We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11382629 and marked it off-topic.

Visa would also be a middleman. Or even the post office if you only accepted mailed cash.

There's also gratipay, which doesn't take a cut. Still the credit card's cut, but gratipay offers bitcoin payments, which, if they implement it right, would eliminate the middleman (unless you count miners as middlemen) when the financee cashes out using bitcoin. If they implemented it wrong, then coinbase is the middleman.

> gratipay offers bitcoin payments, which, if they implement it right, would eliminate the middleman [...] when the financee cashes out using bitcoin

And tell me, how does one cut out the middleman when they convert their Bitcoin earnings to US dollars or whatever currency they prefer?

Jesus Christ why don't you people just start mowing the guy's lawn for Christ's sake

well then wouldn't the blades be the middleman

That can be taken more than one way

A few people will donate bitcoin. A few things can be bought directly with bitcoin. On average, you'd expect that the fraction of your income paid in bitcoin would be similar to the fraction of goods and services that you can pay for with bitcoin.

> A few people will donate bitcoin. A few things can be bought directly with bitcoin. On average, you'd expect that the fraction of your income paid in bitcoin would be similar to the fraction of goods and services that you can pay for with bitcoin.

The point of donating money to the author of the piece is to encourage them to continue writing this epic story. Giving them Bitcoin is akin to leaving a tip to your server where the tip appears to be currency but rather instead is a Chick tract with the suggestion that you'll pray for their soul.

The difference being that others accept these "chick tracts" in exchange for goods and services.

I'm not in the mood to register with some service and hand out my CC data to give the author a buck. In contrast I'd scan a QR code in a heartbeat.

Nobody even noticed the middle-ma'am though.

Ah, arguing with nerds. :)

(maybe 'cutting out a middleman' is pedantically accurate in this case. We seem to have identified at least two middlemen in this process)

Arguing with middlenerds beats arguing with middlemen...

Well, one could just wire the money directly – in many countries that’s free for receiving and sending.

Payments-wise, yes. Patreon does remove the middleman of your publisher, though, in terms of how your audience connects with you.

Which is usually called another term, the "gatekeeper".

I suppose Patreon is technically in the middle but since their cut is small and transparent it's not like a 'man in the middle' attack where the intermediary is secretive about how much they're collecting and so on.