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Bitcoin literally fixes this. Bitcoin is the first public infrastructure for sending money online without intermediaries and trusted third parties. This is the

by urza 4y ago

Bitcoin literally fixes this. Bitcoin is the first public infrastructure for sending money online without intermediaries and trusted third parties. This is the problem it solves, yet any mention of this on HN gets downvoted. You can use something like https://btcpayserver.org/ https://btcpayserver.org/ and be your own payment processor with very little work. Kind of frustrating that HN hates bitcoin so much, that even under link/article about small merchant getting harassed by shopify/stripe, they would rather downvote any mention of real solution..

HorizonXP 4y ago
I don’t know if BTC fully fixes this, but I agree that crypto in general is heading down the path that will likely fix this. And agreed, HN continues to hate crypto due to 99% of it being garbage, and ignoring the 1% that is actually revolutionary.
- ecopoesis 4y ago
  “'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.” It doesn’t matter if 1% of cryptocurrency useful and not a scam: because 99% of it is, if you use crypto you’re going to get scammed.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    If you use money you're going to get scammed
    - anonymousab 4y ago
      The key is that the vast supermajority of your interactions with fiat won't be at high risk of being a scam.
      - theplumber 4y ago
        Because you are familiar with fiat/cash and its risks and you use crypto only for "crypto" stuff not to buy your groceries. You won't send cash to someone you don't really trust, would you? How is crypto different? With paypal you get some "security" with the tradeoff that sometimes you won't get it(i.e you get scammed either as buyer or seller) and many times it just pissesoff both the sender and receiver using "fraud detection" and treating both as criminals.
  - urza 4y ago
    That's why I say bitcoin and not crypto.
oldprogrammer2 4y ago
It may fix this particular problem, on one side of the transaction, but it creates new ones. What if I, as a purchaser, want to dispute my purchase? What if I was ripped off? What if the product was broken, not as advertised, etc. I like knowing there is recourse through chargebacks. For example, I rented a vacation home last year, on VRBO, and the highly unusual contract (that was not shared until after the purchase) made me very uncomfortable. As an aside, I was also surprised that I was billed directly by the rental company via Stripe, rather than through VRBO. I requested a refund within an hour of booking. For two weeks, I attempted to contact the rental company. I never received a single acknowledgement from them, and VRBO provided zero support. The only way I was able to get my money back was with a chargeback, showing my request for a refund within the cancellation window. I am 100% confident that if this had been a bitcoin transaction I would have lost that money. I would also expect a rise in bad actors abusing that lack of recourse if bitcoin did increase in popularity for payment. In my mind, that is the challenge that crypto needs to solve before it can become widely adopted as a payment option.
- theplumber 4y ago
  Consider crypto payments as cash payments and the problem(your expectations from a payment provider) is "solved"
  - throwsjdhsj1234 4y ago
    Or for services/goods that requires this kind of leeway, use an escrow. Yes it does introduce a third party, but the point is that compared to the current system there is no other option for the many cases in which you don't need don't want to use an escrow, the payment processor invariably act as such and can shutdown your business at will.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      A system that requires me to put transactions in escrow more often than extremely rarely is not a system I want to use.
theplumber 4y ago
The main issue with crypto is the exchange rate and volatility. The local ATM gives you a shitty rate on bitcoin and by the time you spend it its value may be lower or higher by a big margin. The merchant may experience a similar issue.
- urza 4y ago
  There are some ways how you can solve this. You can convert to and from stablecoins. You can use hedging and use cfd or futures to keep your bitcoin on stable fiat value. Depending on what you need, this can be done on exchange, with some payment gateway or even trustlessly via smart contracts.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    I'm talking about the reality and in the real world the solution you propose does not exist. For some reasons stablecoins do not seem to be used outside few online exchangers.I can't find them available at the local atm.
    - urza 4y ago
      All the solutions I mentioned do exists and are used daily by thousands. And no, atms are indeed not the place to exchange bitcoin for stablecoins.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    So, I use fiat to buy bitcoin, convert it to a stablecoin, go buy lunch, convert it back to bitcoin, then the merchant converts it back to fiat. Why jump through all those hoops to buy lunch? or anything for that matter. At this point i could just use gold.
brunes 4y ago
You're ignoring something critical here. The whole reason these address validation and KYC measures exist is to protect against fraud. They aren't done "just for fun". Please explain how bitcoin solves for that problem. Hint: it doesn't.

by urza 4y ago

HorizonXP 4y ago

I don’t know if BTC fully fixes this, but I agree that crypto in general is heading down the path that will likely fix this. And agreed, HN continues to hate crypto due to 99% of it being garbage, and ignoring the 1% that is actually revolutionary.

ecopoesis 4y ago
“'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.” It doesn’t matter if 1% of cryptocurrency useful and not a scam: because 99% of it is, if you use crypto you’re going to get scammed.
- theplumber 4y ago
  If you use money you're going to get scammed
  - anonymousab 4y ago
    The key is that the vast supermajority of your interactions with fiat won't be at high risk of being a scam.
    - theplumber 4y ago
      Because you are familiar with fiat/cash and its risks and you use crypto only for "crypto" stuff not to buy your groceries. You won't send cash to someone you don't really trust, would you? How is crypto different? With paypal you get some "security" with the tradeoff that sometimes you won't get it(i.e you get scammed either as buyer or seller) and many times it just pissesoff both the sender and receiver using "fraud detection" and treating both as criminals.
- urza 4y ago
  That's why I say bitcoin and not crypto.

oldprogrammer2 4y ago

It may fix this particular problem, on one side of the transaction, but it creates new ones. What if I, as a purchaser, want to dispute my purchase? What if I was ripped off? What if the product was broken, not as advertised, etc. I like knowing there is recourse through chargebacks. For example, I rented a vacation home last year, on VRBO, and the highly unusual contract (that was not shared until after the purchase) made me very uncomfortable. As an aside, I was also surprised that I was billed directly by the rental company via Stripe, rather than through VRBO. I requested a refund within an hour of booking. For two weeks, I attempted to contact the rental company. I never received a single acknowledgement from them, and VRBO provided zero support. The only way I was able to get my money back was with a chargeback, showing my request for a refund within the cancellation window. I am 100% confident that if this had been a bitcoin transaction I would have lost that money. I would also expect a rise in bad actors abusing that lack of recourse if bitcoin did increase in popularity for payment. In my mind, that is the challenge that crypto needs to solve before it can become widely adopted as a payment option.

theplumber 4y ago
Consider crypto payments as cash payments and the problem(your expectations from a payment provider) is "solved"
- throwsjdhsj1234 4y ago
  Or for services/goods that requires this kind of leeway, use an escrow. Yes it does introduce a third party, but the point is that compared to the current system there is no other option for the many cases in which you don't need don't want to use an escrow, the payment processor invariably act as such and can shutdown your business at will.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    A system that requires me to put transactions in escrow more often than extremely rarely is not a system I want to use.

theplumber 4y ago

The main issue with crypto is the exchange rate and volatility. The local ATM gives you a shitty rate on bitcoin and by the time you spend it its value may be lower or higher by a big margin. The merchant may experience a similar issue.

urza 4y ago
There are some ways how you can solve this. You can convert to and from stablecoins. You can use hedging and use cfd or futures to keep your bitcoin on stable fiat value. Depending on what you need, this can be done on exchange, with some payment gateway or even trustlessly via smart contracts.
- theplumber 4y ago
  I'm talking about the reality and in the real world the solution you propose does not exist. For some reasons stablecoins do not seem to be used outside few online exchangers.I can't find them available at the local atm.
  - urza 4y ago
    All the solutions I mentioned do exists and are used daily by thousands. And no, atms are indeed not the place to exchange bitcoin for stablecoins.
- tekknik 4y ago
  So, I use fiat to buy bitcoin, convert it to a stablecoin, go buy lunch, convert it back to bitcoin, then the merchant converts it back to fiat. Why jump through all those hoops to buy lunch? or anything for that matter. At this point i could just use gold.

brunes 4y ago

You're ignoring something critical here. The whole reason these address validation and KYC measures exist is to protect against fraud. They aren't done "just for fun". Please explain how bitcoin solves for that problem. Hint: it doesn't.