8 ms·

This is the best, and in my opinion, only use case for Ethereum

bnchrch 4y ago
This is something I hope a blockchain solution breaks through. A thought on how to do it. 1. Create a stable coin 2. Create a credit card that uses this token 3. Tie using it to some reward, supercharge it with VC if you have to 4. Release a QR payment component where vendors don't have to pay to receive payment, get rewards and payees earn double rewards 5. Integrate that bad boy far and wide Worth noting that Stripe, Shopify and Square are also well placed to use a similar strategy
- Swizec 4y ago
  > This is something I hope a blockchain solution breaks through. Don't worry, Visa and probably Mastercard already have a crypto department. They've been digging into blockchain (and buying startups) for a while now.
  - k__ 4y ago
    I read, at one of those companies hundreds of people are working on crypto/blockchain.
- karamanolev 4y ago
  So far I think the first step has failed spectacularly a few times, let alone any follow up. I'm not saying the above is necessarily impossible, but at this point I've acquired an instant gag reflex when I hear blockchain. I'm not sure if that's a healthy approach for me, but it's true. Why does it have to be a blockchain instead of a government-mandated nonprofit (e.g. FedNow) to operate it? Wouldn't that have more oversight and less chances of massive fraud?
  - junofan 4y ago
    The Fed is absurdly profitable.
  - Areibman 4y ago
    I used to feel the exact same way until I saw what Circle did with USDC. I’m highly doubtful that FedNow will be able to compete in terms of innovative new features. Say what you will about blockchain, there’s a lot of builders out there aggressively churning out new tech without anyone’s permission.
    - yao420 4y ago
      USDC and Circle are not as clean as they would like us to believe. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-financial-bubble-era-comes-full https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-financial-bubble-era-comes...
tossl568 4y ago
That system where your money disappears if you don't get "gas" fees right? The Bitcoin/lightning stack is the best option here.
- odrekf 4y ago
  You mean Bitcoin Cash.
  - tossl568 4y ago
    I absolutely, positively do not.
    - odrekf 4y ago
      It has much, much better scalability and uptime. The other day the entire LN went down due to 1 bad node. That has never happened, and will never happen in the original Bitcoin design (ticker: BCH).
      - tossl568 4y ago
        It has better scalability if you don't care about decentralisation whatsoever and that it's possible that everyone can store a copy of everyone's else's coffee transactions in perpetuity. It's not possible without huge, expensive to run servers, which is why nobody runs a BCH node. Uptime? By what metric? Bitcoin, the real one, has 100% uptime since the fork. The entire LN did not "go down the other day due to one bad node", that is not how it works at the most fundamental level. It simply did not happen. If you're a sockpuppet then nobody is buying it sorry, your coin is dead. And if you've actually fell for this narrative and actually hold BCH, then I am truly sorry and hope you realise you've fell for a scam before you lose any more money.
        odrekf 4y ago
        What you call "Bitcoin", is not Bitcoin by its own whitepaper. And it certainly DOESN'T have 100% uptime. Keeping blocks artificially limited at 1mb doesn't make it more decentralized, it actually makes it more centralized, since barely anyone in the world can use the network or pay the fees when a bunch of people are using it at the same time.
rvz 4y ago
No. Not even remotely close. Both Bitcoin, and Ethereum have both proven that they are unsuitable for payments. Both with their demonstrably slow, expensive and unscalable layer 1 and their ducktaped contraptions of their non standard layer 2 solutions. I can only see a few cryptocurrencies that are suitable for the payments use-case which the ones considered for this are part of the ISO 20020 standard.
- randomran01234 4y ago
  It's very possible that an EVM-compatible L2 eventually captures this space, or a subset of it. Harder to imagine any L1 blockchain ever being able to reach the throughput needed without dramatic trade-offs in decentralization, censorship-resistance and security. At that point you might wonder how it would be any different than a centralized Visa or Mastercard network.
drexlspivey 4y ago
Micropayments will be the killer app for crypto imo, once the $0.30 minimum transaction fee by the gatekeepers goes away a whole new universe of business models and revenue streams opens up. You can literally stream money if you want to. Lightning Network is one way to do that right now and the UX is getting pretty good too.
- Premiuum 4y ago
  >a whole new universe of business models and revenue streams opens up. Agreed. And there are loads of hi-speed, low-cost "coins".
kelnos 4y ago
Can we get through even one finance-related HN post without a content-free comment claiming cryptocurrencies will solve this problem? (Spoiler: they won't.)
- fezfight 4y ago
  The question posed is can the visa-mastercard duopoly be broken. The answer is no. Like all entrenched systems, the only way beyond them is to circumvent them. Circumventing the financial system is what bitcoin did. So no, you can't solve it, but you don't need to.

This is something I hope a blockchain solution breaks through. A thought on how to do it. 1. Create a stable coin 2. Create a credit card that uses this token 3. Tie using it to some reward, supercharge it with VC if you have to 4. Release a QR payment component where vendors don't have to pay to receive payment, get rewards and payees earn double rewards 5. Integrate that bad boy far and wide Worth noting that Stripe, Shopify and Square are also well placed to use a similar strategy

Swizec 4y ago
> This is something I hope a blockchain solution breaks through. Don't worry, Visa and probably Mastercard already have a crypto department. They've been digging into blockchain (and buying startups) for a while now.
- k__ 4y ago
  I read, at one of those companies hundreds of people are working on crypto/blockchain.
karamanolev 4y ago
So far I think the first step has failed spectacularly a few times, let alone any follow up. I'm not saying the above is necessarily impossible, but at this point I've acquired an instant gag reflex when I hear blockchain. I'm not sure if that's a healthy approach for me, but it's true. Why does it have to be a blockchain instead of a government-mandated nonprofit (e.g. FedNow) to operate it? Wouldn't that have more oversight and less chances of massive fraud?
- junofan 4y ago
  The Fed is absurdly profitable.
- Areibman 4y ago
  I used to feel the exact same way until I saw what Circle did with USDC. I’m highly doubtful that FedNow will be able to compete in terms of innovative new features. Say what you will about blockchain, there’s a lot of builders out there aggressively churning out new tech without anyone’s permission.
  - yao420 4y ago
    USDC and Circle are not as clean as they would like us to believe. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-financial-bubble-era-comes-full https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-financial-bubble-era-comes...

tossl568 4y ago

That system where your money disappears if you don't get "gas" fees right? The Bitcoin/lightning stack is the best option here.

odrekf 4y ago
You mean Bitcoin Cash.
- tossl568 4y ago
  I absolutely, positively do not.
  - odrekf 4y ago
    It has much, much better scalability and uptime. The other day the entire LN went down due to 1 bad node. That has never happened, and will never happen in the original Bitcoin design (ticker: BCH).
    - tossl568 4y ago
      It has better scalability if you don't care about decentralisation whatsoever and that it's possible that everyone can store a copy of everyone's else's coffee transactions in perpetuity. It's not possible without huge, expensive to run servers, which is why nobody runs a BCH node. Uptime? By what metric? Bitcoin, the real one, has 100% uptime since the fork. The entire LN did not "go down the other day due to one bad node", that is not how it works at the most fundamental level. It simply did not happen. If you're a sockpuppet then nobody is buying it sorry, your coin is dead. And if you've actually fell for this narrative and actually hold BCH, then I am truly sorry and hope you realise you've fell for a scam before you lose any more money.
      - odrekf 4y ago
        What you call "Bitcoin", is not Bitcoin by its own whitepaper. And it certainly DOESN'T have 100% uptime. Keeping blocks artificially limited at 1mb doesn't make it more decentralized, it actually makes it more centralized, since barely anyone in the world can use the network or pay the fees when a bunch of people are using it at the same time.

rvz 4y ago

No. Not even remotely close. Both Bitcoin, and Ethereum have both proven that they are unsuitable for payments. Both with their demonstrably slow, expensive and unscalable layer 1 and their ducktaped contraptions of their non standard layer 2 solutions. I can only see a few cryptocurrencies that are suitable for the payments use-case which the ones considered for this are part of the ISO 20020 standard.

randomran01234 4y ago
It's very possible that an EVM-compatible L2 eventually captures this space, or a subset of it. Harder to imagine any L1 blockchain ever being able to reach the throughput needed without dramatic trade-offs in decentralization, censorship-resistance and security. At that point you might wonder how it would be any different than a centralized Visa or Mastercard network.

drexlspivey 4y ago

Micropayments will be the killer app for crypto imo, once the $0.30 minimum transaction fee by the gatekeepers goes away a whole new universe of business models and revenue streams opens up. You can literally stream money if you want to. Lightning Network is one way to do that right now and the UX is getting pretty good too.

Premiuum 4y ago
>a whole new universe of business models and revenue streams opens up. Agreed. And there are loads of hi-speed, low-cost "coins".

kelnos 4y ago

Can we get through even one finance-related HN post without a content-free comment claiming cryptocurrencies will solve this problem? (Spoiler: they won't.)

fezfight 4y ago
The question posed is can the visa-mastercard duopoly be broken. The answer is no. Like all entrenched systems, the only way beyond them is to circumvent them. Circumventing the financial system is what bitcoin did. So no, you can't solve it, but you don't need to.