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Centralised currency requires a bank like entity to transfer money from customer to driver. That forces the app to be centralised and one run by a unicorn. Smal

Centralised currency requires a bank like entity to transfer money from customer to driver. That forces the app to be centralised and one run by a unicorn. Small players will get fleeced on txn charges. A decentralised app (or apps) could work on a protocol and use bitcoin and the margins can be squeezed to almost zero as there are lots of competing apps, providers and aggregators etc. Think: like airlines. Only without the luxury/economy differentiation that exists in that industry. Ridesharing is subsidized right now but that can't last forever, right?

CydeWeys 9y ago
Transaction costs are an insignificantly small part of what it costs to run an Uber or a Lyft. Most of their costs go to employee salaries (including developers and customer support) and hosting fees. I don't understand what using a decentralized currency would really change. Uber or Lyft could very easily add decentralized currencies as payment options in their apps now. It wouldn't change anything about the fundamental nature of the business other than you'd have another payment option. They still have to pay their software engineers, etc. As for this theoretical decentralized app, who writes it? Who pays to run the servers? If I have a problem with my ride, who is the arbiter?