The only hard thing about micropayments is that "payments" is a worldwide monopoly and the incumbents don't want it to exist.
Now, the problem with micropayments gated sites is that you are trying to gate the exact thing that attracts people, so don't expect this business model to work.
Micropayments aren't hard. Customers simply don't want to use them. Tons of newspapers and magazines have tried offering single articles for sale for $1 or 50c, and all have failed. People just don't want to use micro payments. They want to pay a monthly subscription.
It would like exactly how it is today. It's not hard to find someone not charging anything for the same piece of content, or not charging anything for another type of content that fills the same void.
I really don't think what's stopping micropayments is the technical ability (or even business deals) to do so. Stuff like that have been talked about and tried for more than a decade, it never caught on.
Anyway, I don't know? I would go somewhere else. Maybe I would just walk outside? It's not like what I get from HN is essential to anything I do in life.
using conventional methods small transactions are eaten by service fees. This means microtransactions require a different way to pay which is friction and people are apathetic especially when what're you doing is trying to get them to pay for things.
I wonder how the web would look like if one could click "pay 1 cent to continue".
Maybe content would become better? Maybe it would make one think "Hmm... one moment, is this something I want to read or am I just doomscrolling?".