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> "It enables micropayments directly in the HTTP layer"

VERY cool! This is the perfect use of micropayments that far exceeds that of traditional fiat and credit vehicles.


Exactly!! and I think that's the underrated part of L402.

It's not just a payment mechanism, it's a new primitive for HTTP itself. The protocol already has a 402 status code that's been sitting unused since 1991. Lightning makes it finally usable.

The interesting implication for AI agents: they can acquire access to resources autonomously, without any human provisioning a credential. The agent just pays. That changes how you architect systems that need to consume external data or services.

Still early.. most developers haven't seen a 402 response in production before. But the primitives are all there now.


Credit cards aren't big on tiny transactions, but I'm sure any payment method could work.


Bitcoin bro here. Very cool! I'm working on something pushing the bare minimum too. Even minimaler if you could smash all the Javascript into the `onkeydown` and other "content attributes"[0] so there's not even a `<script>` tag!

[0] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webappapis.html#event...


Maybe, but the AI we see in the mainstream today -- generative image/video/text creations and Large Language Model chatbots -- were done via non-governmental public and private companies. And a lot of the work hitting the scene loudly and somewhat prematurely. My understanding is the amount of and type of compute needed for Quantum is pretty intense, so there'd be a huge footprint from its manufacturing to keep it hidden.

Just like any stonk that's increased in value, woulda coulda shoulda. Keep an eye out for things that you care about and things you think other people will care about, and invest in those.

I did find my passport at that same time and threw a lot more USD at it. It's nice.

Regular stonks are incredibly flawed, or whatever you want to call it, and the general public gambles on them as "the next big thing". None of that is unique to BTC, albeit more extreme with BTC. One should look at a potential investment as both its real world usage _and_ increased speculation.


Wholeheartedly agree. Bitcoin bro here. The amount of fiat that most people can put in to such a speculative and confusing investment is most likely the small % of their $ they can label as "risk capital".


Since I've been in it, this has happened in:

- early 2018

- March 2020

- Summer 2021

- Summer 2022

- mildly in Q1 2025

- now in early 2026

This has never happened before!


That "Dead Internet" phrase keeps becoming more likely, and this graph shows that. Human-to-human interactions, LLMs using those interactions, less human-to-human interactions because of that, LLMs using... ?


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