5 ms·

Payments don't need to be final. You could use a contract that implements arbitration logic.

by arbol 5y ago

ashtonkem 5y ago
Yeah, but why would anyone want to do that when credit cards already exist?
- arbol 5y ago
  Eventually it should be a sensible choice. The goal is for crypto (not bitcoin) to be more economically sensible to run credit card style infrastructure. Clearly, this is not currently true but I expect it will improve to the point where most services use some aspect of crypto because it makes sense economically.
  - lottin 5y ago
    I think you're mistaken. Cryptocurrencies are anarcho-capitalist money. They're not economical or user friendly because that would mean they cannot be decentralised. Anarcho-capitalists are okay with that because for them their ideology is more important than practicality but the general public will never adopt a payments system that is more expensive and less practical than the alternatives.
    - arbol 5y ago
      I'm not expecting the average person to adopt a crypto payments system any time soon. Currency is only one aspect. B2B will come first. There are already a large number of crypto projects partnering with existing businesses to address real problems. I don't see a minority ideology standing in the way of this.
      - lottin 5y ago
        They have been trying to sell blockchain technology to businesses for a long time. Nothing has come out of it despite millions spent in r&d and marketing.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        And a ton of money wasted on IBM consultants.
        chrisco255 5y ago
        Here's Visa announcing they'll be settling USDC transactions on the Ethereum blockchain: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/visa-settles-usdc-transaction-ethereum-090000667.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/visa-settles-usdc-transaction... Here's various businesses running oracles for smart contracts including Deutsch Telecom: https://chain.link/ecosystem/data-providers https://chain.link/ecosystem/data-providers Here's Ernst & Young's take on the technology: https://www.ey.com/en_us/blockchain https://www.ey.com/en_us/blockchain
        lottin 5y ago
        I can't find a specific example of a business that has used a blockchain to achieve something in any of these links.
        chrisco255 5y ago
        Visa is a business and they used the Ethereum chain to settle a payment in the form of the USDC ERC20 token. Now, they're just getting started. But from my perspective, I've seen virtually every function that I enjoy from my bank replaced by smart contracts in the past year. And the only thing that's really holding me back from closing my bank account altogether is the legacy integrations that exist. And that will fade with time.
        lottin 5y ago
        Sure, but they aren't using a blockchain themselves, they're simply letting their clients settle some transactions on the ethereum blockchain. It's not really an example of a business using blockchain technology to its advantage. If they had deployed a blockchain and used that to process transactions, that would be more convincing, but so far I don't think they've done that.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    No, it will not be a sensible choice. There are some pretty deep, social problems in the crypto space that make this an extremely unlikely outcome. The fundamental issue is that creating scalable, cheap credit infrastructure for mass economic activity is fundamentally in opposition with creating an investment that will continually gain in value. You see this really clearly in Ethereum, where’s gas fees can be exceptionally high compared to traditional financial institutions.
    - chrisco255 5y ago
      Check out Aave: its a lending protocol carrying $20B in assets on smart contracts. It works great! https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/ Or https://compound.finance/ https://compound.finance/ also a great project. Ethereum's gas fees have nothing to do with the price of the base asset: it has to do with limited block size availability. When the network is congested, block size is limited and this causes transactions to be bid up in an auction format to get in first. This is one of the costs of decentralization. However, recent advances in Zero Knowledge Proof cryptography has paved a path for Ethereum to take to get to VISA scale and beyond and be able to process 200K transactions per second (at pennies or less per tx): see https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ and https://starkware.co/ https://starkware.co/.

Payments don't need to be final. You could use a contract that implements arbitration logic.

by arbol 5y ago

Payments don't need to be final. You could use a contract that implements arbitration logic.

ashtonkem 5y ago

Yeah, but why would anyone want to do that when credit cards already exist?

arbol 5y ago
Eventually it should be a sensible choice. The goal is for crypto (not bitcoin) to be more economically sensible to run credit card style infrastructure. Clearly, this is not currently true but I expect it will improve to the point where most services use some aspect of crypto because it makes sense economically.
- lottin 5y ago
  I think you're mistaken. Cryptocurrencies are anarcho-capitalist money. They're not economical or user friendly because that would mean they cannot be decentralised. Anarcho-capitalists are okay with that because for them their ideology is more important than practicality but the general public will never adopt a payments system that is more expensive and less practical than the alternatives.
  - arbol 5y ago
    I'm not expecting the average person to adopt a crypto payments system any time soon. Currency is only one aspect. B2B will come first. There are already a large number of crypto projects partnering with existing businesses to address real problems. I don't see a minority ideology standing in the way of this.
    - lottin 5y ago
      They have been trying to sell blockchain technology to businesses for a long time. Nothing has come out of it despite millions spent in r&d and marketing.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        And a ton of money wasted on IBM consultants.
      - chrisco255 5y ago
        Here's Visa announcing they'll be settling USDC transactions on the Ethereum blockchain: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/visa-settles-usdc-transaction-ethereum-090000667.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/visa-settles-usdc-transaction... Here's various businesses running oracles for smart contracts including Deutsch Telecom: https://chain.link/ecosystem/data-providers https://chain.link/ecosystem/data-providers Here's Ernst & Young's take on the technology: https://www.ey.com/en_us/blockchain https://www.ey.com/en_us/blockchain
        lottin 5y ago
        I can't find a specific example of a business that has used a blockchain to achieve something in any of these links.
        chrisco255 5y ago
        Visa is a business and they used the Ethereum chain to settle a payment in the form of the USDC ERC20 token. Now, they're just getting started. But from my perspective, I've seen virtually every function that I enjoy from my bank replaced by smart contracts in the past year. And the only thing that's really holding me back from closing my bank account altogether is the legacy integrations that exist. And that will fade with time.
        lottin 5y ago
        Sure, but they aren't using a blockchain themselves, they're simply letting their clients settle some transactions on the ethereum blockchain. It's not really an example of a business using blockchain technology to its advantage. If they had deployed a blockchain and used that to process transactions, that would be more convincing, but so far I don't think they've done that.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  No, it will not be a sensible choice. There are some pretty deep, social problems in the crypto space that make this an extremely unlikely outcome. The fundamental issue is that creating scalable, cheap credit infrastructure for mass economic activity is fundamentally in opposition with creating an investment that will continually gain in value. You see this really clearly in Ethereum, where’s gas fees can be exceptionally high compared to traditional financial institutions.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    Check out Aave: its a lending protocol carrying $20B in assets on smart contracts. It works great! https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/ Or https://compound.finance/ https://compound.finance/ also a great project. Ethereum's gas fees have nothing to do with the price of the base asset: it has to do with limited block size availability. When the network is congested, block size is limited and this causes transactions to be bid up in an auction format to get in first. This is one of the costs of decentralization. However, recent advances in Zero Knowledge Proof cryptography has paved a path for Ethereum to take to get to VISA scale and beyond and be able to process 200K transactions per second (at pennies or less per tx): see https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ and https://starkware.co/ https://starkware.co/.