One of the very big hopes for Bitcoin was the notion of enabling 'micropayments'. Today, one can't practically pay 50 cents with Visa because there is a 30 cent swipe fee and a percent fee on top.
However, now with the stalwarts of 1MB blocksize limits, it looks like we are going to have to start setting our miners fees to (remarkably enough): 30 cents.
Does this spell an end to micropayments?