w.r.t bitcoin being the new payment method, so far bitcoin hasn't enabled the really game changing thing: frictionless micropayments. It's possible that lighting networks will enable this (load up your browser with 5 bucks and lock that up in a connection to the LN, pay for articles then pay 1 cent to skip ads, buy premium features one at a time etc), but we haven't seen this yet.
Having read the Scott McCloud book that focused on micropayments almost 20 years ago, and having seen so very many people try something and have it go nowhere, I've come to the conclusion that micropayments are simply never going to be a thing.
My guess is, at the end of the day, people don't want to think about money transactions when doing ordinary things. You know that word "gamify"? Adding badges and shit to things to make tedious things "fun"? Micropayments do the opposite. Transactifying your ordinary processes makes them less fun because you're constantly thinking about spending money. It just adds friction, even just cognitive friction, when everything we do is about reducing it.
I think this is also why Patreon is taking off. People don't think about paying a penny to read a single comic, they just toss a few bucks at a comic artist each month.
What do you think about non-human actors interacting through micropayments? Either your computer acting in your interests with a small sum of money, or autonomous agents that live through a couple hours of compute at the cheapest price & keep their own wallet.
