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What would someone use this for, when fiat works everywhere?
by jjtheblunt 4y ago
What would someone use this for, when fiat works everywhere?
- TheJoeMan 4y agoI think it would be neat if I could pay 1 penny to read a single HN-linked NYT or WSJ article. But the entrenched payment processors refuse to give up their 5%+25cent cut or whatever.
- gamblor956 4y agoIt's even more expensive to use crypto. You would spend almost as much on gas/transaction fees as you would on a year's subscription.
- iskander 4y agoYou can check current prices here: https://l2fees.info/ https://l2fees.info/ Sending any amount of ETH it costs between $0.01 (on the Loopring network) and $0.46 on the Ethereum mainnet (with the most popular layer 2 network, Arbitrum, costing $0.02). So not quite there to send 1c micropayments, especially since sending USDC would instead cost something like 2x-3x more, but not inconceivable that it might get there on newer layer 2 networks which do more aggressive batching (using proof techniques called STARKs and SNARKs). There are some other networks, such as Solana where transactions are effectively free (though even very small fractions of a cent add up for an algorithm): https://solanabeach.io/transactions https://solanabeach.io/transactions
- gamblor956 4y agoSo the defense to crypto being expensive to transact in is to...use another network on top of the crypto instead of the crypto I actually want to use. THIS IS WHY CRYPTO DID NOT TAKE OFF. It's too complicated and expensive to use for all of the supposed use case; it's objectively worse than comparable fiat options.
- iskander 4y agoI send USDC on eth pretty frequently and for larger amounts find it more convenient than Venmo or Zelle. For smaller amounts it would only make sense if other people are already using L2s, which might happen through website integrations (or not).
- llanowarelves 4y agoI agree with you that it should be solved at the protocol-level, as the BTC whitepaper describes, "for coffee" etc. There are plenty of cryptos with focus on scaling and cheap on-chain transactions, like E-cash.
- acdha 4y agoDon't forget to include the conversion fees. In the example shown in the blog post, it looks like using ETH to pay that $10 bill costs $1.63 vs. the $0.59 it would cost to use a credit card for the same transaction.
- iskander 4y agoI think that's why USDC on an L2 is a better payment layer, especially if it's integrated into a payment app or a social site like Twitter
- npc12345 4y ago
- denimnerd42 4y agothat would be great
- trh0awayman 4y agoXanadu is starting to sound more and more attractive these days
- wmf 4y agoXanadu was never real. The micropayment part was never even designed AFAIK let alone implemented.
- tootie 4y agoThe fees are closer to 3% or a bit under these days. And that's for a very robust and mature infrastructure, not just on the merchant side, but the buyer side. Credit cards do a lot more than just send payments, you get all the benefits of things like dispute resolution, rewards points and the bug/feature of spending money you don't have in hand. If you go to a fully-baked crypto payment provider like Coinbase, they still charge 1% for a far less sophisticated product. The cost of all the things that crypto doesn't do get shifted to consumers and merchants indirectly.
- imtringued 4y agoThe mental effort to click a button to pay a penny is too high.
- rvz 4y ago> when fiat works everywhere? And in countries like Argentina, it doesn't work for them. Hence why this [0] and this [1] exists. [0] https://www.usebraintrust.com https://www.usebraintrust.com [1] https://stellar.org/moneygram https://stellar.org/moneygram
- zubiaur 4y agoI suspect you are being down-voted because most people are not familiar with currency controls, hyperinflation and price controls. The Argentinian peso is not worth the paper it's printed on.
- repomies69 4y agoI guess that people in US and other big countries with strong currencies don't really understand that there are smaller fiat currencies and these are actually used. I wonder how often you have to convert your USD even when traveling, last time I was visiting Africa I remember most just accepted USD or euros directly even though the countries had their own local currencies.
- irusensei 4y agoI'm tired of pointing this and getting downvoted into oblivion. Most negative comments come from privileged people living in Western Europe or the western US. You can even guess which is which from the timestamp. In the end it is a soft family-friendly version of "stop being poor".
- Aunche 4y agoGP's comment is about Stripe's service, not cryptocurrency in general. Unless if Stripe really wants to set their money on fire, I doubt that they're going onramping any hyperinflating currency. If you're in a country with a weak currency, what you really want isn't crypto but rather a stable fiat, mainly the USD. Cryptocurrency only really helps the relatively privileged people in these countries to bypass currency controls.
- jjtheblunt 4y agooh, I understand but had not known of that case until you mentioned it. thank you
- treis 4y agoSpeaking from personal experience: "to buy drugs"
- repomies69 4y agocan you share more details pls
- googlryas 4y agoMy FedEx driver is a drug dealer and he don't even know it.
- treis 4y ago(1) Install tor (2) Search reddit/internet for marketplace on tor (3) Be very sure that you have actually reached the marketplace. Lots of scammers MITM them and steal your crypto by changing the pay to wallet (4) Buy crypto (which kind depends on merchant & market place) (5) Place order on marketplace (6) Send crypto to the address they give you (7) Encrypt your shipping info with the merchants public key and send it to them (8) Drugs show up 1-2 weeks later
- m00dy 4y agoThe instructions above can get you pretty far. But before trying this, make sure that the crypto you are using supports zero-knowledge proof or zk-proof. This way, you make it harder for law enforcements to link all these things to your identity.
- r3trohack3r 4y agoI hear this a lot. And I know it’s true. But it seems like a bad use of crypto. I prefer to do crime in cash. Cash doesn’t have a permanent public ledger associated with it. Even if that ledger is “zero-knowledge” - I’m betting my freedom on bullet proof math staying bullet proof for the statute of limitations. I understand that “at scale” cash may be a higher risk than crypto. But I’m not “at scale.” Local, last-mile, cash transactions are preferable in nearly every way.
- cle 4y agoThere are four "partners" mentioned in TFA, and it links to a list of many more.
- idiotsecant 4y ago>What would someone use this for, when fiat works everywhere? For the same reason some people line to use linux when windows works everywhere. Actual technical use cases, ideology, and 'tinker-friendliness' 1) there are some use cases where it is better (typically when you want to do something that the state doesn't want you to do) 2) there are ideological reasons to prefer decentralized ownership of the financial system rather than assuming the state can be responsible with the dials and levers of that system 3) There are neat properties of crypto that are fun for tinkerers - money is programmable and you can do neat tinker-toy things with it like micropayments, fintech like collateralize loans and decentralized derivatives trading, dumb things and experiments like the old peepeth, etc. I think eventually if adoption is wide enough there will be society-altering implications inherent to crypto but for now I think it's those 3 things.
- dist1ll 4y agoFinally someone brings up tinkering - a.k.a. the thing that hacking (and by extension HN) is supposed to be about.
- rahen 4y agoCore developers of the Bitcoin ecosystem are also Linux hackers. Rusty Russel, C-lightning main developer was also the creator of iptables and a good part of the Linux TCP stack. Technical minded people showing hostility toward Bitcoin because of some obvious scammers is as unfathomable to me as showing hostility toward TCP/IP because of malwares.
- kreetx 4y agoDon't forget Hal Finney :)
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y agoTCP/IP works quite beautifully for something designed decades ago, and actually solves real problems, though (like delivering your message to my t̶e̶l̶e̶t̶y̶p̶e halfway across the globe). "Crypto" seems to be quite good at worsening air pollution in my country (which is already very bad) and not much else.
- yieldcrv 4y agoThere are examples on that page The simple answer is because there is existing demand, not because any of that demand matches any of your use cases
- irusensei 4y agoIt doesn't. You just think it does because you live (or even better, were born) in a privileged area of the planet.
- seydor 4y agoStripe isnt used much outside those areas