Micropayments would solve so many problems for the internet. And, cryptocurrencies would solve so many problems for micropayments. But, it's a non-starter because any proposal gets flooded with people popping veins about how crypto can't solve anything.

If it's so easy to solve, go solve it. Set up a test site with micropayments. Maybe scrape CNN and see how many people will pay you micro for a copy of CNN.

It doesn't need to be crypto, or payment processor based.

My ideal experience would be I load $20 into the browser somewhere like a wallet in one block (that could be a payment processor step). If I visit a participating page, it decrements my wallet $.01 or whatever.

The downside is the possibility of abuse and tracking by governments, which would have to be handled at the source, not the symptom.

I worked on this before. You can solve the privacy issue using "statistical payments", by lack of a better word.

You visit website A,A,A,B,C,D,A,A

At the end of the month, you send your entire 20$ randomly to one of the websites you visited.

This will level out everyone's contribution and reward websites with lots of traffic. It eliminates the need for micropayments.

So I set up my own website and put a book on the F5 key to nearly guarantee I get my own $20 back. I also hotlink images from it to Reddit.

You can look into international call termination fee fraud in the public telephone network, for more on this.