Morality aside, the logistics of this means you cannot literally PayPal someone 10 cents. The processing cost isn't worth transferring such a small amount.
So the answer to this is to pay $5 and be able to see 50 replies. But what if you're unsure you want to even see that many replies? It's now a steep cost to consider.
I suspect they want to do a side-channel payment system.
So you pay X $100 or w/e and they increase your account by 96.50 or w/e it is after fees and X pocket that 96.50 into X's own bank account. Then when you have to pay 10 cents to somebody they move 10 cents in X's ledger while the 96.50 never moves between bank accounts.
Eventually whoever's article you read (Y) will want to withdrawal what the ledger has but ideally at that point it will be a higher value like $100 so they'd get $96.50 of that but individually each reader only paid 10 cents.
I really wish that's how (a subset of) the internet worked. Not for replies, but for quality website access. Think newspapers and other primary sources of information. Fill up your browser tank and go visit these websites. The site then gets paid per view, or per duration of stay. Details are tricky though.
In my opinion a big barrier to the success of such systems is that newspapers often aren't primary sources. Most outsource the reporting to press agencies and (increasingly) to social media. Press agencies usually do sell individual stories with primary reporting, but not at the prices you and I can afford.
For mainstream press though, is it worth the pennies of a microtransaction to read someone's re-hashing of public records and social media posts? That is very much dependent on both the reader's personal expertise and the author's, and if they are mismatched the article becomes worthless to the reader. An article explaining what HN is would be illuminating to many, but entirely unworthy even of pennies to you and I.
Other way around. You should paypal them $0.01 if your reply is worth viewing.
But Hacker News already has a cost to posting replies: you can only post a few (I think 5 replies every 4 hours) and although you can make more accounts, there's a limit to that too. So I know this was one of your top 5 in this 4-hour period.
