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When 90%+ of your income is routed through VISA, MasterCard and PayPal, getting booted off those is a sufficiently fatal blow. I don't know (or care) if this w

When 90%+ of your income is routed through VISA, MasterCard and PayPal, getting booted off those is a sufficiently fatal blow. I don't know (or care) if this was the case with Wikileaks, but if it happens to your retail business you are toast. These private institutions have way too much arbitrary power to decide the fates of others with opaque & inconsistent reasoning-- I see nearly anything providing a check against that power as useful. I'm no longer convinced blockchain tech is a viable answer, but I do think having a variety of non-consolidated payment processors to choose from is a good thing.

root_axis 8y ago
The bottom line is that this isn't a real problem for legitimate businesses. If you're a business owner who's been shut out of the western banking system then your business is DOA whether or not the business accepts bitcoin. Yes, bitcoin is great if you're a rogue political organization like wikileaks, but this is a very uncommon scenario.
- slfnflctd 8y ago
  There have been numerous, widely varied reports of legitimate businesses having their funds completely frozen for an unspecified amount of time - often long enough to sink a fledgling startup - simply because they were new and "made too much money too fast". Payment processors have also been known to discriminate against perfectly legal businesses for a long list of random things some old jackass in a suit decided were too 'unsavory'. I think these organizations are wrong to meddle so much rather than being passive facilitators as originally envisioned. They have a right to exclude things which put their assets at risk, as well as a legal obligation to assist law enforcement where appropriate, but beyond that neutrality and privacy should be the rule.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > Payment processors have also been known to discriminate against perfectly legal businesses for a long list of random things some old jackass in a suit decided were too 'unsavory'. Typically, it's because of fraud, not unsavory-ness. Fraud on the customer's side, not the business'. The solution to that is not making every transaction put the weight of fraud solely on the customer.

root_axis 8y ago

The bottom line is that this isn't a real problem for legitimate businesses. If you're a business owner who's been shut out of the western banking system then your business is DOA whether or not the business accepts bitcoin. Yes, bitcoin is great if you're a rogue political organization like wikileaks, but this is a very uncommon scenario.

slfnflctd 8y ago
There have been numerous, widely varied reports of legitimate businesses having their funds completely frozen for an unspecified amount of time - often long enough to sink a fledgling startup - simply because they were new and "made too much money too fast". Payment processors have also been known to discriminate against perfectly legal businesses for a long list of random things some old jackass in a suit decided were too 'unsavory'. I think these organizations are wrong to meddle so much rather than being passive facilitators as originally envisioned. They have a right to exclude things which put their assets at risk, as well as a legal obligation to assist law enforcement where appropriate, but beyond that neutrality and privacy should be the rule.
- vkou 8y ago
  > Payment processors have also been known to discriminate against perfectly legal businesses for a long list of random things some old jackass in a suit decided were too 'unsavory'. Typically, it's because of fraud, not unsavory-ness. Fraud on the customer's side, not the business'. The solution to that is not making every transaction put the weight of fraud solely on the customer.