit card payments) is widely implemented
If you are willing to trust an intermediary (and most people are) then distributed ledgers (blockchains) are unnecessary
The benefit of Bitcoin (or blockchains generally) is that you don't need to trust anyone. In 2009 this was considered important, but today, does anyone care?
The example given (Vultr) is equivalent to a Starbucks card. You’re prepaying a company for a service. The transaction is the prepayment. How you use that balance is now irrelevant.
Micro transactions to a range of different independent businesses requires using existing payment networks (visa / MasterCard / etc: relatively expensive; crypto: lack of widespread adoption) or building a new payment network.
> If you are willing to trust an intermediary (and most people are)
We already do. It’s called the bank. We also have regulation that helps. How many people keep real money in their personal PayPal accounts? How many people can even afford to?
EDIT: I retract my Vultr / Starbucks equivalence.
> At the end of each month, Vultr tells we what's due if I exceed what remains in the account. If necessary I load more money in
Starbucks will not let your spend exceed your deposits on your card. Your statement suggests Vultr will. Credit accounts are a whole other risk. What happens if you don’t pay off your balance after you’ve already consumed the service?
The difference is due at the end of the month. If I didn't pay, they would simply charge the last credit card I used to load the account (I suppose)
Another example: Linode (https://www.linode.com/) charges my credit card at the end of each month, to cover my usage. So a $5 cloud instance isn't paid for until the month ends. The point is to aggregate a whole month of spending into a single credit card payment
> The benefit of Bitcoin (or blockchains generally) is that you don't need to trust anyone. In 2009 this was considered important, but today, does anyone care?
I dont see how this is any less relevant today than it was 12 years ago.
When I use (for example) Vultr cloud compute (https://www.vultr.com/), I load my Vultr account with $10 via credit card. Once the money enters the account it remains there until it is spent
Then I pay 1 or 2 cents each hour for a cloud instance. At the end of each month, Vultr tells we what's due if I exceed what remains in the account. If necessary I load more money in
This kind of simple micropayment scheme (with a trusted entity holding upfront credit card payments) is widely implemented
If you are willing to trust an intermediary (and most people are) then distributed ledgers (blockchains) are unnecessary
The benefit of Bitcoin (or blockchains generally) is that you don't need to trust anyone. In 2009 this was considered important, but today, does anyone care?
No