What if the true barrier to a world of seamless micropayments isn’t technological, but psychological? In this episode of Bitcoin Audible, we revisit Nick Szabo’s classic essay, “The Mental Accounting Barrier to Micropayments,” exploring why even with lightning-fast, low-cost Bitcoin transactions, the smallest payments might never take off as expected. Can new monetization models, AI agents, and value-for-value systems overcome the hidden costs in our minds-or will human cognition always set the lower bound on how small a transaction can be? Dive in as we unpack the unseen limits shaping the future of digital payments and online commerce.
Check out the original article: The Mental Accounting Barrier to Micropayments by Nick Szabo (Link: https://tinyurl.com/8r5cewhc)
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