@joepie91

i think it would.
many are unbanked.
bitcoin is also about no more money printing beyond 21 million.

not saying its needed, but... i guess those are the "ideas". 🤷‍♀️

@serapath My question is very specifically about it 'catching on', though. Sure, it would have probably *existed*, but the early broad adoption was primarily driven by frustrations with the US banking system, and the then-promises of lower transaction fees.

I'm not sure it would have ever reached that point of mass interest if it weren't for the terrible banking structures in the US inviting people to look for alternatives. Only very few people ever cared about the *philosophical* underpinnings really.

@serapath (Also, "unbanked" is a bit of a misnomer because these metrics often include people who *do* have access to eg. mobile payment systems that functionally act as a bank for them, but just aren't recognized as such by eg. the ECB or Federal Reserve)

@joepie91

I assume it is cheaper and faster than traditional bank transfers to anywhere around the world.

bitcoin itself is probably quite expensive if you send small amounts, but lightning has almost no fees at all and i have never seen the kind of micropayments nostr supports and calls "zaps".

people share them like "likes" ...worth fractions of cents

@serapath Anywhere within SEPA, bank transfers are typically free, including internationally; and stuff like Wise is also very low-cost and, crucially, much simpler and faster to use than cryptocurrencies.

Like, that's the whole thing with cryptocurrencies and so many things like it that are hyped - sure, they do something that could be useful, but they don't actually do it *better* than the things that already exist.

(Also, I'm extremely not a fan of trying to 'monetize' social interactions. It creates toxic dynamics. I'd consider that an anti-feature.)

@joepie91

i havent seen a social network yet or any payment platform that allows to pay fractions of cents to others by pressing "like".

Integrating a servixe like paypal or stripe or others into an app is also quite a bit of an undertaking depending on what features you want.

So i assume thats something where things never tet managed to became developer or usee friendly enough then?

@serapath No, literally, it's just a terrible idea. Attaching monetary value to social interactions makes things worse for everybody. It shouldn't be done.

(Flattr did try something similar in the past and it was a failure)

@joepie91

why did flattr fail?
i mean given how underfunded open source is, it doesnt sound too bad to allow people to tip and support folks.
also, not everyone is a coder, some people make different things.

i dont have a strong opinion on it, but who knows, maybe it can help with getting more ppl funded 🤷‍♀️

@serapath Flattr failed due to a combination of low interest (it wasn't worth it for people for tiny amounts), and the operation of the service itself not being sustainable with the low revenue.

And yes, supporting people's work is a good thing, but that is crucially something *very* different from "attaching monetary value to social interactions", and you don't need tiny microtransactions for that. Entirely different problem space.

While donation systems as they exist today certainly are not perfect, the funding issues people have broadly aren't technical in nature. They're a mix of political, cultural, and most of all "if a bunch of capitalists are hoarding all the money, there's simply not a lot of money to go around". Those are the real problems that need to be addressed, and you can't do that with an app.

(A big part of the cultural issue is actually that people think of donations as a special case of payments, in terms of "you need to distribute donations across everyone whose work you enjoy"; in reality that model doesn't make sense for donations at all, it just needs to work out on the whole and it doesn't actually matter who sends money to who.)