To investors,
There has been a rise in interest for audience funded content over the last few years. Some of this has been driven by a decreasing trust in the mainstream media. Some of it has been facilitated by the explosion in tools and services aimed at helping individuals create and distribute content more easily. And some of it is an attempt to create content that is immune from advertiser pressure.
Regardless of the reason, it is hard to miss the increasing number of paywalls around the internet. Two of the most popular services for email paywalls are Substack and Ghost. These products allow an individual to create content, deliver it to their readers’ inbox, and receive payment in exchange.
As Jack Dorsey pointed out over the weekend, there are trade-offs between these services.
Substack is a centralized, closed-source software service that uses Stripe for payment processing. Ghost is an open-source software service that uses Stripe for payment processing. I am personally a fan of Substack from the user perspective, but both products are effective at serving their customers.
The identification of Stripe as a crucial centralized point is important. It is true in both the closed-source and open-source model. Substack obviously recognizes this because they have added bitcoin payment integration using OpenNode. My guess is that Ghost, who currently has all payment APIs closed, will eventually add bitcoin payments as well.
But what would the world look like if individuals didn’t want to wait on Substack, Ghost, or any service provider to create bitcoin-enabled paywall infrastructure?
Strike, the payment infrastructure company focused on the Lightning Network, held a hackathon recently where someone created a product called PlebPay. This allows anyone in the world to create a paywall, for any piece of content, instantaneously and with no payment processing fee. The beauty of this product is that it leverages the Lightning Network, so you can require micropayments as small as $0.01 for someone to view the desired content.
Here is an example:
Click here to access the video via the paywall. You’ll see that with the scan of a simple QR code, you can pay $0.01 and immediately watch the hilarious video of young Jack Mallers. There was no need for YouTube to create paywall support. There was no requirement for YouTube to integrate with Bitcoin or the Lightning Network.
This is what the future of the internet looks like. A decentralized, digital payment system that is built on open-source software, which is continuously improved on to facilitate global, frictionless, free payments.
This idea of decentralization around payments is really important. We don’t need to accept the fact that payments will forever be a centralized point of failure. There is a better solution in bitcoin. The layer one technology is well understood, but quickly the world is going to wake up to the superiority of the Lightning Network as well.
I don’t know what use cases internet users will come up with for PlebPay. It feels exciting though to have the capability of adding micropayments to any internet action with just a few clicks of a button. Companies have spent decades trying to figure out how to build this type of functionality, but an engineer built this functionality in approximately 4 hours at a hackathon. The revenue model for businesses online is rapidly shifting and the era of advertising is under pressure. Advertising won’t go away, but the trend of audience-funded content is only beginning.
We are watching an innovation in the payment industry that is truly zero to one. There is nothing from the legacy system that can remotely compete. These early iterations look like a toy today, but they will be the basis for global disruption in the future. Hindsight will be 20/20. You just have to squint hard enough to see where we are going right now. But the light at the end of the tunnel is there. I can’t wait to see it come to fruition.
Go check out PlebPay and set up a paywall for something on the internet. Send me the link and I’ll pay a small fee to help you experience the magic :)
Have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
-Pomp
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THE RUNDOWN:
Google Cloud Hiring Team of Blockchain Experts: Google Cloud is hiring a team of blockchain experts to capitalize on the move to decentralized Web 3 applications, the company wrote in a blog post Thursday. While tech and cloud giants such as Google and Amazon represent the heights of Web 2 centralization, Google is seeing the opportunity presented by newer decentralized blockchain technologies. Read more.
State Senator Introduces Bill to Make Bitcoin Legal Tender in Arizona: A bill introduced in Arizona would make bitcoin legal tender in the state in the unlikely event that the legislation passes and the law goes into effect. The bill, SB 1341, was introduced by state Sen. Wendy Rogers, a Republican. It seeks to amend the list of accepted legal tender to include bitcoin, which means the cryptocurrency would be accepted for the payment of debt, public charges, taxes and other dues. Read more.
Bitcoin Miner Greenidge’s NY Power Plant Permit Delayed: The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) has delayed its decision whether it will allow Greenidge Generation to continue to use its power plant in the town of Dresden for bitcoin mining, Bloomberg reported. The decision is now expected to come by March 31, two months later than originally planned, the report said. Read more.
The Unhosted Crypto Wallet Rule Is Back: A controversial proposed rule that would enforce know-your-customer rules on unhosted or self-hosted crypto wallets may again be under consideration by the U.S. federal government. The rule was first proposed at the end of 2020 by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the U.S. money-laundering watchdog. If enacted, crypto exchanges would be required to collect names and home addresses, among other personal details, from anyone hoping to transfer cryptocurrencies to their own private wallets. Read more.
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Micropayments Reduce Centralized Risk