https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/announcement-2
SMBC comics parts ways with their ad provider, leaving them without any income.
I really wish I could just pay with lightning to see content. Are there any easy to use lightning paywalls? Surely someone could write some simple JavaScript to do this. It doesn't need to be completely secure.
Paywalls don't work. Patreon-style subscriptions yes, but paywalls no.
Paywalls haven't been tried much with a payment method that doesn't suck.
Last year someone sent me a link to a video that needed an NFT to access. I wrote back, “How do I see this video without shitcoining?”
They do work. Someone made a demo and it's the first time I ever paid to read an article. It was like $0.25 USD worth of BTC. Paid over lightning with a qr code that was generated and the article instantly unlocked. I wish I could remember who or where I saw it, but someone has made one. It exists, and itwass magical to use. I would pay for a lot more content if it was always that easy.
Blog posts and JPGs can't have market prices. What stops me from paying the 25 cents once, taking a screenshot, and releasing it for everyone for free? 
https://dergigi.com/2022/12/18/a-vision-for-a-value-enabled-web/
"It doesn't make sense to charge for access to code or content, because it's not that too many people are consuming the good itself. It's the production—not consumption—of [content] that suffers from too much demand."
- Nadia Eghbal
Nothing stops you, but nothing stops you now. People could do that with the smbc comics. But the websites could have a "pay to remove ads" option.
Also, if there is a link to the article, there will be some amount of people who will pay the lightning invoice, if only to support the creator.
Does this one suck? It's similar to the one I tried years ago: https://yalls.org/articles/97d67df1-d721-417d-a6c0-11d793739be9:0965AC5E-56CD-4870-9041-E69616660E6F/729489e3-bda0-4eb0-8df1-c3a7053589b3
I have no affiliation with this site or the poster of that article, it's just an example of a LN paywall.
Yes, yalls.org is why I said paywalls hadn't been tried much. Not not at all!
It's pretty good. I just wish there was an easy way to implement that on, say, my blog.
Still can't find the one I was looking for. Did find this: https://rukundo.mataroa.blog/blog/i-built-a-blogging-platform-powered-by-the-lightning-network/
The repo is a but dated, but it might still work.
Thanks!
The technology isn't exciting to hackers. The sats aren't wanted by the artist. The cash modality is always swimming upstream online. Anything else requires trust and yet custodial services always operate under a pall of suspicion. Anyone who builds trust (exchanges) gets accosted by the state and KYC. The question is which of these to tackle first and what subset needs solving to make lightning paywalls great? Til then it's sell for fiat and do patreon.
Just needs a subtle zap button. Paywalls will turn away nocoiners. Has he posted a bitcoin address in the past? I would guess he is aware of bitcoin.
Yes, this can't come soon enough...
I think two things held it back : lightning network, which now Nostr is showing "existence proof" for working for micropayments.
Another factor might have been tax regulations; AFAIK it's still the case that technically, legally, and time you send crypto for anything you're supposed to report it on taxes. The receiving end (publication) would then have the same burden if they want to cash out into fiat. Who wants to have to report 1000's of $0.05 transactions each year?
Soooo I'm hoping the current Admin can at least address the 2nd point? Maybe that's a bit more important than the SBR?
The tax problem is easy to solve for the sender: get some AML/KYC Bitcoin and just don't report it.
For the receiver, it'd be regular income, so just sum it up and report it.
On the sender side, sure, I guess... But to me this sort of mirrors the debate between marijuana legalization vs decriminalization. Some people say "hey let's just decriminalize it, because *I'm* willing to take the risk scoring it..." But this is never going to hit mass adoption until average people have no "reasonable doubt" that the government isn't going to audit them for everyday spending with BTC.
On the receiver side, if they receive Sats, and they sell for Fiat, isn't that still a taxable event? Every single time? (IANAL and I get that you aren't either, but that's my understanding...)
Of course it's taxable. It's income.
Right, but if I'm a coffee shop owner, I don't have to calculate FIFO/LIFO for the cost basis for every transaction with fiat.
Technically I do if it's crypto. Customer pays for coffee using Bitcoin on a Tuesday, price is $82k. Now I want to convert that to fiat on a Saturday, price is now $85k. I'm now legally required to account for capital gains on that $3.00 transaction.
