7 ms·

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 sh

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-...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - pirate787 4y ago
      This is partly incorrect -- USDC is regulated and audited. You're confusing it with Tether https://www.circle.com/blog/how-to-build-trust-usdc-audits-and-attestations https://www.circle.com/blog/how-to-build-trust-usdc-audits-a...
      - colesantiago 4y ago
        No. I am talking about all stabletokens including USDC. I don't see any fully independent verifiable real audit of their entire reserves anywhere with USDC, and a lousy blogpost by Circle isn't strong enough evidence and no substitute of this.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - imachine1980_ 4y ago
    I'm one of those, work remote from argentine is simply pay 90 tax becouse of a broken conversion rate technically, becouse you can pay 15 income tax and don't but have a company and return assets like bonds, is a mess . this is really useful and I trust stripe more than the competition
    - koolba 4y ago
      What does “pay 90 tax” mean? Surely you don’t mean paying a 90% tax rate?!
      - ilammy 4y ago
        Probably an exaggeration, but caveats apply. Say, you get paid in USD. You got paid: 10000 USD Income tax: 15% Government exchange rate: 130 ARS per 1 USD Unofficial exchange rate: 330 ARS per 1 USD Now, if you do things like daddy government says and use the official rate, you end up with this amount: 10000 USD * 130 = 1300000 ARS and then 1300000 * (1 - 0.15) = 1105000 But if you do what's good for you and still pay taxes to not go to jail: 10000 USD * 330 = 3300000 ARS and then 3300000 * (1 - 0.15) = 2805000 Now consider your "effective" tax rate: You got paid: 3300000 ARS (fair market value) Government rate: (3300000 - 1105000) / 3300000 = 0.66 Unofficial rate: (3300000 - 2805000) / 3300000 = 0.15 Note that it's before you consider future devaluation of peso. For tax purposes you can say you received 3.3M ARS, but just keep it as 10k USD. Then your effective "government cut" rate over the years could very well be in 90% territory if you do the stupid thing and hold pesos.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    > 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 That is just people opening bank accounts, but with extra steps.
    - seibelj 4y ago
      No you just use any number of mobile crypto wallets, many of which are open source. You don’t need any permission to receive USDC
- djohnston 4y ago
  absolute control of your own money. borderless currency. distributed applications/smart contracts outside the reach of any state. these are my personal faves
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    With Stripe and USDC you don't have control of your money at all and smart contracts don't work and are broken causing people to lose money in the millions. It is a fragile, brittle system that is highly likely to fail, you only need to look here to see why. [0] [0] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
    - datadata 4y ago
      > smart contracts don't work and are broken This absolute statement is asserting that ALL smart contracts don't work. There is overwhelming evidence of some smart contracts working just fine, and of course a lot of smart contracts also have problems. It is wild to just drop all of the nuance of such a complicated issue. What new technology has been flawless without any failures along the way?
      - colesantiago 4y ago
        This 'flawless argument' is an irrelevant statement, we have given blockchain technologies over 15 years to improve, but the scams have been getting bigger in an unregulated environment. I also don't recall any regulated bank accounts getting automatically drained or losing everybody's money due to a single scammer or a bad actor. One single error or exploit in these smart contracts results in millions being drained. This happens on a weekly basis with a giant lack of consumer protection, unaccountability or any chance of getting your money back (which that is a huge unsolved problem). So yes, these smart contracts do not work. It's a system designed to fail with thousands of disasters, rug pulls and scams just waiting to happen.
        datadata 4y ago
- madsbuch 4y ago
  transparent algorithmic governance. I think it is easy to dismiss as a value proposition. In the end, the future will show, so we probably should not spend too much time speculating.
- tenpies 4y ago
  > What can crypto and blockchain legitimately offer that is better than what the current financial system offers? Cancellation resistance. Protection from oppressive governments trying to squash freedom. Protection from retroactive laws targeting previously legal transactions. Asset protection. And look I agree with you. And everything I posted above carries a huge cost given the volatility of most cryptocurrencies, but unfortunately we live in times where if you truly care about freedom from tyranny, your behaviour is going to overlap heavily with criminal behaviour.
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    I don't think evading sanction laws and taxes with crypto is a great use case and Stripe will be investigated and ordered to ban accounts doing this behaviour. So you're back to the current regulated system that works, is stable and is the best we have.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- imtringued 4y ago
  >What can crypto and blockchain legitimately offer that is better than what the current financial system offers? They don't deny the existence of negative rates.

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-...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - pirate787 4y ago
    This is partly incorrect -- USDC is regulated and audited. You're confusing it with Tether https://www.circle.com/blog/how-to-build-trust-usdc-audits-and-attestations https://www.circle.com/blog/how-to-build-trust-usdc-audits-a...
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      No. I am talking about all stabletokens including USDC. I don't see any fully independent verifiable real audit of their entire reserves anywhere with USDC, and a lousy blogpost by Circle isn't strong enough evidence and no substitute of this.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- imachine1980_ 4y ago
  I'm one of those, work remote from argentine is simply pay 90 tax becouse of a broken conversion rate technically, becouse you can pay 15 income tax and don't but have a company and return assets like bonds, is a mess . this is really useful and I trust stripe more than the competition
  - koolba 4y ago
    What does “pay 90 tax” mean? Surely you don’t mean paying a 90% tax rate?!
    - ilammy 4y ago
      Probably an exaggeration, but caveats apply. Say, you get paid in USD. You got paid: 10000 USD Income tax: 15% Government exchange rate: 130 ARS per 1 USD Unofficial exchange rate: 330 ARS per 1 USD Now, if you do things like daddy government says and use the official rate, you end up with this amount: 10000 USD * 130 = 1300000 ARS and then 1300000 * (1 - 0.15) = 1105000 But if you do what's good for you and still pay taxes to not go to jail: 10000 USD * 330 = 3300000 ARS and then 3300000 * (1 - 0.15) = 2805000 Now consider your "effective" tax rate: You got paid: 3300000 ARS (fair market value) Government rate: (3300000 - 1105000) / 3300000 = 0.66 Unofficial rate: (3300000 - 2805000) / 3300000 = 0.15 Note that it's before you consider future devaluation of peso. For tax purposes you can say you received 3.3M ARS, but just keep it as 10k USD. Then your effective "government cut" rate over the years could very well be in 90% territory if you do the stupid thing and hold pesos.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  > 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 That is just people opening bank accounts, but with extra steps.
  - seibelj 4y ago
    No you just use any number of mobile crypto wallets, many of which are open source. You don’t need any permission to receive USDC
djohnston 4y ago
absolute control of your own money. borderless currency. distributed applications/smart contracts outside the reach of any state. these are my personal faves
- colesantiago 4y ago
  With Stripe and USDC you don't have control of your money at all and smart contracts don't work and are broken causing people to lose money in the millions. It is a fragile, brittle system that is highly likely to fail, you only need to look here to see why. [0] [0] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
  - datadata 4y ago
    > smart contracts don't work and are broken This absolute statement is asserting that ALL smart contracts don't work. There is overwhelming evidence of some smart contracts working just fine, and of course a lot of smart contracts also have problems. It is wild to just drop all of the nuance of such a complicated issue. What new technology has been flawless without any failures along the way?
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      This 'flawless argument' is an irrelevant statement, we have given blockchain technologies over 15 years to improve, but the scams have been getting bigger in an unregulated environment. I also don't recall any regulated bank accounts getting automatically drained or losing everybody's money due to a single scammer or a bad actor. One single error or exploit in these smart contracts results in millions being drained. This happens on a weekly basis with a giant lack of consumer protection, unaccountability or any chance of getting your money back (which that is a huge unsolved problem). So yes, these smart contracts do not work. It's a system designed to fail with thousands of disasters, rug pulls and scams just waiting to happen.
      - datadata 4y ago
madsbuch 4y ago
transparent algorithmic governance. I think it is easy to dismiss as a value proposition. In the end, the future will show, so we probably should not spend too much time speculating.
tenpies 4y ago
> What can crypto and blockchain legitimately offer that is better than what the current financial system offers? Cancellation resistance. Protection from oppressive governments trying to squash freedom. Protection from retroactive laws targeting previously legal transactions. Asset protection. And look I agree with you. And everything I posted above carries a huge cost given the volatility of most cryptocurrencies, but unfortunately we live in times where if you truly care about freedom from tyranny, your behaviour is going to overlap heavily with criminal behaviour.
- colesantiago 4y ago
  I don't think evading sanction laws and taxes with crypto is a great use case and Stripe will be investigated and ordered to ban accounts doing this behaviour. So you're back to the current regulated system that works, is stable and is the best we have.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
imtringued 4y ago
>What can crypto and blockchain legitimately offer that is better than what the current financial system offers? They don't deny the existence of negative rates.