Where does this preoccupation with payments come from all of a sudden? Personally I don't want "payments" implemented in my web browser, and I seriously doubt that that would be in anyone's interest.
I found it pretty eye opening to be able to make payments freely and (practically) pseudonomously, in contrast to which all other digital payments systems are heavily permissioned. Crypto UI may not be great but try sending a wire internationally in the banking system and you are presented with 2-3 massively leaky abstractions (why should I the consumer have to research the difference in ACH, electronic wire) with various fees, delays, and possible invisible censorship issues (blacklists, whitelists, reports triggered) PER bank.
I make international payments pretty often and have never been presented with a leaky abstraction, suffered from "censorship" or anything like that. "Permissioned" is simply a consequence of that fact that most countries establish barriers to the free movement of people, goods and capitals in and out of their territory. You're not going to solve that with technology, because it's not a technological problem. It's not even clear that it's a problem.
I’m sure many people haven’t experienced that kind of censorship but lots of people have. I used to play online poker which was made illegal in the US through payment channel crackdowns(for reasons at best paternalistic but realistically just physical casino lobbying). Given that the internet facilitates pretty much any kind of information transfer I have to ask mysef is it more likely the future will be a future where I can only transfer value by requesting 20th C institutions to proxy for me or is it more likely I will be able to freely transfer value in my own right.
If you're talking about transmitting money, it's a regulated activity in the US. [1] If you think that you will be able to bypass regulations by using crypto-currencies and suffer no consequences, I think you're in for a surprise.
Ah! I can kind of see the idea, but crypto seems... kind of overengineered for that?
There was flattr [1] a while ago, with a similar concept, but it didn't really take off. I'm not sure a more complicated solution with a higher barrier of entry would.
