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> I reduced a portion of my ecommerce store checkout fees to <1% by using a crypto payment processor > stripe's highway robbery of 3% per sale. This is mislead

> I reduced a portion of my ecommerce store checkout fees to <1% by using a crypto payment processor > stripe's highway robbery of 3% per sale. This is misleading because it moves all of the costs to other transactions: Your users have to get their money into exchanges (credit card fees occur here if using a card), buy the cryptocurrency (exchange fees), transfer it to you (transaction fees), and then you need to transfer the cryptocurrency somewhere else (more transaction fees), and exchange it back to another currency (more exchange fees). Then you have to account for exchange rates, which fluctuate constantly. If I need to buy something for $100 from your store, I need to buy at least $101-$102 of cryptocurrency in case the exchange rate slips while I’m going through all of the above steps. That extra $1-$2 floats around in my wallet forever if you’re using some obscure cryptocurrency that I’m not going to use again any time soon. At best, I now have yet another account to maintain and track and do math on whenever I need to buy something. It ends up being far, far more expensive than Stripe’s checkout payments. It’s just misleading because the expenses are spread out across so many different touch points.

serverholic 5y ago
This is a misleading comment. If I have euros and I need dollars then obviously I have to exchange them. If we're talking about currency then we generally assume we can skip that part. Additionally, ethereum fees are pretty reasonable for layer2 and getting cheaper on a regular basis. Right now on the order of $0.15 per transaction. That could get 10-100x cheaper with some tech on the roadmap. So I think it'll end up cheaper than stripe.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > If we're talking about currency then we generally assume we can skip that part. We’re talking about cryptocurrency, which comes in thousands of different flavors. 99.99% of the population doesn’t receive their paycheck in cryptocurrency, so the exchange rate is happening one way or another. Ignoring the exchange rate and pretending everyone always happens to have the exact cryptocurrency that a store wants is misleading. > Additionally, ethereum fees are pretty reasonable for layer2 Which would be great, but again you’re assuming that the stars have aligned and everyone is already using the exact cryptocurrency system you have in mind from end to end. In practice, they’re not, and they still need to incur exchange and transaction fees to get to that point. The fees are incurred one way or another. You can’t honestly expect us to pretend that everyone already has everything in cryptocurrency and everyone is already using the exact wallets and systems as each other. Reality is entirely different than the hypothetically optimal scenario.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Currency exchange up to some amount is generally free if you're using services/neobanks like Revolut or TransferWise.
  - serverholic 5y ago
    Nothing is free
  - ghostwriter 5y ago
    not generally, rather occasionally, if you happen to be a resident in a first-world country that follows all the demands coming from the US and the bloc.
- selectodude 5y ago
  Do most people not have banks that just silently do currency conversion for you? I go overseas and use my US-based credit card all the time without any issues at all. The conversion fees are pennies per tx.
  - badestrand 5y ago
    Next time you should check the conversion rate your bank applies versus the one Google shows you and you will see that while your bank seems to be charging pennies only it probably charges 2-3% of the full transaction sum on top of that via the conversion rate.
    - selectodude 5y ago
      Chase Sapphire offers $0 forex fees, Visa has a live forex calculator. USD to EUR has a .41 percent fee from Visa. So 41 cents on $100. I can live with that.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Is there a payment processor I can embed on my website today that uses Layer 2 Ethereum?
Zenig_ 5y ago
With mtpelerin.com you can buy synthetic token like jEUR or jUSD whithout any bank fee, and then it is on a ETH sidechain (polygon MATIC) and the current fee to swap is $0.014061 ~ (https://polygon-gas-watch.vercel.app/ https://polygon-gas-watch.vercel.app/) So no, it's far cheaper than any VISA/MASTERCARD/SWIPE/PAYPAL that took far too much with they big percent... It's time to change
tmaly 5y ago
This made me think of the original idea of using Gold or precious metals as a currency. The idea is that this type of currency should hold value and buy the same amount of goods and services. A 1 ounce gold coin in 1920 would buy a nice tailored suit. Today a 1 ounce gold coin still buys a nice tailored suit. Could this idea be extended to a crypto currency that is not used for pure speculative trading, but really as a store of value?
- immibis 5y ago
  This is not possible. 1 ounce of gold today is €1500. You don't want a fixed supply for a stable price level. The equation is MV=PY - monetary base times velocity equals price level times total output. You are aiming to hold the price level constant. You can't really control the output, apart from making it lower, which you don't want. Controlling the velocity is hard. That leaves the monetary base... which is very easy to control if you admit centralized control. Or maybe someone smarter than me can figure out an algorithm to control it automatically. Either way, fixing M doesn't work. To stabilize P, you have to adjust M to counteract the change in Y÷V.

serverholic 5y ago

This is a misleading comment. If I have euros and I need dollars then obviously I have to exchange them. If we're talking about currency then we generally assume we can skip that part. Additionally, ethereum fees are pretty reasonable for layer2 and getting cheaper on a regular basis. Right now on the order of $0.15 per transaction. That could get 10-100x cheaper with some tech on the roadmap. So I think it'll end up cheaper than stripe.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> If we're talking about currency then we generally assume we can skip that part. We’re talking about cryptocurrency, which comes in thousands of different flavors. 99.99% of the population doesn’t receive their paycheck in cryptocurrency, so the exchange rate is happening one way or another. Ignoring the exchange rate and pretending everyone always happens to have the exact cryptocurrency that a store wants is misleading. > Additionally, ethereum fees are pretty reasonable for layer2 Which would be great, but again you’re assuming that the stars have aligned and everyone is already using the exact cryptocurrency system you have in mind from end to end. In practice, they’re not, and they still need to incur exchange and transaction fees to get to that point. The fees are incurred one way or another. You can’t honestly expect us to pretend that everyone already has everything in cryptocurrency and everyone is already using the exact wallets and systems as each other. Reality is entirely different than the hypothetically optimal scenario.
KptMarchewa 5y ago
Currency exchange up to some amount is generally free if you're using services/neobanks like Revolut or TransferWise.
- serverholic 5y ago
  Nothing is free
- ghostwriter 5y ago
  not generally, rather occasionally, if you happen to be a resident in a first-world country that follows all the demands coming from the US and the bloc.
selectodude 5y ago
Do most people not have banks that just silently do currency conversion for you? I go overseas and use my US-based credit card all the time without any issues at all. The conversion fees are pennies per tx.
- badestrand 5y ago
  Next time you should check the conversion rate your bank applies versus the one Google shows you and you will see that while your bank seems to be charging pennies only it probably charges 2-3% of the full transaction sum on top of that via the conversion rate.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    Chase Sapphire offers $0 forex fees, Visa has a live forex calculator. USD to EUR has a .41 percent fee from Visa. So 41 cents on $100. I can live with that.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
Is there a payment processor I can embed on my website today that uses Layer 2 Ethereum?

Zenig_ 5y ago

With mtpelerin.com you can buy synthetic token like jEUR or jUSD whithout any bank fee, and then it is on a ETH sidechain (polygon MATIC) and the current fee to swap is $0.014061 ~ (https://polygon-gas-watch.vercel.app/ https://polygon-gas-watch.vercel.app/) So no, it's far cheaper than any VISA/MASTERCARD/SWIPE/PAYPAL that took far too much with they big percent... It's time to change

tmaly 5y ago

This made me think of the original idea of using Gold or precious metals as a currency. The idea is that this type of currency should hold value and buy the same amount of goods and services. A 1 ounce gold coin in 1920 would buy a nice tailored suit. Today a 1 ounce gold coin still buys a nice tailored suit. Could this idea be extended to a crypto currency that is not used for pure speculative trading, but really as a store of value?

immibis 5y ago
This is not possible. 1 ounce of gold today is €1500. You don't want a fixed supply for a stable price level. The equation is MV=PY - monetary base times velocity equals price level times total output. You are aiming to hold the price level constant. You can't really control the output, apart from making it lower, which you don't want. Controlling the velocity is hard. That leaves the monetary base... which is very easy to control if you admit centralized control. Or maybe someone smarter than me can figure out an algorithm to control it automatically. Either way, fixing M doesn't work. To stabilize P, you have to adjust M to counteract the change in Y÷V.