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This is where I see crypto moving us forward. With crypto, there is no gate keeper. No Stripe or Patreon or Paypal in the way. I love Stripe by the way, but th

This is where I see crypto moving us forward. With crypto, there is no gate keeper. No Stripe or Patreon or Paypal in the way. I love Stripe by the way, but they too could in theory block me for whatever reason. Also on the other side of the coin, you have the buyer who can cancel their subscription at any time. You could even have a smart contract for 30 day refunds - which allows the refund for any reason but at least the buyer has committed by having their funds held in that contract for the 30. Stable coins can take the speculation out of it and are ideal for small amounts of "cash" for these kinds of transactions. I think this problem is a great example of where crypto can shine where normal finance is held back. You can have the idealistic platform - Wordpress on your own server and some PHP code or something to check for payments - no one "owning it" on your behalf. Someone can wrap that as a SaaS, but anyone can, there is no need to go with the big unicorn provider. That leaves the question of how to market your little market stall on the internet? Well like anything else, just use the right tool for the job. You don't need the payment platform to be the way people find you.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I doubt it. The limitation isn’t moving money, there are tons of ways for consumers to pay creators money, it’s all the services around payment that Patreon provides to both producer and consumer. Things like recurring charges, places for premium content, charging structure tied to content release, fraud protection, support, and marketing. A decent chunk of that is outside the scope of what crypto can solve. I think the idea that creators should cobble together Wordpress websites kind of weird. Most of these creators are artists, not engineers. They probably don’t have the inclination nor the skills to build a DIY patreon. If they’re going to move, someone needs to provide a turnkey solution for them.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Yeah you are right about wordpress. Bad example. Something like substack or even blogger might be better. But anything like that should run through their own domain "just in case". Wordpress can be turnkey - someone needs to set that up? I mean wordpress.com is kind of that. Or another company could set up an instant install and make it look good and make it fast wordpress service. They probably exist. Maybe they could do it for free and then charge a take from Stripe. Crypto solves some problems beyond this, but I am not sure it will be adopted because walled gardens and central corporations seem to win for the obvious reasons. Crypto gives the buyer more control and the seller more freedom. The seller can have zero fear of getting their funds cut off by the platform. Recurring payments are not possible from the PULL side, but I like that. If something is valuable the customer will keep on paying. A smart contract could allow for subscriptions from the customer side by pushing the money until the contract is stopped. This solves the "remembering to do it" part.

ashtonkem 6y ago

I doubt it. The limitation isn’t moving money, there are tons of ways for consumers to pay creators money, it’s all the services around payment that Patreon provides to both producer and consumer. Things like recurring charges, places for premium content, charging structure tied to content release, fraud protection, support, and marketing. A decent chunk of that is outside the scope of what crypto can solve. I think the idea that creators should cobble together Wordpress websites kind of weird. Most of these creators are artists, not engineers. They probably don’t have the inclination nor the skills to build a DIY patreon. If they’re going to move, someone needs to provide a turnkey solution for them.

quickthrower2 6y ago
Yeah you are right about wordpress. Bad example. Something like substack or even blogger might be better. But anything like that should run through their own domain "just in case". Wordpress can be turnkey - someone needs to set that up? I mean wordpress.com is kind of that. Or another company could set up an instant install and make it look good and make it fast wordpress service. They probably exist. Maybe they could do it for free and then charge a take from Stripe. Crypto solves some problems beyond this, but I am not sure it will be adopted because walled gardens and central corporations seem to win for the obvious reasons. Crypto gives the buyer more control and the seller more freedom. The seller can have zero fear of getting their funds cut off by the platform. Recurring payments are not possible from the PULL side, but I like that. If something is valuable the customer will keep on paying. A smart contract could allow for subscriptions from the customer side by pushing the money until the contract is stopped. This solves the "remembering to do it" part.