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Do you have counter examples? Anything using the currencies as stores of wealth or mediums of exchange seem to be better suited by traditional finance which ar

Do you have counter examples? Anything using the currencies as stores of wealth or mediums of exchange seem to be better suited by traditional finance which are less volatile and capable of higher volume. Anything using the ledger as a distributed datastore seems like it would be better suited by a datastore that wasn't wrapped up in a currency ledger and uses a consensus algorithm less costly than proof-of-work.

ryanlol 8y ago
We receive up to six figures in cryptocurrency payments every week for multiple perfectly legal products. If that’s not a “legal use case”, I don’t know what is. Are we going to argue next that credit cards have no use case because other forms of payment exist? Another example: I just bought a watch off of a guy on a forum using bitcoin, bank transfers or WU would have been a far bigger pain in the ass.
- dboreham 8y ago
  Care to say what kind of product you are selling, and to which kinds of customer?
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    Most of our revenue comes from proxies, customers range from SV startups to individual “SEO” people. We do accept other payment methods from established clients.
    - dboreham 8y ago
      As in : HTTP Proxy services?
      - ryanlol 8y ago
        That’s right.
        dboreham 8y ago
        And this is for totally above board purposes?
        ryanlol 8y ago
        Yes? Ad verification, pricing intelligence, recruiting, QA and so on.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hudon 8y ago
  While it has speculative value [0], you can use it to buy stuff, but while doing so you will spend on exchange fees to convert in and out of crypto, you will use as much electricity for your transaction as 33 US households use in a day, you will subject yourself to liquidity risk and volatility risk [1] and you will have to wait for anywhere from ten minutes to a couple hours [2]. Calling this complicated, risky and expensive process a "use case" is like calling a Rube Goldberg machine that opens a door "useful for opening doors". It's like no, not really. It can do it, sure, but there are significantly better ways of achieving the same thing. [0] When there are no more greater fools entering the market, the price will tank and you will not be able use it to transfer value. [1] It's possible that right after your purchase, the price of the token shoots up or down 50%, making rational purchasing decisions difficult. [2] transactions on Visa, Apple Pay, or PayPal all get complete within seconds.
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    It’s like you’ve never dealt with chargebacks.
    - hudon 8y ago
      Chargebacks protect users from fraudsters, which is exactly what the featured article is saying is a major problem in the cryptocurrency space. Millions of people getting scammed with no legal recourse is a problem. Retailers dealing with chargebacks less so... I've never heard of the "Merchants are thinking of no longer selling anything due to chargebacks" problem.
      - ryanlol 8y ago
        Either I ask customers to send me loads of PII, or I ask them to make their first payments in bitcoin. I’ll always choose the latter.
    - abalone 8y ago
      It's like you've never been ripped off by someone selling you a watch on an internet forum.
- hueving 8y ago
  What is bitcoin giving your customer that a credit card would not?
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    Trust.
    - hueving 8y ago
      Trust for what? I'm happy to use my credit card pretty much anywhere because US credit card companies will easily reverse any fraudulent transactions. Shopping on the web with credit cards is a solved problem. There is some hidden subtext at play with bitcoin that I'm missing. Is it that you don't trust your customers?
      - ryanlol 8y ago
        Yes, unfortunately we can’t trust our customers. Before, people were using stolen cards to buy accounts on our service and then selling those on hacking forums. After forcing new users to pay in cryptocurrency (or have a call with us), there’s been essentially no fraud. For our niche this seems to work well.
SilasX 8y ago
Contribution to Wikileaks: the US pressures financial intermediaries not to process donations to WL, even though it's legal.
ricksanch88 8y ago
Uhh, Verge is currently being used for payments for online services, subscriptions, and ad-buys. They have a debit card coming out backed by a major bank. That's legal.
lawn 8y ago
Examples of what cryptocurrencies does better: * Donations to wikileaks. Paypal froze their account and there are tons of examples where they have done this without good cause. * Legal businesses like marijuana sellers, porn, escort services and gambling platforms have had trouble using and keeping payment services. Some have been forced to only accept cash payments as they couldn't accept credit cards. * A way to accept irreversible payments digitally. Credit card charge back fraud is a big problem. * Credit card companies and other payment processors take an often expensive fee. Cryptocurrencies are much cheaper (see Bitcoin Cash as Bitcoin is not a good example). * Easier to move money. For example sending money to or taking money with you when you cross borders. Western Union is slow, expensive and cannot be used to send everywhere. The same can be said about banks in isolated countries or countries in disarray. With cryptocurrencies all you need is internet (sometimes a VPN as well). Edit: As usual when I try to point this out I'm down voted. I encourage you to counter my examples.
- lotyrin 8y ago
  Places crypto has been used isn't evidence that it was the only thing possible to have been used, which is the question -- what does PoW-consensus blockchain ledger make possible that isn't possible without it? It's not a matter of what they've been better than status-quo broken finance systems. The question is "if we replace these broken systems with something, why does it have to be a blockchain using PoW for consensus?" In many of the cases people use crypto because otherwise they'd have had to been a bank or a money transmitter or file with SEC and uphold their legal obligations as such, and in those cases using blockchain didn't make those obligations disappear. In other cases, the hype around "blockchain" created solutions that could have been served by any form of digital currency or any form of distributed database -- not just this specific form.
  - lawn 8y ago
    > what does PoW-consensus blockchain ledger make possible that isn't possible without it? Preventing double spends in a decentralized manner without a trusted third party. No other form of digital currency can do that. There is a possibility that PoW can be replaced with some form of PoS (proof of stake) but it's not certain if it works well enough. Note that I consider both PoW and PoS backed ledgers cryptocurrencies. > It's not a matter of what they've been better than status-quo broken finance systems. They're better than everything at the examples I listed.

ryanlol 8y ago

We receive up to six figures in cryptocurrency payments every week for multiple perfectly legal products. If that’s not a “legal use case”, I don’t know what is. Are we going to argue next that credit cards have no use case because other forms of payment exist? Another example: I just bought a watch off of a guy on a forum using bitcoin, bank transfers or WU would have been a far bigger pain in the ass.

dboreham 8y ago
Care to say what kind of product you are selling, and to which kinds of customer?
- ryanlol 8y ago
  Most of our revenue comes from proxies, customers range from SV startups to individual “SEO” people. We do accept other payment methods from established clients.
  - dboreham 8y ago
    As in : HTTP Proxy services?
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      That’s right.
      - dboreham 8y ago
        And this is for totally above board purposes?
        ryanlol 8y ago
        Yes? Ad verification, pricing intelligence, recruiting, QA and so on.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hudon 8y ago
While it has speculative value [0], you can use it to buy stuff, but while doing so you will spend on exchange fees to convert in and out of crypto, you will use as much electricity for your transaction as 33 US households use in a day, you will subject yourself to liquidity risk and volatility risk [1] and you will have to wait for anywhere from ten minutes to a couple hours [2]. Calling this complicated, risky and expensive process a "use case" is like calling a Rube Goldberg machine that opens a door "useful for opening doors". It's like no, not really. It can do it, sure, but there are significantly better ways of achieving the same thing. [0] When there are no more greater fools entering the market, the price will tank and you will not be able use it to transfer value. [1] It's possible that right after your purchase, the price of the token shoots up or down 50%, making rational purchasing decisions difficult. [2] transactions on Visa, Apple Pay, or PayPal all get complete within seconds.
- ryanlol 8y ago
  It’s like you’ve never dealt with chargebacks.
  - hudon 8y ago
    Chargebacks protect users from fraudsters, which is exactly what the featured article is saying is a major problem in the cryptocurrency space. Millions of people getting scammed with no legal recourse is a problem. Retailers dealing with chargebacks less so... I've never heard of the "Merchants are thinking of no longer selling anything due to chargebacks" problem.
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      Either I ask customers to send me loads of PII, or I ask them to make their first payments in bitcoin. I’ll always choose the latter.
  - abalone 8y ago
    It's like you've never been ripped off by someone selling you a watch on an internet forum.
hueving 8y ago
What is bitcoin giving your customer that a credit card would not?
- ryanlol 8y ago
  Trust.
  - hueving 8y ago
    Trust for what? I'm happy to use my credit card pretty much anywhere because US credit card companies will easily reverse any fraudulent transactions. Shopping on the web with credit cards is a solved problem. There is some hidden subtext at play with bitcoin that I'm missing. Is it that you don't trust your customers?
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      Yes, unfortunately we can’t trust our customers. Before, people were using stolen cards to buy accounts on our service and then selling those on hacking forums. After forcing new users to pay in cryptocurrency (or have a call with us), there’s been essentially no fraud. For our niche this seems to work well.

SilasX 8y ago

Contribution to Wikileaks: the US pressures financial intermediaries not to process donations to WL, even though it's legal.

ricksanch88 8y ago

Uhh, Verge is currently being used for payments for online services, subscriptions, and ad-buys. They have a debit card coming out backed by a major bank. That's legal.

lawn 8y ago

Examples of what cryptocurrencies does better: * Donations to wikileaks. Paypal froze their account and there are tons of examples where they have done this without good cause. * Legal businesses like marijuana sellers, porn, escort services and gambling platforms have had trouble using and keeping payment services. Some have been forced to only accept cash payments as they couldn't accept credit cards. * A way to accept irreversible payments digitally. Credit card charge back fraud is a big problem. * Credit card companies and other payment processors take an often expensive fee. Cryptocurrencies are much cheaper (see Bitcoin Cash as Bitcoin is not a good example). * Easier to move money. For example sending money to or taking money with you when you cross borders. Western Union is slow, expensive and cannot be used to send everywhere. The same can be said about banks in isolated countries or countries in disarray. With cryptocurrencies all you need is internet (sometimes a VPN as well). Edit: As usual when I try to point this out I'm down voted. I encourage you to counter my examples.

lotyrin 8y ago
Places crypto has been used isn't evidence that it was the only thing possible to have been used, which is the question -- what does PoW-consensus blockchain ledger make possible that isn't possible without it? It's not a matter of what they've been better than status-quo broken finance systems. The question is "if we replace these broken systems with something, why does it have to be a blockchain using PoW for consensus?" In many of the cases people use crypto because otherwise they'd have had to been a bank or a money transmitter or file with SEC and uphold their legal obligations as such, and in those cases using blockchain didn't make those obligations disappear. In other cases, the hype around "blockchain" created solutions that could have been served by any form of digital currency or any form of distributed database -- not just this specific form.
- lawn 8y ago
  > what does PoW-consensus blockchain ledger make possible that isn't possible without it? Preventing double spends in a decentralized manner without a trusted third party. No other form of digital currency can do that. There is a possibility that PoW can be replaced with some form of PoS (proof of stake) but it's not certain if it works well enough. Note that I consider both PoW and PoS backed ledgers cryptocurrencies. > It's not a matter of what they've been better than status-quo broken finance systems. They're better than everything at the examples I listed.