Absolutely. You're 1000% correct. Cryptocurrency is way too high friction for stuff like that. When I wish to spend crypto, I need to:

[If you don't have an exchange account already, you'll need the 0.x steps too!]

0.0 Create an account on an exchange which is legally allowed to operate in your state/country;

0.1 Provide all sorts of KYC/AML info including photos of yourself and your government ID;

0.2 Wait hours/days/weeks for the exchange to "validate" your KYC/AML info and allow you to purchase crypto;

1. Log in to an exchange which is actually allowed to operate in the place where one resides;

2. Purchase Bitcoin or other coin the exchange deems appropriate (leaving aside the hefty fee charged for using fiat currency/traditional credit card);

3. Wait days/weeks until the exchange allows you to transfer the purchased cryptocurrency out of your exchange-hosted wallet;

4. Transfer crypto to a wallet you actually control;

5. Convert the crypto purchased on the exchange to the crypto coin required for whatever your purpose may be;

6. Transmit the crypto to the destination wallet.

Total time (not including setting up the exchange account, which can take anywhere from 1-10 days): 3-10 days.

Much too high friction for small payments, IMHO.

And technically it can be avoided through back channels if you know someone who already has it - can just pay them cash or whatever and they can send crypto to you

Crypto is very easy to transfer once you have a wallet

Its the exchange to/from real world currency where the friction is.

Which is a huge pain in the butt. If someone invented a new lower-spam email ecosystem that required everyone to make a new bank account, very few people would join.

I would say something about a combined account but many countries have already figured out free bank transfers without needing crypto so maybe do that?

You're correct, as far as it goes.

However, we weren't talking about using cryptocurrency in general, but in a very specific way: Making micropayments to devs as a mechanism to limit AI slop PRs to open source projects.

Doing that effectively would require broad implementation of some sort of payment scheme.

Given the current (as I documented) hoops one needs to jump through to obtain cryptocurrency if one doesn't have any, especially just for a random user to get crypto to send $1 to a github repo with their PR makes exactly zero sense.

Yes. Buying drugs and other stuff outside of the mainstream economy is definitely worth the effort. To send $1/PR for escrow to limit spam? Not so much.