7 ms·

Advancing our approach to digital currency

61 points by sjcsjc 6y ago

ve55 6y ago
I read the entire post, but I'm not sure if it.... actually said anything? I guess an expectation of some future releases related to easily spending or buying crypto perhaps?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wmf 6y ago
  Yeah, I would translate this as "stop saying we hate crypto, we have allowed some crypto stuff, and we will allow more in due time".
  - krimeo 6y ago
    And just like that crypto crashed again.
- TheColorYellow 6y ago
  They quite literally mention the partnerships, programs, and products that Visa is involved with in this space. What more do you want from a publication saying what Visa is doing in the crypto space?
  - azinman2 6y ago
    Perhaps they’re coming out with some innovative product? Or some major shift in policy? I had the exact same reaction as the GP. That was a lot of words that didn’t really say much.
bananaquant 6y ago
It looks like Visa is stepping in the niche that Facebook's Libra has identified, but couldn't fully explore due to regulatory pressure. It would be interesting to see if they can succeed at letting people and businesses efficiently settle transactions in cryptocurrency.
- TheColorYellow 6y ago
  Do you think there is a sufficient market for businesses looking to transact in crypto? I'm a big believer in the tech, but when I look today I still don't see how Visa really plays well with the current crypto market. There are almost no cryptocurrencies that actually have desirable cash-like qualities that would result in their use in the retail space which basically eliminates all B2C like options. CBDC or other forms of tokenization could be a big deal, but CBDC certainly isn't there yet, and despite some interesting initiatives I haven't yet seen a value add tokenized solution in the retail sector. Including in developing countries, existing solutions using traditional payment networks are still more desirable. There is the classic Innovators Dilemma where the new hot product will obviously underperform traditional products in the interim but eventually outperform them over the long term. I could see this happening in the developing world, but to my knowledge I have yet to see a product that seems to fit this mold.
  - bananaquant 6y ago
    I think that cryptos are going to become more popular in the coming years with the ordinary people. As for the businesses — they don't want to own them, since they are not widely recognized currencies. When CBDCs come along, that would be a totally different story. They will be likely just made the official currencies of their countries. Having said that, I can see a case for payment systems to start transacting in existing cryptos, so long as they can satisfy the regulators. They already do that with different real-world currencies. When you have a card in one currency and a business charging you in a different currency, the payment processor does automatic conversion between them for you. With cryptos, everything works the same way, except there may be a crypto-exchange in the middle. The payment processor just needs to guarantee the delivery and some stable exchange rate. Admittedly, these are not pure crypto transactions. But businesses can already do those directly over blockchain. The major thing stopping them is that there are few other businesses who would accept crypto. Hopefully, payment processors adding support for cryptos could move everyone else to broader adoption.
    - hakfoo 6y ago
SparkyMcUnicorn 6y ago
They mentioned "working closely" with Coinbase and Fold. I hadn't heard of Fold, so I checked it out and they're currently marketing a credit card that rewards you Bitcoin instead of "cash back", points, or airline miles. Not very relevant to this discussion, but Fold emphasizes "opt out [of] surveillance" and "opt in [to] privacy". I went to create an account and saw the "sign in with twitter" option, and here are the permissions they're requesting: - See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections. - See your Twitter profile information and account settings. - See accounts you follow, mute, and block. - See your email address. How can a company think this aligns with that sort of marketing at all?
- sneak 6y ago
  The privacy.com (private/disposable payment card numbers) app and website have tons of third party trackers and spyware embedded, too. Privacy is just a marketing bullet point, these days. Apple pushes it hard as a differentiator, yet most of iCloud isn’t end to end encrypted and almost all of the apps in their App Store have spyware embedded in them.
  - rsa25519 6y ago
    > The privacy.com (private/disposable payment card numbers) app and website have tons of third party trackers and spyware embedded, too. Well, the relevance all depends on your threat model. Personally, I care about protecting my banking info from strangers but not about protecting my info from privacy.com and its third parties. I think "spyware" is a bit of an exaggeration considering that presumably many privacy.com users have a threat model similar to mine.
    - esrauch 6y ago
      I'm curious about this stance; are you worried specifically about people stealing money from you? Because outside of that, the privacy.com-third-parties (and then third parties they might sell data onward to from there) seem more strangers than the businesses you have actually have a direct financial transaction with; you can't even enumerate who they are.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ilaksh 6y ago
If digital currency becomes really successful then it will eventually put Visa out of business. Money should be a public system, not a private enterprise. And the ability to transfer money without paying some gatekeeper should be a fundamental right and core function of government. I think for government to stay relevant then it needs to start to encompass more distributed protocols. To the degree that it fails to do so then I think it loses relevance. Which may be fine, since government has historically performed fairly poorly. Maybe we can replace most of it with independent technology in a different paradigm.
- centimeter 6y ago
  > If digital currency becomes really successful then it will eventually put Visa out of business. Not really - there don't exist any digital currencies that A) have desirable economic/security properties B) can scale to billions of users and C) have a UX that's accessible to unsophisticated users. Visa's role in a Bitcoin-based economy is probably providing custodial wallets, Lightning payment routing, etc. > the ability to transfer ... should be a fundamental right and core function of government The government has historically done a pretty bad job of this (which is why 99.9% of consumer payments go through private systems). Why would I want the government to manage this when we know how to do this well without a government involved? What's the benefit of using FedCoin over using something decentralized with good monetary properties? > I think for government to stay relevant then it needs to start to encompass more distributed protocols. To the degree that it fails to do so then I think it loses relevance. This is an oxymoron - if a protocol is distributed, it inherently obviates the need for governmental management.
  - TheColorYellow 6y ago
    This is a good read of the market and I agree with most of your points. If you're saying the government shouldn't be innovating in the digital currency space or if the impact would be negligible due to feasibility or some other issue, I'd strongly disagree. > What's the benefit of using FedCoin over using something decentralized with good monetary properties? The government and existing banking systems are the actors with the largest degree of potential impact for any currency solution in the next 30 years. This solution doesn't necessarily need Bitcoin-like decentralization by any means to solve real problems with real innovative solutions. To me, Bitcoin has proven itself limited to only a speculative store of value solution and has failed to deliver impactful, broadly felt impact. Any product based on Bitcoin will inheritly suffer a limited upside due to this. This is where the difference is for the existing entities, the central banks, domestic banking networks, financial intermediaries - unlimited upside.
hypnotist 6y ago
It seems that Visa is having FOMO moment here. (at least in my opinion) They do not want to be left out in case all those nerds start scaling Bitcoin or any other altcoin to something that can be used globally and legally.
- soared 6y ago
  This reads to me more like visa has bought into to crypto currency and is spending real money to build out integrations. Seems like they’re a player in the space, not just there for fomo. Similar to fidelity.
mrkramer 6y ago
Unfortunately Bitcoin's creator is the only one who can bring peer-to-peer electronic cash to the world, it will not be Facebook or any other company. If Satoshi stayed with Bitcoin project Visa, MasterCard, Swift and all the other major financial companies would slowly become thing of a past.
soared 6y ago
My favorite company positions are partner agnostic. I’m not sure why but I somehow morally agree more with a company who provides their service to a variety of partners and doesn’t have a preferred vendor. Likely it’s the adtech bidding /auction background, where many tech companies aren’t agnostic and double dip on the buy and sell side (google, att, amazon, Verizon).
soared 6y ago
If you didn’t know, visa has effectively pivoted to partly be a tech company. I worked with them on data licensing agreements (evil adtech) and from that perspective their systems were more up to date and worked better than oracle’s.
kemonocode 6y ago
It might be a knee-jerk reaction, but I'd be very wary of Trojan horses. The old money and just all of the traditional economic infrastructure has a vested interest in seeing crypto fail because it takes power away from them, and Visa is no exception.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  I'd like to think Visa is independent of the banks and is therefore agnostic towards who is keeping the ledger.
globular-toast 6y ago
What do they class as "digital currency"? The major world currencies have been purely electronic for decades now. Nothing physical is moving around, even between banks. Bitcoin is unique not because it's electronic but because it's trustless. Those "stablecoins" they then go on to mention are no different to regular currencies, they're just there to allow people to cash in on the hype of bitcoin.
phyzome 6y ago
« Today, fiat-backed digital currencies, commonly referred to as “stablecoins,” have emerged as a promising new payment innovation, combining the benefits of digital currencies with the stability of existing currencies like the US dollar. » Haha, Visa drank the stablecoin koolaid.
banditelol 6y ago
> Today their research is focused on new mechanisms to improve scalability and enable offline digital currency transactions. I'm a bit lost here about offline digital currency transactions, I have no clue on what concept can make it possible, can anyone enlighten me please?

61 points by sjcsjc 6y ago

ve55 6y ago

I read the entire post, but I'm not sure if it.... actually said anything? I guess an expectation of some future releases related to easily spending or buying crypto perhaps?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wmf 6y ago
Yeah, I would translate this as "stop saying we hate crypto, we have allowed some crypto stuff, and we will allow more in due time".
- krimeo 6y ago
  And just like that crypto crashed again.
TheColorYellow 6y ago
They quite literally mention the partnerships, programs, and products that Visa is involved with in this space. What more do you want from a publication saying what Visa is doing in the crypto space?
- azinman2 6y ago
  Perhaps they’re coming out with some innovative product? Or some major shift in policy? I had the exact same reaction as the GP. That was a lot of words that didn’t really say much.

bananaquant 6y ago

It looks like Visa is stepping in the niche that Facebook's Libra has identified, but couldn't fully explore due to regulatory pressure. It would be interesting to see if they can succeed at letting people and businesses efficiently settle transactions in cryptocurrency.

TheColorYellow 6y ago
Do you think there is a sufficient market for businesses looking to transact in crypto? I'm a big believer in the tech, but when I look today I still don't see how Visa really plays well with the current crypto market. There are almost no cryptocurrencies that actually have desirable cash-like qualities that would result in their use in the retail space which basically eliminates all B2C like options. CBDC or other forms of tokenization could be a big deal, but CBDC certainly isn't there yet, and despite some interesting initiatives I haven't yet seen a value add tokenized solution in the retail sector. Including in developing countries, existing solutions using traditional payment networks are still more desirable. There is the classic Innovators Dilemma where the new hot product will obviously underperform traditional products in the interim but eventually outperform them over the long term. I could see this happening in the developing world, but to my knowledge I have yet to see a product that seems to fit this mold.
- bananaquant 6y ago
  I think that cryptos are going to become more popular in the coming years with the ordinary people. As for the businesses — they don't want to own them, since they are not widely recognized currencies. When CBDCs come along, that would be a totally different story. They will be likely just made the official currencies of their countries. Having said that, I can see a case for payment systems to start transacting in existing cryptos, so long as they can satisfy the regulators. They already do that with different real-world currencies. When you have a card in one currency and a business charging you in a different currency, the payment processor does automatic conversion between them for you. With cryptos, everything works the same way, except there may be a crypto-exchange in the middle. The payment processor just needs to guarantee the delivery and some stable exchange rate. Admittedly, these are not pure crypto transactions. But businesses can already do those directly over blockchain. The major thing stopping them is that there are few other businesses who would accept crypto. Hopefully, payment processors adding support for cryptos could move everyone else to broader adoption.
  - hakfoo 6y ago

SparkyMcUnicorn 6y ago

They mentioned "working closely" with Coinbase and Fold. I hadn't heard of Fold, so I checked it out and they're currently marketing a credit card that rewards you Bitcoin instead of "cash back", points, or airline miles. Not very relevant to this discussion, but Fold emphasizes "opt out [of] surveillance" and "opt in [to] privacy". I went to create an account and saw the "sign in with twitter" option, and here are the permissions they're requesting: - See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections. - See your Twitter profile information and account settings. - See accounts you follow, mute, and block. - See your email address. How can a company think this aligns with that sort of marketing at all?

sneak 6y ago
The privacy.com (private/disposable payment card numbers) app and website have tons of third party trackers and spyware embedded, too. Privacy is just a marketing bullet point, these days. Apple pushes it hard as a differentiator, yet most of iCloud isn’t end to end encrypted and almost all of the apps in their App Store have spyware embedded in them.
- rsa25519 6y ago
  > The privacy.com (private/disposable payment card numbers) app and website have tons of third party trackers and spyware embedded, too. Well, the relevance all depends on your threat model. Personally, I care about protecting my banking info from strangers but not about protecting my info from privacy.com and its third parties. I think "spyware" is a bit of an exaggeration considering that presumably many privacy.com users have a threat model similar to mine.
  - esrauch 6y ago
    I'm curious about this stance; are you worried specifically about people stealing money from you? Because outside of that, the privacy.com-third-parties (and then third parties they might sell data onward to from there) seem more strangers than the businesses you have actually have a direct financial transaction with; you can't even enumerate who they are.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ilaksh 6y ago

If digital currency becomes really successful then it will eventually put Visa out of business. Money should be a public system, not a private enterprise. And the ability to transfer money without paying some gatekeeper should be a fundamental right and core function of government. I think for government to stay relevant then it needs to start to encompass more distributed protocols. To the degree that it fails to do so then I think it loses relevance. Which may be fine, since government has historically performed fairly poorly. Maybe we can replace most of it with independent technology in a different paradigm.

centimeter 6y ago
> If digital currency becomes really successful then it will eventually put Visa out of business. Not really - there don't exist any digital currencies that A) have desirable economic/security properties B) can scale to billions of users and C) have a UX that's accessible to unsophisticated users. Visa's role in a Bitcoin-based economy is probably providing custodial wallets, Lightning payment routing, etc. > the ability to transfer ... should be a fundamental right and core function of government The government has historically done a pretty bad job of this (which is why 99.9% of consumer payments go through private systems). Why would I want the government to manage this when we know how to do this well without a government involved? What's the benefit of using FedCoin over using something decentralized with good monetary properties? > I think for government to stay relevant then it needs to start to encompass more distributed protocols. To the degree that it fails to do so then I think it loses relevance. This is an oxymoron - if a protocol is distributed, it inherently obviates the need for governmental management.
- TheColorYellow 6y ago
  This is a good read of the market and I agree with most of your points. If you're saying the government shouldn't be innovating in the digital currency space or if the impact would be negligible due to feasibility or some other issue, I'd strongly disagree. > What's the benefit of using FedCoin over using something decentralized with good monetary properties? The government and existing banking systems are the actors with the largest degree of potential impact for any currency solution in the next 30 years. This solution doesn't necessarily need Bitcoin-like decentralization by any means to solve real problems with real innovative solutions. To me, Bitcoin has proven itself limited to only a speculative store of value solution and has failed to deliver impactful, broadly felt impact. Any product based on Bitcoin will inheritly suffer a limited upside due to this. This is where the difference is for the existing entities, the central banks, domestic banking networks, financial intermediaries - unlimited upside.

hypnotist 6y ago

It seems that Visa is having FOMO moment here. (at least in my opinion) They do not want to be left out in case all those nerds start scaling Bitcoin or any other altcoin to something that can be used globally and legally.

soared 6y ago
This reads to me more like visa has bought into to crypto currency and is spending real money to build out integrations. Seems like they’re a player in the space, not just there for fomo. Similar to fidelity.

mrkramer 6y ago

Unfortunately Bitcoin's creator is the only one who can bring peer-to-peer electronic cash to the world, it will not be Facebook or any other company. If Satoshi stayed with Bitcoin project Visa, MasterCard, Swift and all the other major financial companies would slowly become thing of a past.

soared 6y ago

My favorite company positions are partner agnostic. I’m not sure why but I somehow morally agree more with a company who provides their service to a variety of partners and doesn’t have a preferred vendor. Likely it’s the adtech bidding /auction background, where many tech companies aren’t agnostic and double dip on the buy and sell side (google, att, amazon, Verizon).

soared 6y ago

If you didn’t know, visa has effectively pivoted to partly be a tech company. I worked with them on data licensing agreements (evil adtech) and from that perspective their systems were more up to date and worked better than oracle’s.

kemonocode 6y ago

It might be a knee-jerk reaction, but I'd be very wary of Trojan horses. The old money and just all of the traditional economic infrastructure has a vested interest in seeing crypto fail because it takes power away from them, and Visa is no exception.

globular-toast 6y ago
I'd like to think Visa is independent of the banks and is therefore agnostic towards who is keeping the ledger.

globular-toast 6y ago

What do they class as "digital currency"? The major world currencies have been purely electronic for decades now. Nothing physical is moving around, even between banks. Bitcoin is unique not because it's electronic but because it's trustless. Those "stablecoins" they then go on to mention are no different to regular currencies, they're just there to allow people to cash in on the hype of bitcoin.

phyzome 6y ago

« Today, fiat-backed digital currencies, commonly referred to as “stablecoins,” have emerged as a promising new payment innovation, combining the benefits of digital currencies with the stability of existing currencies like the US dollar. » Haha, Visa drank the stablecoin koolaid.

banditelol 6y ago

> Today their research is focused on new mechanisms to improve scalability and enable offline digital currency transactions. I'm a bit lost here about offline digital currency transactions, I have no clue on what concept can make it possible, can anyone enlighten me please?