> Crypto continues to help nobody and achieve nothing in the real world
It's kind of surprising how little progress has been made.
It is absolutely possible to use privacy-respecting low-fee tokens to purchase ebooks, purchase "no advertisement" article reads, or subscribe to periodicals.
Even something like Taler is better than Visa and Mastercard. I would love to know why lwn.net, ars, or the register don't try. I would absolutely pay $0.25-$2.00 per read for the ~50 articles I read per month on these websites.
Micropayments for tech readers seems like a good place to start. Tech readers use ad blockers, but are also willing to try new tools with janky UX.