[kbatten]

I don't see this as any different than buying something from amazon though, which anyone can do.

Micropayments are a problem, but as long as you buy a few dollars worth of reddit gold it is more akin to buying a gift card than a micropayment.

The psychological issues are valid, but I'm not seeing technological issues in this specific case.

[HeyImAlex]

But you go to amazon because you want to buy something, not because you're feeling benevolent, so the expectation of needing to jump through the hoop is there and the necessity of doing it is real. Plus, once you've gone through sign up once you never need to again.

Some site I've never been to before asks pretty please for 40 cents and I'm not about to go find my wallet (probably in my room across the house) grab my credit card and enter a ton of personal information into some strange form who's security I don't really trust, especially when I know the credit card processor is probably keeping 30c + 3%.

PayPal and similar help but then... I have to use paypal. If only I could just directly send the money (like bitcoin, from me to some address) with a token that the site provided me attached. Pretty sure a lot of people are working in this area to make it happen. I really think app-store ease of transactions with the open web will change things up for the better.

[Swizec]

That's the whole point. The psychological issues, not the technical issues.

As much as us geeks would love it to be, this is not a technical problem. This is a social/marketing problem.