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It's stunning, that over 20 years of building the Web, we still do not have the equivalent of cash. Most creators that make big bucks on Patreon do not use it

It's stunning, that over 20 years of building the Web, we still do not have the equivalent of cash. Most creators that make big bucks on Patreon do not use it for donations. They simply use it to sell stuff. Like https://www.patreon.com/PokeGo20 https://www.patreon.com/PokeGo20 who have 62k "patreons" paying for a "fake my Pokemon Go position" software. Or https://www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse https://www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse who make over $100k/month by selling access to their premium content. Patreon is needed because selling on the net is such a hassle. Nobody wants to fiddle with their credit card unless it is important. Nobody wants to give it to "someone on the internet". It's funny, because it would be so totally easy to create something like cash on the web. It just needs someone to start a business of selling tokens for $1.10 and buying them back from whoever comes first for $1. Voila - internet cash. Sell sealed tokens in stores (over the counter or via a machine that eats coins) - voila! anonymous internet cash.

0815test 8y ago
> It's stunning, that over 20 years of building the Web, we still do not have the equivalent of cash. You're right that we do not have the equivalent of cash, but we do have the equivalent of monopoly money - and it works well enough that users are willing to pay sky-high transaction fees in order to exchange it!
skybrian 8y ago
What you describe is basically a gift card. But there are restrictions on them because they could easily used for money laundering. The reason we can't have nice abstractions involving money is basically because it attracts criminals. Any business dealing with money has to figure out how to deal with fraud or they don't last long.
- TicklishTiger 8y ago
  figure out how to deal with fraud The token issuer would just has to stoically do two things and two things only: 1: Sell tokens for $1.10 each 2: Buy them back for $1.00 each Done. No fraud issues.
  - toast0 8y ago
    What does your token issuer do when the purchase of a token is revoked? That could be from a charge back, bounced check, or because the cash was determined to be counterfeit when deposited. A big problem is the costs involved may be 10% at scale, but are certainly more than ten cents per transaction, so you need to get a deposit, but I'm not buying $50 worth of flooz to pay someone $1, because I don't know when flooz is going to stop working. Anyway, it's not that hard for someone to run a PayPal shop, as long as the product fits PayPal's tos and doesn't look suspicious.
    - TicklishTiger 8y ago
      What does your token issuer do when the purchase of a token is revoked? Nothing. The token issuer is not involved in that. He just sells and buys tokens. When Joe buys an apple from you with a dollar note and you bring that note to your bank - what does the bank do when Joe returns the apple to you? Nothing.
      - toast0 8y ago
        If you give me a token when I give you a fake note, and then you give me a real note when I give you a token, how do you stay in business? And how do you not have to deal with fraud issues?
        TicklishTiger 8y ago
        That is not related to tokens. You could ask those question to any merchant. No matter if they sell chewing gum or tokens. A merchant better watches out to not take fake notes. The token issuer sells a box of 100 tokens to a store. And charges the store $110. Just like a chewing gum merchant sells a box of 100 chewing gums to a store. Last time I checked, there was chewing gum in stores.
        toast0 8y ago
        I'm no longer sure what your token product is. Do I go down to my local store, and buy tokens from them, that they've purchased from the issuer? How is that very much different than a prepaid visa/mastercard/amex gift card that I can get today; maybe that it's easier to spend the money with people who can't get a credit card merchant account? How much margin is the merchant going to add on top of what you're charging them? How do you deal with anti-money laundering laws, etc?
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  Another way of looking at this this is that society has lost sight of the forest for the trees in its desire to impede criminals.
mdorazio 8y ago
It's worth noting that this was one of the original use cases of cryptocurrency, especially alt-coins like Doge. In reality it didn't shake out that way because most people ended up "investing" in crypto rather than using it as an actual currency, and because transaction costs got stupid in a hurry.
- TicklishTiger 8y ago
  it didn't shake out that way because most people ended up "investing" No. It didn't shake out because current crypto currencies all are totally overambitious, overengineered solutions so none of them managed to create a bearable user experience. - They want you to put a fu..... app on your phone. People hate that. - Then they want you to send fiat to some company involved in crypto. So your bank might mark you as a criminal. - Then they want you to guess some transaction fee that will get your payments through. - Then they make you wait an undefined amount of time before the transaction counts. The reason for this mess is that all the crypto currencies used Bitcoin as their blueprint for their design. And only made minor adjustments to how it works. Bitcoin has a lot of interesting properties. But they are not needed for every day transactions. Yet, it pays an insanely high price (in terms of complexity, usability and performance) to achieve those.
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    What do you mean people hate using apps? And everything else is taken care of by the app/intermediaries/possibly smart contracts.
- rjbwork 8y ago
  Early on there was a doge marketplace. I participated...right before it was overrun by people selling hacked porn sites...
ceejayoz 8y ago
Stripe's Apple Pay web integration is the closest I've seen. Click on a button, put my thumb on the device, and it's done. As a bonus, the vendor doesn't get my card number.
manigandham 8y ago
> because it would be so totally easy to create something like cash on the web If you really think it's that simple then I encourage you to start your journey to becoming a billionaire, but you'll quickly find out that very smart people have already worked on this and what we have today is the best given the vast complexities and regulations around money transfer. > It just needs someone to start a business of selling tokens for $1.10 and buying them back from whoever comes first for $1. You just described what patreon, paypal and other exchange services already do, but with even higher fees.
jetrink 8y ago
Forget cash, why don't we have checks? A check is just a piece of paper authorizing a transfer of funds from a bank account to a person or entity named in the TO field. Why can't I go on my banking app and generate a cryptographically signed bit of text authorizing a transfer to someone by name? Why does Paypal have to sit in the middle of a transaction like that?
- badpun 8y ago
  Can’t you just do a bank-to-bank transfer online in the US? It’s how people pay for stuff online in Poland.
  - jetrink 8y ago
    Some banks partner with services that allow you to send money to a phone number or email address, but the experience isn't great. For example, I once offered to reimburse a friend for travel expenses using such a service. He agreed, forgetting that he had previously interacted with that service using a now closed bank account, which the service still associated with his email address. My payment was routed to the phantom bank account and took 45 days to be returned.
    - badpun 8y ago
      OMG that sounds bad. US banking industry must be a really complacent oligopoly to not care to introduce easy transfers, and thus give up billions to companies like PayPal (which has no reason for existence in Poland). In Poland, there’s an organization that handles all inter-bank transfers, and all banks use its API. To do a transfer as a customer, you only need to know other person’s bank account number (which is umique in the whole EU). The money is transferred within a couple of hours, or if you pay a little fee, it’s instantenous.
      - ac29 8y ago
        There's a reason services like Venmo are so popular in the US - they make what are effectively bank to bank transfers easy and free. The only issue is that they aren't quick (2-3 days), which isn't really an issue if you aren't living paycheck to paycheck.

0815test 8y ago

> It's stunning, that over 20 years of building the Web, we still do not have the equivalent of cash. You're right that we do not have the equivalent of cash, but we do have the equivalent of monopoly money - and it works well enough that users are willing to pay sky-high transaction fees in order to exchange it!

skybrian 8y ago

What you describe is basically a gift card. But there are restrictions on them because they could easily used for money laundering. The reason we can't have nice abstractions involving money is basically because it attracts criminals. Any business dealing with money has to figure out how to deal with fraud or they don't last long.

TicklishTiger 8y ago
figure out how to deal with fraud The token issuer would just has to stoically do two things and two things only: 1: Sell tokens for $1.10 each 2: Buy them back for $1.00 each Done. No fraud issues.
- toast0 8y ago
  What does your token issuer do when the purchase of a token is revoked? That could be from a charge back, bounced check, or because the cash was determined to be counterfeit when deposited. A big problem is the costs involved may be 10% at scale, but are certainly more than ten cents per transaction, so you need to get a deposit, but I'm not buying $50 worth of flooz to pay someone $1, because I don't know when flooz is going to stop working. Anyway, it's not that hard for someone to run a PayPal shop, as long as the product fits PayPal's tos and doesn't look suspicious.
  - TicklishTiger 8y ago
    What does your token issuer do when the purchase of a token is revoked? Nothing. The token issuer is not involved in that. He just sells and buys tokens. When Joe buys an apple from you with a dollar note and you bring that note to your bank - what does the bank do when Joe returns the apple to you? Nothing.
    - toast0 8y ago
      If you give me a token when I give you a fake note, and then you give me a real note when I give you a token, how do you stay in business? And how do you not have to deal with fraud issues?
      - TicklishTiger 8y ago
        That is not related to tokens. You could ask those question to any merchant. No matter if they sell chewing gum or tokens. A merchant better watches out to not take fake notes. The token issuer sells a box of 100 tokens to a store. And charges the store $110. Just like a chewing gum merchant sells a box of 100 chewing gums to a store. Last time I checked, there was chewing gum in stores.
        toast0 8y ago
        I'm no longer sure what your token product is. Do I go down to my local store, and buy tokens from them, that they've purchased from the issuer? How is that very much different than a prepaid visa/mastercard/amex gift card that I can get today; maybe that it's easier to spend the money with people who can't get a credit card merchant account? How much margin is the merchant going to add on top of what you're charging them? How do you deal with anti-money laundering laws, etc?
adrianratnapala 8y ago
Another way of looking at this this is that society has lost sight of the forest for the trees in its desire to impede criminals.

mdorazio 8y ago

It's worth noting that this was one of the original use cases of cryptocurrency, especially alt-coins like Doge. In reality it didn't shake out that way because most people ended up "investing" in crypto rather than using it as an actual currency, and because transaction costs got stupid in a hurry.

TicklishTiger 8y ago
it didn't shake out that way because most people ended up "investing" No. It didn't shake out because current crypto currencies all are totally overambitious, overengineered solutions so none of them managed to create a bearable user experience. - They want you to put a fu..... app on your phone. People hate that. - Then they want you to send fiat to some company involved in crypto. So your bank might mark you as a criminal. - Then they want you to guess some transaction fee that will get your payments through. - Then they make you wait an undefined amount of time before the transaction counts. The reason for this mess is that all the crypto currencies used Bitcoin as their blueprint for their design. And only made minor adjustments to how it works. Bitcoin has a lot of interesting properties. But they are not needed for every day transactions. Yet, it pays an insanely high price (in terms of complexity, usability and performance) to achieve those.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  What do you mean people hate using apps? And everything else is taken care of by the app/intermediaries/possibly smart contracts.
rjbwork 8y ago
Early on there was a doge marketplace. I participated...right before it was overrun by people selling hacked porn sites...

ceejayoz 8y ago

Stripe's Apple Pay web integration is the closest I've seen. Click on a button, put my thumb on the device, and it's done. As a bonus, the vendor doesn't get my card number.

manigandham 8y ago

> because it would be so totally easy to create something like cash on the web If you really think it's that simple then I encourage you to start your journey to becoming a billionaire, but you'll quickly find out that very smart people have already worked on this and what we have today is the best given the vast complexities and regulations around money transfer. > It just needs someone to start a business of selling tokens for $1.10 and buying them back from whoever comes first for $1. You just described what patreon, paypal and other exchange services already do, but with even higher fees.

jetrink 8y ago

Forget cash, why don't we have checks? A check is just a piece of paper authorizing a transfer of funds from a bank account to a person or entity named in the TO field. Why can't I go on my banking app and generate a cryptographically signed bit of text authorizing a transfer to someone by name? Why does Paypal have to sit in the middle of a transaction like that?

badpun 8y ago
Can’t you just do a bank-to-bank transfer online in the US? It’s how people pay for stuff online in Poland.
- jetrink 8y ago
  Some banks partner with services that allow you to send money to a phone number or email address, but the experience isn't great. For example, I once offered to reimburse a friend for travel expenses using such a service. He agreed, forgetting that he had previously interacted with that service using a now closed bank account, which the service still associated with his email address. My payment was routed to the phantom bank account and took 45 days to be returned.
  - badpun 8y ago
    OMG that sounds bad. US banking industry must be a really complacent oligopoly to not care to introduce easy transfers, and thus give up billions to companies like PayPal (which has no reason for existence in Poland). In Poland, there’s an organization that handles all inter-bank transfers, and all banks use its API. To do a transfer as a customer, you only need to know other person’s bank account number (which is umique in the whole EU). The money is transferred within a couple of hours, or if you pay a little fee, it’s instantenous.
    - ac29 8y ago
      There's a reason services like Venmo are so popular in the US - they make what are effectively bank to bank transfers easy and free. The only issue is that they aren't quick (2-3 days), which isn't really an issue if you aren't living paycheck to paycheck.