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This sounds exactly why people like Jack Dorsey are pushing for bitcoin + lightning network adoption. They've experienced first hand how much gatekeeping has de

This sounds exactly why people like Jack Dorsey are pushing for bitcoin + lightning network adoption. They've experienced first hand how much gatekeeping has developed in the space (via Square + CashApp in his case) that make true innovation almost impossible. An open, permissionless, and GLOBAL monetary network for final settlement and small payments (and micropayments) which no single competing nation state has unilateral control over would be a game changer for fintech innovation. The function of everything from Visa/Mastercard, Fedwire, SWIFT, Paypal, Western Union, etc, all rebase onto one global network with countless businesses competing on top of it to provide the most appealing user experience.

AlexandrB 4y ago
I'd rather have a bunch of gatekeepers than losing money with no recourse if my credit card number is stolen. The trade-off for crypto-style decentralization is complete loss of consumer protection.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Then you won't ever use raw bitcoin. You'll continue using a service that obfuscates their use of bitcoin and lightning, like you do now with services that obfuscate their use of Fedwire and SWIFT. They'll provide you with consumer protection services, either for a fee or in exchange for harvesting and selling your data, like they do now. I'm not suggesting that everyone is going to use raw bitcoin and have to manage their own keys. I'm suggesting that nation states and corporations (and many individuals) will all rebase their money operations on an open network, digital protocol. Bitcoin.
  - alxhill 4y ago
    So there's a bunch of existing intermediaries, which is bad, and to fix that we're going to add the exact same set of intermediaries, but on top of bitcoin, which means its good?
    - snotrockets 4y ago
      Boiling the oceans is incredible value add.
    - junofan 4y ago
      Margins are insane and can definitely come down.
metadat 4y ago
It's been 45 minutes and I'm still waiting for my Bitcoin transaction to go through. BTC and Crypto at large don't seem like a viable alternative solution, or even a solution to any real problem at all.
- xur17 4y ago
  > This sounds exactly why people like Jack Dorsey are pushing for bitcoin + lightning network adoption. The solution was in the message you replied to.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Do we seriously still have to deal with this criticism in 2022? Come on man. Educate yourself about the bitcoin layer 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOo3zLFhEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOo3zLFhEk For small payments, lightning is instant and extremely low fee. For larger payments that you want certainty of settlement, even a few hours confirmation time is drastically superior to traditional settlement networks that take days if not weeks internationally. FYI, your credit card payments are instant, but not finally settled. That happens in periodic bulk batches between banks. https://www.swanbitcoin.com/a-look-at-the-lightning-network/ https://www.swanbitcoin.com/a-look-at-the-lightning-network/ Even the Fed is on top of trying to understand this, https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%20events/publications/working%20papers/2022/wp2219.pdf https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%...
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    Eh, in the UK I already have instantaneous bank transfers that are free for normal retail customers to use. Money arrives instantly, and as far as a retail customer is concerned, it settles instantly. Under the hood their regular batch settlement between banks, but that doesn’t matter to a retail customer, because the money is instantly withdraw-able, and covered by government deposit protection the moment the faster payment appears on your bank statement (which is milliseconds after the payment is initiated by the sender). Why would I want to mess around with Bitcoins, when I already have access to fast, secure, cheap, money transfers to any UK bank account?
colechristensen 4y ago
> An open, permissionless, and GLOBAL monetary network for final settlement and small payments (and micropayments) which no single competing nation state has unilateral control over would be a game changer for fintech innovation. The function of everything from Visa/Mastercard, Fedwire, SWIFT, Paypal, Western Union, etc, all rebase onto one global network with countless businesses competing on top of it to provide the most appealing user experience. This is not ever going to happen. Witness today the Ethereum tumbler getting sanctioned. When a payment method gets significant enough it will either be regulated or squashed by the state.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  States are welcome to try to exclude themselves and their citizens from the network, as many nation states attempt to do now with the open internet.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Some people do compare the relatively free exchange of information on the Internet with cryptocurrencies, but modern democracies regulating commerce isn't anywhere near the intent of dictatorships regulating information. It is also quite easy for a state to exclude themselves from cryptocurrency networks, to the extent that the only transactions taking places are enabled by black market in person exchanges for cash, and no legal business entity could use that currency so you're left with the only thing bitcoin was really ever good for, evading legal controls to do trivial things or illegal things. Nothing more.
gamblor956 4y ago
Your argument to all of the problems affecting bitcoin is...don't use bitcoin. Use this other thing, lightning, which is sort of built on bitcoin, but not really. And also not actually used anywhere, yet, even though it's supposed to be so amazing at fixing bitcoin's problems that crypto merchants should have embraced it over night. That bitcoin's biggest proponents still haven't embraced lightning is a pretty clear admission of defeat by bitcoin apologists that bitcoin doesn't actually solve anything, and isn't actually very useful for anything, even with the fix that was supposed to finally bring bitcoin into the promised land.
- tossl568 4y ago
  Every lightning transaction (or channel update) is a valid Bitcoin transaction that can be broadcasted to the Bitcoin network and settled at any time. Lightning capacity and transactions are growing fast. "Crypto"'s biggest proponents haven't embraced lightning because they have shitcoins to sell.
  - drekk 4y ago
    I think if your coin uses more energy to settle one transaction than a typical South American uses in a year it's the "shitcoin" Crypto being filled with scams is a feature, not a bug.
    - sph 4y ago
      > your coin uses more energy to settle one transaction than a typical South American uses in a year Do you even know what you're talking about? The energy concerns are real, but please avoid exaggeration to win arguments.
      - bearmode 4y ago
        https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/features/crypto-energy-consumption/ https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/feature... >By far the most power-hungry crypto in our study, we found that a single Bitcoin transaction uses an average of 1,173 Kilowatt Hours (kWh). If we consider that the average monthly electricity usage for a UK household is 350 kWh, that’s enough to power the typical UK home for more than three months at a cost of roughly £125 ($173), based on a fixed cost of £0.11 ($0.148) per kWh >In the U.S, it would equate to roughly 6 weeks of electricity based on an average household electricity usage of 877 kWh per month (U.S Energy Information Administration). Not quite an entire year, but definitely a number of months. Also according to digiconomist's latest figures, it's currently at around 1500kWh per transaction. So even worse.
warkdarrior 4y ago
> The function of everything from Visa/Mastercard, Fedwire, SWIFT, Paypal, Western Union, etc, all rebase onto one global network with countless businesses competing on top of it to provide the most appealing user experience. Even if they do rebase on top of one global network, what incentive do these companies have to change their product offerings or their fees? Consumers will not care what Visa/Mastercard or Western Union use on the backend, could be carrier pigeons as far as most people are concerned. What would cause fintech to become more competitive? I'd love to see every transaction fee, loan rate, etc. go to zero. But would "one global network" lead to that?

AlexandrB 4y ago

I'd rather have a bunch of gatekeepers than losing money with no recourse if my credit card number is stolen. The trade-off for crypto-style decentralization is complete loss of consumer protection.

anonporridge 4y ago
Then you won't ever use raw bitcoin. You'll continue using a service that obfuscates their use of bitcoin and lightning, like you do now with services that obfuscate their use of Fedwire and SWIFT. They'll provide you with consumer protection services, either for a fee or in exchange for harvesting and selling your data, like they do now. I'm not suggesting that everyone is going to use raw bitcoin and have to manage their own keys. I'm suggesting that nation states and corporations (and many individuals) will all rebase their money operations on an open network, digital protocol. Bitcoin.
- alxhill 4y ago
  So there's a bunch of existing intermediaries, which is bad, and to fix that we're going to add the exact same set of intermediaries, but on top of bitcoin, which means its good?
  - snotrockets 4y ago
    Boiling the oceans is incredible value add.
  - junofan 4y ago
    Margins are insane and can definitely come down.

metadat 4y ago

It's been 45 minutes and I'm still waiting for my Bitcoin transaction to go through. BTC and Crypto at large don't seem like a viable alternative solution, or even a solution to any real problem at all.

xur17 4y ago
> This sounds exactly why people like Jack Dorsey are pushing for bitcoin + lightning network adoption. The solution was in the message you replied to.
anonporridge 4y ago
Do we seriously still have to deal with this criticism in 2022? Come on man. Educate yourself about the bitcoin layer 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOo3zLFhEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOo3zLFhEk For small payments, lightning is instant and extremely low fee. For larger payments that you want certainty of settlement, even a few hours confirmation time is drastically superior to traditional settlement networks that take days if not weeks internationally. FYI, your credit card payments are instant, but not finally settled. That happens in periodic bulk batches between banks. https://www.swanbitcoin.com/a-look-at-the-lightning-network/ https://www.swanbitcoin.com/a-look-at-the-lightning-network/ Even the Fed is on top of trying to understand this, https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%20events/publications/working%20papers/2022/wp2219.pdf https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%...
- avianlyric 4y ago
  Eh, in the UK I already have instantaneous bank transfers that are free for normal retail customers to use. Money arrives instantly, and as far as a retail customer is concerned, it settles instantly. Under the hood their regular batch settlement between banks, but that doesn’t matter to a retail customer, because the money is instantly withdraw-able, and covered by government deposit protection the moment the faster payment appears on your bank statement (which is milliseconds after the payment is initiated by the sender). Why would I want to mess around with Bitcoins, when I already have access to fast, secure, cheap, money transfers to any UK bank account?

colechristensen 4y ago

> An open, permissionless, and GLOBAL monetary network for final settlement and small payments (and micropayments) which no single competing nation state has unilateral control over would be a game changer for fintech innovation. The function of everything from Visa/Mastercard, Fedwire, SWIFT, Paypal, Western Union, etc, all rebase onto one global network with countless businesses competing on top of it to provide the most appealing user experience. This is not ever going to happen. Witness today the Ethereum tumbler getting sanctioned. When a payment method gets significant enough it will either be regulated or squashed by the state.

anonporridge 4y ago
States are welcome to try to exclude themselves and their citizens from the network, as many nation states attempt to do now with the open internet.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Some people do compare the relatively free exchange of information on the Internet with cryptocurrencies, but modern democracies regulating commerce isn't anywhere near the intent of dictatorships regulating information. It is also quite easy for a state to exclude themselves from cryptocurrency networks, to the extent that the only transactions taking places are enabled by black market in person exchanges for cash, and no legal business entity could use that currency so you're left with the only thing bitcoin was really ever good for, evading legal controls to do trivial things or illegal things. Nothing more.

gamblor956 4y ago

Your argument to all of the problems affecting bitcoin is...don't use bitcoin. Use this other thing, lightning, which is sort of built on bitcoin, but not really. And also not actually used anywhere, yet, even though it's supposed to be so amazing at fixing bitcoin's problems that crypto merchants should have embraced it over night. That bitcoin's biggest proponents still haven't embraced lightning is a pretty clear admission of defeat by bitcoin apologists that bitcoin doesn't actually solve anything, and isn't actually very useful for anything, even with the fix that was supposed to finally bring bitcoin into the promised land.

tossl568 4y ago
Every lightning transaction (or channel update) is a valid Bitcoin transaction that can be broadcasted to the Bitcoin network and settled at any time. Lightning capacity and transactions are growing fast. "Crypto"'s biggest proponents haven't embraced lightning because they have shitcoins to sell.
- drekk 4y ago
  I think if your coin uses more energy to settle one transaction than a typical South American uses in a year it's the "shitcoin" Crypto being filled with scams is a feature, not a bug.
  - sph 4y ago
    > your coin uses more energy to settle one transaction than a typical South American uses in a year Do you even know what you're talking about? The energy concerns are real, but please avoid exaggeration to win arguments.
    - bearmode 4y ago
      https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/features/crypto-energy-consumption/ https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/feature... >By far the most power-hungry crypto in our study, we found that a single Bitcoin transaction uses an average of 1,173 Kilowatt Hours (kWh). If we consider that the average monthly electricity usage for a UK household is 350 kWh, that’s enough to power the typical UK home for more than three months at a cost of roughly £125 ($173), based on a fixed cost of £0.11 ($0.148) per kWh >In the U.S, it would equate to roughly 6 weeks of electricity based on an average household electricity usage of 877 kWh per month (U.S Energy Information Administration). Not quite an entire year, but definitely a number of months. Also according to digiconomist's latest figures, it's currently at around 1500kWh per transaction. So even worse.

warkdarrior 4y ago

> The function of everything from Visa/Mastercard, Fedwire, SWIFT, Paypal, Western Union, etc, all rebase onto one global network with countless businesses competing on top of it to provide the most appealing user experience. Even if they do rebase on top of one global network, what incentive do these companies have to change their product offerings or their fees? Consumers will not care what Visa/Mastercard or Western Union use on the backend, could be carrier pigeons as far as most people are concerned. What would cause fintech to become more competitive? I'd love to see every transaction fee, loan rate, etc. go to zero. But would "one global network" lead to that?