5 ms·

In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid, but crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Current legal system may not

by yashg 4y ago

In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid, but crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Current legal system may not be absolutely fair, but it does not need to be replaced by a vastly inferior, slow, planet destroying ponzi.

antibasilisk 4y ago
>crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities And we will be thankful for that when we are all classed as criminals.
chatmasta 4y ago
If Little Snitch accepted crypto, and people paid with it, then they would not be facing this problem. How is Little Snitch accepting payment for its services not a valid use case?
BeefWellington 4y ago
> but crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Many years ago, I used bitcoin to pay for web and e-mail hosting. Heck, there were several pubs in town offering the option to pay with crypto. I was paid for remote freelance web development work using bitcoin several times, none of it criminal (one example: a car dealership sales portal customization). All of that was above board, reported to government, taxes paid, etc. Providers moved away from it because of sentiments like this becoming prevailing (lots of people used it for illicit activities of course) which is a shame. Public sentiment has nothing to do with what the tech can actually be used for. That said, the environment impact caused is the larger concern to have IMO.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  > Providers moved away from it because I would say people moved away from accepting bitcoin for beer because it's wildly fluctuating value made it unsuitable for use as a day to day currency, and because they realized it was a gimmick whose inconvenience (for the vendor) was not worth the limited interest in using it as such.
  - BeefWellington 4y ago
    Yeah, fair, becoming a vehicle for speculation was maybe a bigger factor.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    > it's wildly fluctuating value made it unsuitable for use as a day to day currency, Coinbase has the option of immediately converting crypto payments into fiat, eliminating that problem. > and because they realized it was a gimmick whose inconvenience (for the vendor) was not worth the limited interest in using it as such. This is the bigger issue. Even if it's an online vendor where having to wait an hour for the transaction to get 6 confirmations isn't a problem, they still have to either integrate with another payment processor like Coinbase to accept the payment, or spend money building their own. In any case, it's cost and infrastructure to setup and they're probably unlikely to see RoI.
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      > Coinbase has the option of immediately converting crypto payments into fiat, eliminating that problem. Sure. You want to update your bitcoin prices what, hourly, to make sure you are charging what you meant to? I'm not sure that coinbase service exactly eliminates the problem. But I'm sure that is a useful service for some! But yeah, we're on the same page. Overall... it is not a convenient thing for an ordinary business to take as payment for ordinary daily things.
      - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
        > Sure. You want to update your bitcoin prices what, hourly, to make sure you are charging what you meant to? That's one way to do it. The other is to charge in USD just like you normally would. When the customer opts to pay in Bitcoin, they get sent to Coinbase which will convert the price into Bitcoin immediately and tell the customer what the balance is in Bitcoin. The exchange rate won't favor the customer, as it will include some amount extra to cover the possibility of the value dropping before the transaction is confirmed.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  Providers moved away from it because it became unstable due to rampant speculation, wash-trading, and market manipulation, combined with the fact that hardly any customers used it.
- mcv 4y ago
  How many years ago? Because I also remember how some years ago a major Bitcoin conference stopped accepting payment in Bitcoin.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
> crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Sometimes, criminal activities are justified when all you do is to protect yourself. For example, when you live in a lawless area, and you need protection against bigger criminals. Peaceful countries with overall working systems are just one side of the world.
unity1001 4y ago
> In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid So calling it 'acting stupid' totally negates the stranglehold that Paypal and Stripe have on a majority of online commerce and payments and totally liberates people from their unregulated tyranny then... ... Things dont change their nature by 'rephrasing them differently'. Unregulated private tyrannies that dominate people's lives are still unregulated private tyrannies. There is a time and place for each argument and there is a time and place for conceding the argument. This is one of them: No one can ban anyone from crypto. If your business wallet gets stolen, you suffer some losses, but you can create a new wallet, add it as your payment option in your business or personal account at your site or wherever, and just continue your life. With these unregulated private tyrannies, you cant. > planet destroying ponzi. 2010s called. They want their proof of work back. What decade are you living in. Dont keep repeating invalidated arguments. That looks like religious zealotry.
hot_gril 4y ago
This isn't a particular case, it's how all payment processors work under the same regulations. Planet-destroying is a valid concern, and that's why there's proof-of-stake.
aftbit 4y ago
Unfortunately, Visa, PayPal, banks, and more are not required to accept all payments for all legal activities. Instead, they are permitted to block users engaged in legal-but-risky behavior. Typically when they do so, there is no serious right of appeal (to an external body). Thus, there are plenty of valid use cases for crypto payments for services that are legal but too risky for banks. For a list of examples, see the categories used in Operation Choke Point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
everfree 4y ago
In your opinion, why is sidestepping PayPal not a second valid use case?
- mcv 4y ago
  There are far better options, though admittedly not as widely supported as they should be. In Netherland, there are a lot of ways to simply use direct bank transfers. You can buy at a webshop using iDeal, which handles the payment through your own bank. You can send someone a payment request that will simply transfer it straight from their bank to yours. All of these are far superior options to relying on either an unreliable third party, or a slow, expensive payment system using its own wildly fluctuating currency that consumes the energy of a small country.
  - everfree 4y ago
    It must be nice to live in the Netherlands. > slow, expensive payment system using its own wildly fluctuating currency that consumes the energy of a small country You don't have to use Bitcoin, you can e.g. use a stablecoin on an Ethereum roll-up. It's not slow; transactions finalize within 1 minute (and soon, less). It's not expensive; it costs less than 10 cents (and soon, less). It doesn't fluctuate wildly, because it value is stabilized using one of several mechanisms. It doesn't consume the energy of a small country, because it does not use proof of work.
- yashg 4y ago
  Because crypto is not money. It was envisioned as a peer to peer money but it quickly attracted scamsters and it became a speculative instrument. Besides, most of the world has alternatives to PayPal that work just fine and most of the time free.
  - everfree 4y ago
    Stablecoins are money. PayPal also quickly attracted scamsters. Some of the world doesn’t have alternatives to PayPal, and sometimes they are not free.
codedokode 4y ago
It looks like Paypal is acting in full accordance with laws and regulations. Since when complying with regulations is considered "stupid"? > planet destroying ponzi I don't see how Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme.
- yashg 4y ago
  Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic value or utility. The only reason one would buy it so that it can be sold to someone else for a higher price and that person would buy it hoping to sell it at an ever higher price. It's a game of finding a bigger fool, classic ponzi. But the world has finite supply of fools so the chain eventually breaks and the last ones to enter end up holding the bag while the early adopters make the bank. Bitcoin has entered that stage where not much new money is coming in. It had its peak in the 2020 and 2021. General public is now donw with it. All the pumps are now just wash trades by whales to suck as much remaining value our of existing faithfuls as possible because it goes bust.
  - codedokode 4y ago
    Can we say the same thing about gold? It has no value and almost no use (it can be replaced by any similar looking metal for use in jewelry), but is very expensive and people are more than willing to buy it. Banks set high commissions for operations with it and governments impose high taxes.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
HeckFeck 4y ago
trustless and distributed is superior even if not widely adopted yet, think SMTP vs the postal service
- hot_gril 4y ago
  I get the point, but SMTP is far from trustless and only debatably distributed. Sad things have happened with it.
rvz 4y ago
> In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid, but crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Just no. PayPal has always acted like this and shut down people's accounts for vague reasons. Stop cheerleading for them. Criminal activity on a public and traceable blockchain makes crypto worse for criminals to use. That is why scammers and criminals are using Zelle and the banks for their criminal enterprise. [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-zelle-banks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-z...
mattdesl 4y ago
Why does an Ethereum L2 have to be slow or planet destroying? IMHO most Eth L2s already show more promise than PayPal as a future payment rail tech, despite them all basically being in beta state. Much lower fees, faster transactions, permissionless withdrawals, fully programmable, negligible energy usage now thanks to PoS.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  L2 shows promise, but I don't believe it works till I see it used at scale. Sorry but there's just too much hype, and I often say the same thing about other tech like Tesla FSD, the Metaverse, or all of Google's side bets.
  - mattdesl 4y ago
    “At scale” is relative. Platforms like Patreon and Ko-Fi haven’t achieved the same reach and scale as PayPal, but they still work for lots of users.
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      To me it's binary. If I've ever used it for real and not just as a curiosity, it's at scale.
- yashg 4y ago
  PoS violets one of the fundamental tenets of crypto/blockchain - decentralization. Bitcoin uses PoW because it at least had a possibility of avoiding monopolizing by ensuring that no single entity will ever come to own majority of processing power of the network. That PoW is slow and expensive is a feature, not a bug. It's a different matter that Bitcoin eventually became centralized in the hands of a few whales who work as a cartel, but PoS makes it all the more easy and ensures that those who have more tokes, will accumulate even more tokens. All being said and done, all the L2 are just centralization projects. These chains and tokens will always be controlled by a small number of early movers. Eventually, it doesn't even fulfill the very purpose of all these tokens - being peer to peer money.
- 4y ago

by yashg 4y ago

antibasilisk 4y ago

>crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities And we will be thankful for that when we are all classed as criminals.

chatmasta 4y ago

If Little Snitch accepted crypto, and people paid with it, then they would not be facing this problem. How is Little Snitch accepting payment for its services not a valid use case?

BeefWellington 4y ago

> but crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Many years ago, I used bitcoin to pay for web and e-mail hosting. Heck, there were several pubs in town offering the option to pay with crypto. I was paid for remote freelance web development work using bitcoin several times, none of it criminal (one example: a car dealership sales portal customization). All of that was above board, reported to government, taxes paid, etc. Providers moved away from it because of sentiments like this becoming prevailing (lots of people used it for illicit activities of course) which is a shame. Public sentiment has nothing to do with what the tech can actually be used for. That said, the environment impact caused is the larger concern to have IMO.

jrochkind1 4y ago
> Providers moved away from it because I would say people moved away from accepting bitcoin for beer because it's wildly fluctuating value made it unsuitable for use as a day to day currency, and because they realized it was a gimmick whose inconvenience (for the vendor) was not worth the limited interest in using it as such.
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  Yeah, fair, becoming a vehicle for speculation was maybe a bigger factor.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > it's wildly fluctuating value made it unsuitable for use as a day to day currency, Coinbase has the option of immediately converting crypto payments into fiat, eliminating that problem. > and because they realized it was a gimmick whose inconvenience (for the vendor) was not worth the limited interest in using it as such. This is the bigger issue. Even if it's an online vendor where having to wait an hour for the transaction to get 6 confirmations isn't a problem, they still have to either integrate with another payment processor like Coinbase to accept the payment, or spend money building their own. In any case, it's cost and infrastructure to setup and they're probably unlikely to see RoI.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    > Coinbase has the option of immediately converting crypto payments into fiat, eliminating that problem. Sure. You want to update your bitcoin prices what, hourly, to make sure you are charging what you meant to? I'm not sure that coinbase service exactly eliminates the problem. But I'm sure that is a useful service for some! But yeah, we're on the same page. Overall... it is not a convenient thing for an ordinary business to take as payment for ordinary daily things.
    - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
      > Sure. You want to update your bitcoin prices what, hourly, to make sure you are charging what you meant to? That's one way to do it. The other is to charge in USD just like you normally would. When the customer opts to pay in Bitcoin, they get sent to Coinbase which will convert the price into Bitcoin immediately and tell the customer what the balance is in Bitcoin. The exchange rate won't favor the customer, as it will include some amount extra to cover the possibility of the value dropping before the transaction is confirmed.
Eisenstein 4y ago
Providers moved away from it because it became unstable due to rampant speculation, wash-trading, and market manipulation, combined with the fact that hardly any customers used it.
mcv 4y ago
How many years ago? Because I also remember how some years ago a major Bitcoin conference stopped accepting payment in Bitcoin.

PurpleRamen 4y ago

> crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Sometimes, criminal activities are justified when all you do is to protect yourself. For example, when you live in a lawless area, and you need protection against bigger criminals. Peaceful countries with overall working systems are just one side of the world.

unity1001 4y ago

> In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid So calling it 'acting stupid' totally negates the stranglehold that Paypal and Stripe have on a majority of online commerce and payments and totally liberates people from their unregulated tyranny then... ... Things dont change their nature by 'rephrasing them differently'. Unregulated private tyrannies that dominate people's lives are still unregulated private tyrannies. There is a time and place for each argument and there is a time and place for conceding the argument. This is one of them: No one can ban anyone from crypto. If your business wallet gets stolen, you suffer some losses, but you can create a new wallet, add it as your payment option in your business or personal account at your site or wherever, and just continue your life. With these unregulated private tyrannies, you cant. > planet destroying ponzi. 2010s called. They want their proof of work back. What decade are you living in. Dont keep repeating invalidated arguments. That looks like religious zealotry.

hot_gril 4y ago

This isn't a particular case, it's how all payment processors work under the same regulations. Planet-destroying is a valid concern, and that's why there's proof-of-stake.

aftbit 4y ago

Unfortunately, Visa, PayPal, banks, and more are not required to accept all payments for all legal activities. Instead, they are permitted to block users engaged in legal-but-risky behavior. Typically when they do so, there is no serious right of appeal (to an external body). Thus, there are plenty of valid use cases for crypto payments for services that are legal but too risky for banks. For a list of examples, see the categories used in Operation Choke Point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

everfree 4y ago

In your opinion, why is sidestepping PayPal not a second valid use case?

mcv 4y ago
There are far better options, though admittedly not as widely supported as they should be. In Netherland, there are a lot of ways to simply use direct bank transfers. You can buy at a webshop using iDeal, which handles the payment through your own bank. You can send someone a payment request that will simply transfer it straight from their bank to yours. All of these are far superior options to relying on either an unreliable third party, or a slow, expensive payment system using its own wildly fluctuating currency that consumes the energy of a small country.
- everfree 4y ago
  It must be nice to live in the Netherlands. > slow, expensive payment system using its own wildly fluctuating currency that consumes the energy of a small country You don't have to use Bitcoin, you can e.g. use a stablecoin on an Ethereum roll-up. It's not slow; transactions finalize within 1 minute (and soon, less). It's not expensive; it costs less than 10 cents (and soon, less). It doesn't fluctuate wildly, because it value is stabilized using one of several mechanisms. It doesn't consume the energy of a small country, because it does not use proof of work.
yashg 4y ago
Because crypto is not money. It was envisioned as a peer to peer money but it quickly attracted scamsters and it became a speculative instrument. Besides, most of the world has alternatives to PayPal that work just fine and most of the time free.
- everfree 4y ago
  Stablecoins are money. PayPal also quickly attracted scamsters. Some of the world doesn’t have alternatives to PayPal, and sometimes they are not free.

codedokode 4y ago

It looks like Paypal is acting in full accordance with laws and regulations. Since when complying with regulations is considered "stupid"? > planet destroying ponzi I don't see how Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme.

yashg 4y ago
Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic value or utility. The only reason one would buy it so that it can be sold to someone else for a higher price and that person would buy it hoping to sell it at an ever higher price. It's a game of finding a bigger fool, classic ponzi. But the world has finite supply of fools so the chain eventually breaks and the last ones to enter end up holding the bag while the early adopters make the bank. Bitcoin has entered that stage where not much new money is coming in. It had its peak in the 2020 and 2021. General public is now donw with it. All the pumps are now just wash trades by whales to suck as much remaining value our of existing faithfuls as possible because it goes bust.
- codedokode 4y ago
  Can we say the same thing about gold? It has no value and almost no use (it can be replaced by any similar looking metal for use in jewelry), but is very expensive and people are more than willing to buy it. Banks set high commissions for operations with it and governments impose high taxes.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

HeckFeck 4y ago

trustless and distributed is superior even if not widely adopted yet, think SMTP vs the postal service

hot_gril 4y ago
I get the point, but SMTP is far from trustless and only debatably distributed. Sad things have happened with it.

rvz 4y ago

> In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid, but crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal activities. Just no. PayPal has always acted like this and shut down people's accounts for vague reasons. Stop cheerleading for them. Criminal activity on a public and traceable blockchain makes crypto worse for criminals to use. That is why scammers and criminals are using Zelle and the banks for their criminal enterprise. [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-zelle-banks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-z...

mattdesl 4y ago

Why does an Ethereum L2 have to be slow or planet destroying? IMHO most Eth L2s already show more promise than PayPal as a future payment rail tech, despite them all basically being in beta state. Much lower fees, faster transactions, permissionless withdrawals, fully programmable, negligible energy usage now thanks to PoS.

hot_gril 4y ago
L2 shows promise, but I don't believe it works till I see it used at scale. Sorry but there's just too much hype, and I often say the same thing about other tech like Tesla FSD, the Metaverse, or all of Google's side bets.
- mattdesl 4y ago
  “At scale” is relative. Platforms like Patreon and Ko-Fi haven’t achieved the same reach and scale as PayPal, but they still work for lots of users.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    To me it's binary. If I've ever used it for real and not just as a curiosity, it's at scale.
yashg 4y ago
PoS violets one of the fundamental tenets of crypto/blockchain - decentralization. Bitcoin uses PoW because it at least had a possibility of avoiding monopolizing by ensuring that no single entity will ever come to own majority of processing power of the network. That PoW is slow and expensive is a feature, not a bug. It's a different matter that Bitcoin eventually became centralized in the hands of a few whales who work as a cartel, but PoS makes it all the more easy and ensures that those who have more tokes, will accumulate even more tokens. All being said and done, all the L2 are just centralization projects. These chains and tokens will always be controlled by a small number of early movers. Eventually, it doesn't even fulfill the very purpose of all these tokens - being peer to peer money.
4y ago