12 ms·

Expanding access to the future of work with crypto payouts

104 points by edwinarbus 4y ago

colesantiago 4y ago
It is a massive mistake that Stripe is offering anything in the crypto space as everyone and Stripe knows it is full of fraud, money laundering, scams and it is completely unregulated. I look forward to the day that Stripe will get investigated for all of the above with this and end up like Paypal, eventually freezing or banning these accounts. Crypto does not offer anything new at all. EDIT: It seems Stripe and Crypto apologists have downvoted & flagged my comment since Stripe is somehow a HN / YC darling that is immune from valid criticism even if they venture into crypto scamming, with no usecase that is better than the current financial system. Crypto is only used for speculating and will eventually collapse under regulation. @karaterobot Stripe is no exception here for regulation and will comply by banning accounts if these 'remittances' are fraudulent as the majority of them most likely are. Even in El Salvador, the country that has adopted bitcoin, merchants aren't using it for payments because they lose money extremely quickly due to volatility, so there isn't a usecase for cryptocurrencies or blockchain at all.
- djohnston 4y ago
  this is a real lazy take mate. i mean, i agree that the crypto industry is plauged by fraud and posers, but to say that blockchain offers nothing new is just showing ignorance of the technology. i recommend reading the original bitcoin whitepaper to understand what is new: https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    What can crypto and blockchain legitimately offer that is better than what the current financial system offers? The Bitcoin whitepaper outlines a P2P payments system, today it isn't used as such, rather a store of value, not even Stripe is using Bitcoin for payments at all. So what use are these cryptocurrencies for, if not for scams and fraud?
    - datadata 4y ago
      From the article: > Speed is one advantage of crypto payouts. Reach is another. Millions of talented freelancers live in countries where it’s hard, if not impossible, to open a local bank account. For example, a majority of the people in Djibouti, El Salvador, and Bhutan don't have bank accounts. With Stripe, freelancers in those countries are now able to receive funds via USDC in minutes. With the addition of USDC, Stripe cross-border payouts extend to more than 4.4 billion people in more than 110 countries—a majority of the world’s population.
      - colesantiago 4y ago
        USDC is a completely centralised 'stablecoin' and has a blacklist function which means they can seize funds of people who they don't like. USDC again is not even regulated as I said with no proof backing this other than 'attestations' which is not a full audit of reserves. How is this decentralised money that was promised by crypto and blockchain? You may very well use Wise, Moneygram and other regulated alternatives which works better, is also relatively faster and is more stable and widely accepted than these USDC tokens.
        dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
        USDC can be sent peer to peer with low fees. And I would be extremely surprised if Wise or Moneygram are cheaper or faster.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Does it adhere to KYC and AML at exchanges and other fiat ramps? I think it’s a clever backdoor hack to instant cross border value movement without traditional banking (Wise and company), but the reach of government is always there. Curious what US Treasury, FinCEN, OFAC, etcs take on this is. The plumbing is easy, it’s the laws, regulation, and compliance that are the work. High level, Stripe is reaching for growth when there isn’t much innovation to be had in financial utilities besides reducing waste and inefficiencies by cannibalizing your business or someone else’s while the industry continues to commodify basic services like payments, cross border transfers, and deposit accounts (lending and data is the last bastion of profits for financial services). https://www.pymnts.com/news/fintech-investments/2022/stripe-valuation-marked-down-64-by-t-rowe-price-global-tech-fund/ https://www.pymnts.com/news/fintech-investments/2022/stripe-...
- karaterobot 4y ago
  Crypto is very popular among people working in rich countries who send remittances back to their families in other countries. That's a legitimate use, a very popular use, and is obviously what Stripe is going for here.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Isn't that what Western Union is doing, rather well and gobally?
    - karaterobot 4y ago
      I don't know if this product will successfully compete with Western Union.
  - jfghi 4y ago
    Once the remittance is received, how is it then exchanged for the currency the recipient needs?
    - rafaelm 4y ago
      From my own experience, you can use a very popular exchange that has a huge P2P marketplace, precisely for this.
      - missedthecue 4y ago
        What is this marketplace named?
        refsab 4y ago
        It's Binance P2P. You can transfer crypto directly into local currency. It uses local residents as liquidity providers.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- jejeyyy77 4y ago
  Lol, feels like some people never see trends until it literally steam rolls over them.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    You mean negative interest rates? Most cryptocurrencies have died as expected. Some of them are still alive but nobody really uses them as a medium of exchange.
- gfodor 4y ago
  these comments get increasingly funny to read as time goes on
- x-complexity 4y ago
  > EDIT: It seems Stripe and Crypto apologists have downvoted & flagged my comment since Stripe is somehow a HN / YC darling that is immune from valid criticism even if they venture into crypto scamming, with no usecase that is better than the current financial system. > It is a massive mistake that Stripe is offering anything in the crypto space as everyone and Stripe knows it is full of fraud, money laundering, scams and it is completely unregulated. The argument is engaging in "everything is X" talk by blanketing an entire space as only engaging in negative impacts. It should be noted that the percentage of crypto used in illicit activity is significantly less than 1%, compared to the estimated 2-5% of global GDP that is involved in money laundering alone within traditional financial ecosystems. https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-report-introduction/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-repor... https://blog.chainalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/chart-2-shares-1024x589.png https://blog.chainalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/char... https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10873/3 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10873/3 (page 1) Using the same argument, it could be said that cash should be banned because its private & semi-anonymous nature allows for its use in transactions for gambling, drug use, child porngraphy, assasinations, & slave trafficking.
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    At least cash is accepted everywhere in domestic countries, and even it's online it's card. Crypto isn't widely accepted or even used as a form of payment in the real world and has no useful legitimate usecase. We don't need more unregulated tokens that have no intrinsic value other than speculation, gambling and fraud. Sure we have issues in the current financial system, but augmenting (and dare I say) replacing it with an entirely worse unregulated system which loses people money through scams, increases and emboldens ransomware and exposes people to huge volatility is not the way to go. > The argument is engaging in "everything is X" talk by blanketing an entire space as only engaging in negative impacts. The negative impacts are FAR greater than the positive impacts of crypto.
    - zeroclip 4y ago
      Cash is not accepted everywhere. Lots of countries are nearly cashless, with small merchants already unable to accept cash.
- telephone2 4y ago
  People seem to forget that 6 trillion dollars of liquidity was injected into the US monetary supply in 2020 (close to a 50% increase in the total USD monetary supply). The 2008 financial bailout popularized by "The Big Short" pales in comparison to what happened in 2020. While there are situations where creating liquidity via monetary policy is necessary - it sucks that it directly impacts the savings and wages of everyday people through inflation. Total bitcoinization would be dystopian but as a lifeboat against the inexorable spread of the negative side effects of inflation and the skyrocketing price of assets due to the cantillon effect - it is remarkably effective. Hate to be a parrot but... "zoom out".
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Can you find any article anywhere which quantifies the magnitude of the Cantillon effect because I certainly have looked and found absolutely nothing. Crypto is hardly inflation-proof, with major cryptos having fallen 80% or more in the last 6 months putting it on pace with the Lira - if you then adjust it for inflation you lose another 10%. It's somehow managed to do all that in the single most inflationary period in 50+ years. I was pretty sure we'd given up on that silly narrative. Crypto is a high-beta speculative play on US dollar liquidity in the global financial system, not a hedge on inflation. Wanna save money from inflation? Buy some I-bonds. So uh, zoom back in ;) [edit] Also, liquidity per (as defined by the size of the Fed's asset book) se isn't really correlated with asset prices, which is why we're doing interest rates. I recommend listening to the Odd Lots podcast with Kashkari in re: inflation.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      Honestly, the cantillon effect is a red herring because any form of spending, it doesn't matter if the money is physically printed as a bank note with no debt backing it or simply spent from savings in a gold standard. If you divide the economy into two sectors, your bank account and the rest of the economy, then spending off your bank account will create a net increase in the money supply in the rest of the economy, this will raise prices in close proximity to you. Or in other words, the cantillon effect describes how price signals propagate through the economy. The strange thing is that people have this fixation on "printed" money causing inflation but as I mentioned, the cantillon effect also applies to normal spending of money that was received via taxes. If you ban the "printing" of money as we have already done by establishing central banks the cantillon effect remains. Where do we find proof of the cantillon effect then? Government spending as a percentage of GDP and subsequent public sector employment but then again, this isn't something new, it is boring and obvious, not some conspiracy of the government scheming against you.
- houstonn 4y ago
  No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
- notatrader 4y ago
  Crypto is very trackable and especially when cashing out. Only countries without kyc/aml protections allow individuals to cash out illicit crypto and that's only a small fraction. Most of crypto is built on speculation which results in direct losses to consumers. And extensive and endless hacks, which is just another tax on consumers. Very little of bitcoin or any cryptocurrency is used for drugs, terrorism or other serious crimes. Real world money laundering (trade based etc) is 500x that of bitcoin and real world drug dealing is at least 1000x greater than darknet markets.
- imtringued 4y ago
  RAI offers something new.
djbusby 4y ago
Now when stripe suddenly shuts down your business you can be even more outta-luck than when it was USD. Better for them you're on the no-recourse crypto.
- sneak 4y ago
  Quite the opposite is true. USDC payments are fast and irreversible.
- zeroclip 4y ago
  This comment is misinformed; if the asset lies your non custodial wallet, only Circle can blacklist your USDC funds. So far Circle has mostly only frozen funds related to government sanctions. Users are free to exchange the funds to DAI which cannot be frozen by a centralized issuer.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jonathan-adly 4y ago
Good for stripe. Not sure about Crypto, particularly the cyberpunk ones. Stripe is the next Google - with the all the good and bad that this brings.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
houston_Euler 4y ago
First, I think it's great to have a talent network that's owned by it's stakeholders, but I think it's questionable to say the token holders "own" the network. My concern is that the organization is split into two entities: (1) Freelance Labs, which owns and controls the website.[1][4], and (2) A Panamanian Non-profit that "owns" the token.[2] Stripe's copy: "And because it’s decentralized, the people that use Braintrust also own and operate the network: Talent keeps 100% of its earnings and clients can make their budgets go further by cutting out unnecessary middle men." #The Braintrust Foundation has nothing to do with the website: From the usebraintrust.com TOS[1]: "This Terms of Service (also referred to as the “Agreement”) is a contract between you (“you” or “User”) and Freelance Labs, Inc. (“Freelance Labs,” “we,” or “us”)." #The website controls the operations of the network: Also from the usebraintrust.com TOS[1]: "The Site is a marketplace where Clients and Freelancers can identify each other and advertise, buy, and sell Freelancer Services online. Subject to the Terms of Service, Freelance Labs provides the Site Services to Users, including hosting and maintaining the Site, facilitating Projects between Users,, and assisting Users in resolving disputes which may arise in connection with those Projects Users are required invoice and pay any amounts owed for any agreed upon Projects facilitated by the Site and/or Services." #Users keep all their earnings, except for the 10% fees clients pay: From the Braintrust whitepaper[3]: "Talent are charged no fees: they are paid their full contracted rate (whether that be per hour or per project). Clients are charged 10% of the total contract value, an amount that is significantly less than in other networks and consulting firms. Client fees are collected in USD, converted into BTRST, and sent to the Braintrust DAO through the Fee Converter, a smart contract that was proposed, voted on, and implemented by the community in October 2021. This process makes it possible for client fees — in the form of BTRST tokens — to pay for network operations and to fund community programs" #The token technically doesn't own anything: Also from Braintrust's whitepaper[3]: "BTRST is not a share of stock, does not represent a claim on profits, dividends, equity, or debt in any company or organization, and is not a financial instrument. BTRST has been adopted by the Braintrust network and users for various activities on the network only, such as for staking, governance, voting, and educational purposes" #The token has no claim to anything: From a podcast with Adam Jackson: "We have a token instead of a share of stock. It does not represent any financial claims, any dividends or profit sharing, simply because there is no profit. The network is meant to run sustainably. It's meant to sustain itself. And so, it charges just enough fees to get by on, paying for hosting and maintenance and upgrades and that sort of thing." Again, I still think it's a potential improvement on the alternatives, and they've built a lot of functionality, but I just worry that the website, seemingly the only way to contract on the network, isn't owned by the foundation. Is the foundation contractually obligated to heed to any votes from the DAO? It's not very clear that they are. They've built out a lot[6] that makes me hopeful their network will hold its value, but I just wish they could leave no doubt that their users own the network as well as the resources that power that network. For example, what if once the network has gained enough value, the owners of Freelance Labs sell the usebraintrust.com website to UpWork? Can they, and if so, what happens then? [1] https://www.usebraintrust.com/terms https://www.usebraintrust.com/terms [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1756245/000175624518000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1756245/000175624518... [3] https://www.usebraintrust.com/whitepaper https://www.usebraintrust.com/whitepaper [4] https://sec.report/CIK/0001759292 https://sec.report/CIK/0001759292 [5] https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/podcast/Pages/podcast-details.aspx?episode=15773630 https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/podcast/Page... [6] https://info.app.usebraintrust.com/ https://info.app.usebraintrust.com/
gitgud 4y ago
To be specific they're allowing transfer to the USDC token, which is a "stable coin" pegged to the USD currency and owned by coin base. This is a fairly low risk move by Stripe, as USDC is more open and trusted than USDT (Tether)
- sneak 4y ago
  Issued by Coinbase. It is owned by whoever has it. They are also easily and instantly (and perhaps most importantly permissionlessly) exchangeable to hundreds of other tokens thanks to DeFi swap smart contracts.
  - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
    USDC is not permissionless. Coinbase froze all USDC in Tornado on the Ethereum blockchain, for examaple.
    - sneak 4y ago
      That's after the fact. Anyone can use and trade in USDC without being whitelisted. You can receive payments in USDC and immediately exchange them for other safer tokens if you wish, and if you use a fresh address each time, nobody can stop you.
      - mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
        That doesn't make it permissionless. The parent is right. USDC is closer to an IOU than a permissionless ERC20 token because the contract it uses has been modified for the centralized blacklist functionality and can lock you out any time. It's the same as a centralized bank. If you get your salary deposited you can also go and take out cash immediately, but until you do, you don't truly own the par value.
  - clarkeni 4y ago
    Issued by Circle
boh 4y ago
As companies continually erode employee benefits and aggressively seek out ever cheaper labor, we have to continually be reminded how innovative and great this "massive shift enabled in large part by new technology" is going to be. Now you're going to get paid in unregulated tokens, isn't that amazing! And guess what? Not using actual money also let's them access "millions of talented freelancers live in countries where it’s hard, if not impossible, to open a local bank account". That's great because those workers also tend to live in countries with lax or non existent labor laws. These new inroads in exploitation is just another great win for innovation! How bright our future gets every day!
- civilized 4y ago
  Everybody wants to talk about how bad the sweatshop is. Nobody wants to talk about the poverty that was so bad, people jumped at the chance to work in the sweatshop.
  - boh 4y ago
    Yes they do. They love to talk about that and do all the time. It helps make exploiting poor people with limited protections seem moral. Don't forget to mention how employing a person to work 16 hours a day making clothes or a phone helps feed their family.
    - XorNot 4y ago
      "that child worker could be an important income source to help feed their family" I've heard that in polite settings when I was younger, and my absolute rage at it has only grown.
    - civilized 4y ago
      I share your moral objections to exploitative working conditions. But most of us aren't doing those people any good. Work opportunities, on the other hand -- even exploitative ones -- do seem to be doing them good, if they are voluntarily choosing to do them. I think that should humble and temper all of our moral sensibilities a little, when we are attempting to judge a development like this as Good or Bad. Here is something doing good for poor people, and here we are, doing nothing for those poor people, judging it. That feels off to me. If this was Stripe Slavery, I would have no problem calling it Bad. I don't support slavery. But empowering people to engage in voluntary working arrangements -- it can be abused, sure, but Bad? I'm skeptical.
zhoujianfu 4y ago
I hope they are also offering USDC on polygon so the fees are less than a penny instead of generalll more than a dollar.
zeroclip 4y ago
This is good but I wish it wasn’t specific to Braintrust. Have been in crypto for a while and have never heard of Braintrust or their token. Freelancers should just be paid directly in a ERC20, Stripe could take a small fee on transfers for their UX and API services, no need for a DAO or separate BTRST token.
- jsemrau 4y ago
  We were evaluating ETH payouts for Finclout and at the time transaction fees was a huge barrier. We are currently working with the Cardano chain because it allows for a min payout of 1 ADA which makes users happy when they get payouts more frequently and us happy because fees are low.
  - zeroclip 4y ago
    Personally feel that a better solution long term is Ethereum L2 payouts.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      L2s are still pretty young. Polygon is popular but is ultimately a sidechain. Optimism hasn't rolled out fully. I understand why some would not want to trust L2s yet.
      - zeroclip 4y ago
        Agreed, although short term solutions like having freelancers paid in ADA just to avoid ETH fees might end up hurting users and eroding their trust in blockchains in the long run.
    - jsemrau 4y ago
      The future of payouts will be omni-chain. Now that ETH is PoS, it is actually one of the benefits of the move, that there is a treasury with non-random payout cycles.
    - imtringued 4y ago
knorker 4y ago
I don't understand how this is related to the future of work. Is it just clickbait? Or are they making the assumption that the future of work is freelance gig economy? That sounds awful. And it's not how I've seen the phrase used before.
comfypotato 4y ago
I stopped reading at “in 5 years the majority of workers will be freelancers”. Am I missing something? Seems like an incredibly naive article. The statement I mentioned, for example, either doesn’t know what a freelancer or majority is. Or am I totally in the dark regarding how the world is employed? Basic functions of society around the world will still require traditionally employed people as the majority, yes? Not to mention that the corporate workplace isn’t going away anytime soon in the developed world. Take your typical painting/handyman/landscaping/small-scale-construction business as an example. In the US at least: you could call the owner a freelancer, but the majority of the small business is traditionally employed workers.
- hef19898 4y ago
  I read it less as a prediction and more like a goal of the, pardon the French, capitalist elite for future employment. Amazon's constabt fight against unions, the Apple-Google-Facebook cartel around SV dev salaries, they all fall into the same bucket.
- jt2190 4y ago
  They’re citing this report: “Freelance Forward Economist Report” by Dr. Adam Ozimek for Upwork. https://www.upwork.com/research/freelance-forward-2021 https://www.upwork.com/research/freelance-forward-2021
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    That source says that the majority of post grads In the US work as free lancers. And you’re still implying that in 5 years the majority of all workers will be free lancers. These statistics are a joke. I literally do not know a single freelancer in my post grad program. I have never met a freelancer who is a post grad. I don’t care enough to sift through the bullshit of your source to see what they actually researched. Upwork is a bullshit site that wants 30 YOE workers to program for $20.00 an hour. This HN post is a waste of time. Thanks for the source though, don’t mean to sound annoyed at you but rather the post in general.
trhway 4y ago
> Then he went on Braintrust and met Stardust, a US-based NFT gaming company. They paid Singh to work remotely, ... In his first three months on Braintrust, Singh earned $50,000 I wish the best to the guy, yet i'm wondering does anybody think it is kind of fishy?

104 points by edwinarbus 4y ago

It is a massive mistake that Stripe is offering anything in the crypto space as everyone and Stripe knows it is full of fraud, money laundering, scams and it is completely unregulated. I look forward to the day that Stripe will get investigated for all of the above with this and end up like Paypal, eventually freezing or banning these accounts. Crypto does not offer anything new at all. EDIT: It seems Stripe and Crypto apologists have downvoted & flagged my comment since Stripe is somehow a HN / YC darling that is immune from valid criticism even if they venture into crypto scamming, with no usecase that is better than the current financial system. Crypto is only used for speculating and will eventually collapse under regulation. @karaterobot Stripe is no exception here for regulation and will comply by banning accounts if these 'remittances' are fraudulent as the majority of them most likely are. Even in El Salvador, the country that has adopted bitcoin, merchants aren't using it for payments because they lose money extremely quickly due to volatility, so there isn't a usecase for cryptocurrencies or blockchain at all.

djohnston 4y ago
this is a real lazy take mate. i mean, i agree that the crypto industry is plauged by fraud and posers, but to say that blockchain offers nothing new is just showing ignorance of the technology. i recommend reading the original bitcoin whitepaper to understand what is new: https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper
- colesantiago 4y ago
  What can crypto and blockchain legitimately offer that is better than what the current financial system offers? The Bitcoin whitepaper outlines a P2P payments system, today it isn't used as such, rather a store of value, not even Stripe is using Bitcoin for payments at all. So what use are these cryptocurrencies for, if not for scams and fraud?
  - datadata 4y ago
    From the article: > Speed is one advantage of crypto payouts. Reach is another. Millions of talented freelancers live in countries where it’s hard, if not impossible, to open a local bank account. For example, a majority of the people in Djibouti, El Salvador, and Bhutan don't have bank accounts. With Stripe, freelancers in those countries are now able to receive funds via USDC in minutes. With the addition of USDC, Stripe cross-border payouts extend to more than 4.4 billion people in more than 110 countries—a majority of the world’s population.
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      USDC is a completely centralised 'stablecoin' and has a blacklist function which means they can seize funds of people who they don't like. USDC again is not even regulated as I said with no proof backing this other than 'attestations' which is not a full audit of reserves. How is this decentralised money that was promised by crypto and blockchain? You may very well use Wise, Moneygram and other regulated alternatives which works better, is also relatively faster and is more stable and widely accepted than these USDC tokens.
      - dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
        USDC can be sent peer to peer with low fees. And I would be extremely surprised if Wise or Moneygram are cheaper or faster.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Does it adhere to KYC and AML at exchanges and other fiat ramps? I think it’s a clever backdoor hack to instant cross border value movement without traditional banking (Wise and company), but the reach of government is always there. Curious what US Treasury, FinCEN, OFAC, etcs take on this is. The plumbing is easy, it’s the laws, regulation, and compliance that are the work. High level, Stripe is reaching for growth when there isn’t much innovation to be had in financial utilities besides reducing waste and inefficiencies by cannibalizing your business or someone else’s while the industry continues to commodify basic services like payments, cross border transfers, and deposit accounts (lending and data is the last bastion of profits for financial services). https://www.pymnts.com/news/fintech-investments/2022/stripe-valuation-marked-down-64-by-t-rowe-price-global-tech-fund/ https://www.pymnts.com/news/fintech-investments/2022/stripe-...
karaterobot 4y ago
Crypto is very popular among people working in rich countries who send remittances back to their families in other countries. That's a legitimate use, a very popular use, and is obviously what Stripe is going for here.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Isn't that what Western Union is doing, rather well and gobally?
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    I don't know if this product will successfully compete with Western Union.
- jfghi 4y ago
  Once the remittance is received, how is it then exchanged for the currency the recipient needs?
  - rafaelm 4y ago
    From my own experience, you can use a very popular exchange that has a huge P2P marketplace, precisely for this.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      What is this marketplace named?
      - refsab 4y ago
        It's Binance P2P. You can transfer crypto directly into local currency. It uses local residents as liquidity providers.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
jejeyyy77 4y ago
Lol, feels like some people never see trends until it literally steam rolls over them.
- imtringued 4y ago
  You mean negative interest rates? Most cryptocurrencies have died as expected. Some of them are still alive but nobody really uses them as a medium of exchange.
gfodor 4y ago
these comments get increasingly funny to read as time goes on
x-complexity 4y ago
> EDIT: It seems Stripe and Crypto apologists have downvoted & flagged my comment since Stripe is somehow a HN / YC darling that is immune from valid criticism even if they venture into crypto scamming, with no usecase that is better than the current financial system. > It is a massive mistake that Stripe is offering anything in the crypto space as everyone and Stripe knows it is full of fraud, money laundering, scams and it is completely unregulated. The argument is engaging in "everything is X" talk by blanketing an entire space as only engaging in negative impacts. It should be noted that the percentage of crypto used in illicit activity is significantly less than 1%, compared to the estimated 2-5% of global GDP that is involved in money laundering alone within traditional financial ecosystems. https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-report-introduction/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-repor... https://blog.chainalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/chart-2-shares-1024x589.png https://blog.chainalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/char... https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10873/3 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10873/3 (page 1) Using the same argument, it could be said that cash should be banned because its private & semi-anonymous nature allows for its use in transactions for gambling, drug use, child porngraphy, assasinations, & slave trafficking.
- colesantiago 4y ago
  At least cash is accepted everywhere in domestic countries, and even it's online it's card. Crypto isn't widely accepted or even used as a form of payment in the real world and has no useful legitimate usecase. We don't need more unregulated tokens that have no intrinsic value other than speculation, gambling and fraud. Sure we have issues in the current financial system, but augmenting (and dare I say) replacing it with an entirely worse unregulated system which loses people money through scams, increases and emboldens ransomware and exposes people to huge volatility is not the way to go. > The argument is engaging in "everything is X" talk by blanketing an entire space as only engaging in negative impacts. The negative impacts are FAR greater than the positive impacts of crypto.
  - zeroclip 4y ago
    Cash is not accepted everywhere. Lots of countries are nearly cashless, with small merchants already unable to accept cash.
telephone2 4y ago
People seem to forget that 6 trillion dollars of liquidity was injected into the US monetary supply in 2020 (close to a 50% increase in the total USD monetary supply). The 2008 financial bailout popularized by "The Big Short" pales in comparison to what happened in 2020. While there are situations where creating liquidity via monetary policy is necessary - it sucks that it directly impacts the savings and wages of everyday people through inflation. Total bitcoinization would be dystopian but as a lifeboat against the inexorable spread of the negative side effects of inflation and the skyrocketing price of assets due to the cantillon effect - it is remarkably effective. Hate to be a parrot but... "zoom out".
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Can you find any article anywhere which quantifies the magnitude of the Cantillon effect because I certainly have looked and found absolutely nothing. Crypto is hardly inflation-proof, with major cryptos having fallen 80% or more in the last 6 months putting it on pace with the Lira - if you then adjust it for inflation you lose another 10%. It's somehow managed to do all that in the single most inflationary period in 50+ years. I was pretty sure we'd given up on that silly narrative. Crypto is a high-beta speculative play on US dollar liquidity in the global financial system, not a hedge on inflation. Wanna save money from inflation? Buy some I-bonds. So uh, zoom back in ;) [edit] Also, liquidity per (as defined by the size of the Fed's asset book) se isn't really correlated with asset prices, which is why we're doing interest rates. I recommend listening to the Odd Lots podcast with Kashkari in re: inflation.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Honestly, the cantillon effect is a red herring because any form of spending, it doesn't matter if the money is physically printed as a bank note with no debt backing it or simply spent from savings in a gold standard. If you divide the economy into two sectors, your bank account and the rest of the economy, then spending off your bank account will create a net increase in the money supply in the rest of the economy, this will raise prices in close proximity to you. Or in other words, the cantillon effect describes how price signals propagate through the economy. The strange thing is that people have this fixation on "printed" money causing inflation but as I mentioned, the cantillon effect also applies to normal spending of money that was received via taxes. If you ban the "printing" of money as we have already done by establishing central banks the cantillon effect remains. Where do we find proof of the cantillon effect then? Government spending as a percentage of GDP and subsequent public sector employment but then again, this isn't something new, it is boring and obvious, not some conspiracy of the government scheming against you.
houstonn 4y ago
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
notatrader 4y ago
Crypto is very trackable and especially when cashing out. Only countries without kyc/aml protections allow individuals to cash out illicit crypto and that's only a small fraction. Most of crypto is built on speculation which results in direct losses to consumers. And extensive and endless hacks, which is just another tax on consumers. Very little of bitcoin or any cryptocurrency is used for drugs, terrorism or other serious crimes. Real world money laundering (trade based etc) is 500x that of bitcoin and real world drug dealing is at least 1000x greater than darknet markets.
imtringued 4y ago
RAI offers something new.

djbusby 4y ago

Now when stripe suddenly shuts down your business you can be even more outta-luck than when it was USD. Better for them you're on the no-recourse crypto.

sneak 4y ago
Quite the opposite is true. USDC payments are fast and irreversible.
zeroclip 4y ago
This comment is misinformed; if the asset lies your non custodial wallet, only Circle can blacklist your USDC funds. So far Circle has mostly only frozen funds related to government sanctions. Users are free to exchange the funds to DAI which cannot be frozen by a centralized issuer.

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jonathan-adly 4y ago

Good for stripe. Not sure about Crypto, particularly the cyberpunk ones. Stripe is the next Google - with the all the good and bad that this brings.

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houston_Euler 4y ago

First, I think it's great to have a talent network that's owned by it's stakeholders, but I think it's questionable to say the token holders "own" the network. My concern is that the organization is split into two entities: (1) Freelance Labs, which owns and controls the website.[1][4], and (2) A Panamanian Non-profit that "owns" the token.[2] Stripe's copy: "And because it’s decentralized, the people that use Braintrust also own and operate the network: Talent keeps 100% of its earnings and clients can make their budgets go further by cutting out unnecessary middle men." #The Braintrust Foundation has nothing to do with the website: From the usebraintrust.com TOS[1]: "This Terms of Service (also referred to as the “Agreement”) is a contract between you (“you” or “User”) and Freelance Labs, Inc. (“Freelance Labs,” “we,” or “us”)." #The website controls the operations of the network: Also from the usebraintrust.com TOS[1]: "The Site is a marketplace where Clients and Freelancers can identify each other and advertise, buy, and sell Freelancer Services online. Subject to the Terms of Service, Freelance Labs provides the Site Services to Users, including hosting and maintaining the Site, facilitating Projects between Users,, and assisting Users in resolving disputes which may arise in connection with those Projects Users are required invoice and pay any amounts owed for any agreed upon Projects facilitated by the Site and/or Services." #Users keep all their earnings, except for the 10% fees clients pay: From the Braintrust whitepaper[3]: "Talent are charged no fees: they are paid their full contracted rate (whether that be per hour or per project). Clients are charged 10% of the total contract value, an amount that is significantly less than in other networks and consulting firms. Client fees are collected in USD, converted into BTRST, and sent to the Braintrust DAO through the Fee Converter, a smart contract that was proposed, voted on, and implemented by the community in October 2021. This process makes it possible for client fees — in the form of BTRST tokens — to pay for network operations and to fund community programs" #The token technically doesn't own anything: Also from Braintrust's whitepaper[3]: "BTRST is not a share of stock, does not represent a claim on profits, dividends, equity, or debt in any company or organization, and is not a financial instrument. BTRST has been adopted by the Braintrust network and users for various activities on the network only, such as for staking, governance, voting, and educational purposes" #The token has no claim to anything: From a podcast with Adam Jackson: "We have a token instead of a share of stock. It does not represent any financial claims, any dividends or profit sharing, simply because there is no profit. The network is meant to run sustainably. It's meant to sustain itself. And so, it charges just enough fees to get by on, paying for hosting and maintenance and upgrades and that sort of thing." Again, I still think it's a potential improvement on the alternatives, and they've built a lot of functionality, but I just worry that the website, seemingly the only way to contract on the network, isn't owned by the foundation. Is the foundation contractually obligated to heed to any votes from the DAO? It's not very clear that they are. They've built out a lot[6] that makes me hopeful their network will hold its value, but I just wish they could leave no doubt that their users own the network as well as the resources that power that network. For example, what if once the network has gained enough value, the owners of Freelance Labs sell the usebraintrust.com website to UpWork? Can they, and if so, what happens then? [1] https://www.usebraintrust.com/terms https://www.usebraintrust.com/terms [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1756245/000175624518000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1756245/000175624518... [3] https://www.usebraintrust.com/whitepaper https://www.usebraintrust.com/whitepaper [4] https://sec.report/CIK/0001759292 https://sec.report/CIK/0001759292 [5] https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/podcast/Pages/podcast-details.aspx?episode=15773630 https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/podcast/Page... [6] https://info.app.usebraintrust.com/ https://info.app.usebraintrust.com/

gitgud 4y ago

To be specific they're allowing transfer to the USDC token, which is a "stable coin" pegged to the USD currency and owned by coin base. This is a fairly low risk move by Stripe, as USDC is more open and trusted than USDT (Tether)

sneak 4y ago
Issued by Coinbase. It is owned by whoever has it. They are also easily and instantly (and perhaps most importantly permissionlessly) exchangeable to hundreds of other tokens thanks to DeFi swap smart contracts.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  USDC is not permissionless. Coinbase froze all USDC in Tornado on the Ethereum blockchain, for examaple.
  - sneak 4y ago
    That's after the fact. Anyone can use and trade in USDC without being whitelisted. You can receive payments in USDC and immediately exchange them for other safer tokens if you wish, and if you use a fresh address each time, nobody can stop you.
    - mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
      That doesn't make it permissionless. The parent is right. USDC is closer to an IOU than a permissionless ERC20 token because the contract it uses has been modified for the centralized blacklist functionality and can lock you out any time. It's the same as a centralized bank. If you get your salary deposited you can also go and take out cash immediately, but until you do, you don't truly own the par value.
- clarkeni 4y ago
  Issued by Circle

boh 4y ago

As companies continually erode employee benefits and aggressively seek out ever cheaper labor, we have to continually be reminded how innovative and great this "massive shift enabled in large part by new technology" is going to be. Now you're going to get paid in unregulated tokens, isn't that amazing! And guess what? Not using actual money also let's them access "millions of talented freelancers live in countries where it’s hard, if not impossible, to open a local bank account". That's great because those workers also tend to live in countries with lax or non existent labor laws. These new inroads in exploitation is just another great win for innovation! How bright our future gets every day!

civilized 4y ago
Everybody wants to talk about how bad the sweatshop is. Nobody wants to talk about the poverty that was so bad, people jumped at the chance to work in the sweatshop.
- boh 4y ago
  Yes they do. They love to talk about that and do all the time. It helps make exploiting poor people with limited protections seem moral. Don't forget to mention how employing a person to work 16 hours a day making clothes or a phone helps feed their family.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    "that child worker could be an important income source to help feed their family" I've heard that in polite settings when I was younger, and my absolute rage at it has only grown.
  - civilized 4y ago
    I share your moral objections to exploitative working conditions. But most of us aren't doing those people any good. Work opportunities, on the other hand -- even exploitative ones -- do seem to be doing them good, if they are voluntarily choosing to do them. I think that should humble and temper all of our moral sensibilities a little, when we are attempting to judge a development like this as Good or Bad. Here is something doing good for poor people, and here we are, doing nothing for those poor people, judging it. That feels off to me. If this was Stripe Slavery, I would have no problem calling it Bad. I don't support slavery. But empowering people to engage in voluntary working arrangements -- it can be abused, sure, but Bad? I'm skeptical.

zhoujianfu 4y ago

I hope they are also offering USDC on polygon so the fees are less than a penny instead of generalll more than a dollar.

zeroclip 4y ago

This is good but I wish it wasn’t specific to Braintrust. Have been in crypto for a while and have never heard of Braintrust or their token. Freelancers should just be paid directly in a ERC20, Stripe could take a small fee on transfers for their UX and API services, no need for a DAO or separate BTRST token.

jsemrau 4y ago
We were evaluating ETH payouts for Finclout and at the time transaction fees was a huge barrier. We are currently working with the Cardano chain because it allows for a min payout of 1 ADA which makes users happy when they get payouts more frequently and us happy because fees are low.
- zeroclip 4y ago
  Personally feel that a better solution long term is Ethereum L2 payouts.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    L2s are still pretty young. Polygon is popular but is ultimately a sidechain. Optimism hasn't rolled out fully. I understand why some would not want to trust L2s yet.
    - zeroclip 4y ago
      Agreed, although short term solutions like having freelancers paid in ADA just to avoid ETH fees might end up hurting users and eroding their trust in blockchains in the long run.
  - jsemrau 4y ago
    The future of payouts will be omni-chain. Now that ETH is PoS, it is actually one of the benefits of the move, that there is a treasury with non-random payout cycles.
  - imtringued 4y ago

knorker 4y ago

I don't understand how this is related to the future of work. Is it just clickbait? Or are they making the assumption that the future of work is freelance gig economy? That sounds awful. And it's not how I've seen the phrase used before.

comfypotato 4y ago

I stopped reading at “in 5 years the majority of workers will be freelancers”. Am I missing something? Seems like an incredibly naive article. The statement I mentioned, for example, either doesn’t know what a freelancer or majority is. Or am I totally in the dark regarding how the world is employed? Basic functions of society around the world will still require traditionally employed people as the majority, yes? Not to mention that the corporate workplace isn’t going away anytime soon in the developed world. Take your typical painting/handyman/landscaping/small-scale-construction business as an example. In the US at least: you could call the owner a freelancer, but the majority of the small business is traditionally employed workers.

hef19898 4y ago
I read it less as a prediction and more like a goal of the, pardon the French, capitalist elite for future employment. Amazon's constabt fight against unions, the Apple-Google-Facebook cartel around SV dev salaries, they all fall into the same bucket.
jt2190 4y ago
They’re citing this report: “Freelance Forward Economist Report” by Dr. Adam Ozimek for Upwork. https://www.upwork.com/research/freelance-forward-2021 https://www.upwork.com/research/freelance-forward-2021
- comfypotato 4y ago
  That source says that the majority of post grads In the US work as free lancers. And you’re still implying that in 5 years the majority of all workers will be free lancers. These statistics are a joke. I literally do not know a single freelancer in my post grad program. I have never met a freelancer who is a post grad. I don’t care enough to sift through the bullshit of your source to see what they actually researched. Upwork is a bullshit site that wants 30 YOE workers to program for $20.00 an hour. This HN post is a waste of time. Thanks for the source though, don’t mean to sound annoyed at you but rather the post in general.

trhway 4y ago

> Then he went on Braintrust and met Stardust, a US-based NFT gaming company. They paid Singh to work remotely, ... In his first three months on Braintrust, Singh earned $50,000 I wish the best to the guy, yet i'm wondering does anybody think it is kind of fishy?