9 ms·

Paypal/Visa/Mastercard doing rent seeking again. Sign of old guards trying to be relevant.

by christiansakai 6y ago

rawtxapp 6y ago
They probably don't want to get their lunch eaten like news publishers that didn't pay attention to the internet.
- XorNot 6y ago
  Or it's a move to satisfy investors who want to know that they've "got a strategy for crypto". The market of crypto being used to buy things is incredibly small.
Geee 6y ago
Actually they are pretty relevant, because they can provide merchant protection, currency exchange, scalability and privacy to cryptocurrencies. You don't need to use them, but they're useful to many.
- krageon 6y ago
  > merchant protection None of the listed agencies do this in practice. > privacy Now I'm starting to believe you may actually be joking. Is that the case?
  - Geee 6y ago
    Not the best privacy obviously. However, they hide transactions from third parties.
    - Dirlewanger 6y ago
      Uh, why do you think after signing up for one credit card, you magically start getting offers for other cards? CC companies have been selling transaction data for decades before FAANG made it trendy to do so.
  - red_trumpet 6y ago
    If I pay with Visa, the seller is not able to see my account balance. With bitcoin, the balance of every wallet is publicly available.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      That's not how Bitcoin works. You're conflating receiving addresses with wallets. And in the PayPal use case, you wouldn't even see a single receiving address, as it's entirely opaque to that and it'd all be handled in some internal PayPal ledger. The receiver of the payment would only see a transfer to them denominated in local fiat currency. They might not even know the source of the funds was crypto at all.
    - herendin 6y ago
      Every address, not every 'wallet' - it's a big difference
      - lottin 6y ago
        What's the difference, exactly?
        iso8859-1 6y ago
        There are wallet like Wasabi and joinmarket-clientserver with a single UI for managing coins and anonymize coins that are then difficult for an outsider to connect to each other. Even without these privacy-focused wallets, you can use an HD wallet, where "child addresses" derived from a never-directly-used root key cannot be connected by a third party, unless you do something to connect them, by e.g. transacting with coins from both wallets from the same IP or in the same transaction.
        lottin 6y ago
        Bitcoin avoids the double-spending problem by using a public ledger. This means all bitcoin transactions are known to any observer. There is no way round it. The best you can hope for is some "anonymity through obscurity" but this only gives a false sense of anonymity.
  - Geee 6y ago
    I have to correct myself. Bitcoin doesn't need merchant protection, because transactions are irreversible. Paypal can provide buyer protection, i.e. chargebacks.
    - uncletammy 6y ago
      > Bitcoin doesn't need merchant protection, because transactions are irreversible. They first have to get confirmed and that can take a long time on BTC. Replace By Fee offers another attack vector on transaction finality. Other than those two very important points, I completely agree with you.
    - krageon 6y ago
      This is true. There really isn't a built-in way to do chargebacks and in practice this can suck if you live somewhere where that is your only recourse if you get scammed.
- bluecalm 6y ago
  >>currency exchange If you mean at the worst possible price often forcing you before you can cash it out or presenting you with misleading choices so you are likely to stumble into their expensive option then yeah - that offer that.
  - Geee 6y ago
    True, but it solves the problem of using cryptocurrency with merchants who accept only fiat currencies. You might want to pay for that convenience.
superos 6y ago
True. And the whole initial point of Bitcoin BTC is gone. Bitcoin BTC is now first and foremost a pretty poor digital ponzi scheme(with fees it is actually a negative sum game). Bitcoin SV tries to fix this, but it is still a PoW system and thus not what we want when fighting to save our earth from negative climate change.

Paypal/Visa/Mastercard doing rent seeking again. Sign of old guards trying to be relevant.

rawtxapp 6y ago

They probably don't want to get their lunch eaten like news publishers that didn't pay attention to the internet.

XorNot 6y ago
Or it's a move to satisfy investors who want to know that they've "got a strategy for crypto". The market of crypto being used to buy things is incredibly small.

Geee 6y ago

Actually they are pretty relevant, because they can provide merchant protection, currency exchange, scalability and privacy to cryptocurrencies. You don't need to use them, but they're useful to many.

krageon 6y ago
> merchant protection None of the listed agencies do this in practice. > privacy Now I'm starting to believe you may actually be joking. Is that the case?
- Geee 6y ago
  Not the best privacy obviously. However, they hide transactions from third parties.
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    Uh, why do you think after signing up for one credit card, you magically start getting offers for other cards? CC companies have been selling transaction data for decades before FAANG made it trendy to do so.
- red_trumpet 6y ago
  If I pay with Visa, the seller is not able to see my account balance. With bitcoin, the balance of every wallet is publicly available.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    That's not how Bitcoin works. You're conflating receiving addresses with wallets. And in the PayPal use case, you wouldn't even see a single receiving address, as it's entirely opaque to that and it'd all be handled in some internal PayPal ledger. The receiver of the payment would only see a transfer to them denominated in local fiat currency. They might not even know the source of the funds was crypto at all.
  - herendin 6y ago
    Every address, not every 'wallet' - it's a big difference
    - lottin 6y ago
      What's the difference, exactly?
      - iso8859-1 6y ago
        There are wallet like Wasabi and joinmarket-clientserver with a single UI for managing coins and anonymize coins that are then difficult for an outsider to connect to each other. Even without these privacy-focused wallets, you can use an HD wallet, where "child addresses" derived from a never-directly-used root key cannot be connected by a third party, unless you do something to connect them, by e.g. transacting with coins from both wallets from the same IP or in the same transaction.
        lottin 6y ago
        Bitcoin avoids the double-spending problem by using a public ledger. This means all bitcoin transactions are known to any observer. There is no way round it. The best you can hope for is some "anonymity through obscurity" but this only gives a false sense of anonymity.
- Geee 6y ago
  I have to correct myself. Bitcoin doesn't need merchant protection, because transactions are irreversible. Paypal can provide buyer protection, i.e. chargebacks.
  - uncletammy 6y ago
    > Bitcoin doesn't need merchant protection, because transactions are irreversible. They first have to get confirmed and that can take a long time on BTC. Replace By Fee offers another attack vector on transaction finality. Other than those two very important points, I completely agree with you.
  - krageon 6y ago
    This is true. There really isn't a built-in way to do chargebacks and in practice this can suck if you live somewhere where that is your only recourse if you get scammed.
bluecalm 6y ago
>>currency exchange If you mean at the worst possible price often forcing you before you can cash it out or presenting you with misleading choices so you are likely to stumble into their expensive option then yeah - that offer that.
- Geee 6y ago
  True, but it solves the problem of using cryptocurrency with merchants who accept only fiat currencies. You might want to pay for that convenience.

superos 6y ago

True. And the whole initial point of Bitcoin BTC is gone. Bitcoin BTC is now first and foremost a pretty poor digital ponzi scheme(with fees it is actually a negative sum game). Bitcoin SV tries to fix this, but it is still a PoW system and thus not what we want when fighting to save our earth from negative climate change.