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As long as crypto gets regulated out of existence, Yes. As long as the crypto exchanges collapses, Yes. As long as we are building better alternatives that ar

As long as crypto gets regulated out of existence, Yes. As long as the crypto exchanges collapses, Yes. As long as we are building better alternatives that are actually in use such as UPI, Pix and the like, Yes. As long as we as a society reject the crypto pyramid schemes and stop allowing more people to join it and in turn losing their life savings completely, Yes. As long as long as crypto dies and withers out of interest, then YES. We have tried private money before in the US and other countries and it completely failed. You mention 'first world narratives' I don't see India complaining about payment issues or surveillance. See for yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-payments-upi.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-pa... Not a single mention of crypto, decentralisation, web3 or any useless crypto technobabble at all. Just damn well engineered real time payments that 300M+ people are using in the real world. https://navendu.me/posts/upi-vs-crypto/ https://navendu.me/posts/upi-vs-crypto/ This is where the future is headed, not crypto.

saurik 4y ago
> You mention 'first world narratives' I don't see India complaining about payment issues or surveillance. I mean, I realize people have weird connotations associated with this phrase--and maybe it should be put out of its misery (but I will remind you that you're the one that started us down using this terminology, not me: I only talked about the "first world" because YOU--not ME--decided to start talking about the "third world", when you decided to pre-attack a strawman) but India is considered the "third world", not the "first world". I can't tell if I struck a nerve there, but I meant "the Western Bloc". https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries... Regardless, UPI doesn't offer privacy, as like... that just isn't within the scope of the design criteria for authoritarians such as yourself. On the other side of that particular divide, those of us disagree with the surveillance state, that makes all of this tech you are enamored with a non-starter: I want decentralized and private money--something at least as, if not MORE, private than paper cash--because I actually believe us non-terrorists deserve privacy despite the clear existence of terrorists. https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farming-your-personal-data-without-your-consent https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farm... > On February 22, while returning from his morning run, Kiran Jonnalagadda, a technologist, went to buy a coffee from a cafe in Indiranagar in Bengaluru. When the cashier asked him for his phone number while billing, Jonnalagadda refused. However, after making the payment, he was surprised that he got a message on his number from the merchant’s bank, thanking him for making the payment. Yeah: I fundamentally don't believe that anyone--including my bank--should know who I am making payments with. I don't want anyone--including my bank--to be able to discern things about my sexual orientation or my medical conditions based on where and when I make payments. I continue to believe that everyone, everywhere, should have the right to such privacy, and that a world with a CBDC--or where all payments are made via cards and digital mechanisms such as your beloved UPI--fundamentally undermines that right. > Several privacy experts have pointed out that this data sharing is part of UPI’s architecture, which is premised on collecting huge amounts of data from users and sharing it with multiple participants involved in a particular transaction. Being data-centric is one of the reasons, they say, UPI can sustain without any fees, as opposed to other digital payments, such as card transactions, which cost money. Ugh. I mean, this is so much worse than I even thought this was going to be... and you seriously want this? You want the entire world to turn into the full-on dystopian version of surveillance capitalism, with every transaction being data-mined and where we are perpetually the product instead of the true consumer? This is just horrible, and if the occasional grift that comes with crypto is the price we have to pay to avoid this kind of authoritarian viewpoint, then I'm going to have to side with crypto. > The amount of data shared on the digital spending habits of consumers is significantly more in UPI as compared to traditional forms of digital transactions. “In a card payment system, such as credit cards, there are fewer parties,” Lakshmanan explained. “Further, the data stored is not identifiable, since it stores credit card numbers, that too in a redacted fashion.”
- colesantiago 4y ago
  You put in a lot of effort for only just one issue that 300M+ have no issue with. The trade off for privacy is for growth and usage, just like WhatsApp. Eventually both will have privacy features built in down the line so this will be a solved problem, just like now that WA has E2E encryption, I see the same for UPI. Crypto had 16 years to reach the amount of people that UPI has reached and what does it have to show for it? You talk about privacy whereas the majority of cryptocurrencies are not privacy friendly and even if a tiny minority are, the exchanges have (rightly) banned them and require KYC to trade them, making this 'privacy coin theater' pointless. Either way, the third world have technologically superior payment systems than the US, at least in a few months when FedNow comes around, which is yet another reason not to use crypto. > Kiran Jonnalagadda, a technologist... Of course it's always the 'technologists', I am afraid 1 person is not a good sample size, but to entertain this anecdote: You have heard of a disposable / prepaid SIM card right?, you can get one down the road and you're ready to go with UPI again. So what is your proposed solution? All I can see with crypto is a complete Rube-Goldberg contraption of a system that is good at losing people's money. If your solution is another privacy pump and dump shitcoin, that isn't going to fly with the lawmakers and regulators, they will simply not allow this to happen and brand it as an unregistered security. Call me authoritarian all you want, but we have things called laws, regulations, taxes that crypto is great at evading.
  - saurik 4y ago
    > You put in a lot of effort for only just one issue that 300M+ have no issue with. This is the same argument people use to defend attempting to ban secure end-to-end encrypted communication technologies--that clearly people don't really care so let's just take that away from them "because terrorism or whatever"--so color me unimpressed. The reality is that people everywhere deserve privacy, and all of your authoritarian reasons for taking that away from them are going to have a very high wall to climb to justify taking away that right. > You have heard of a disposable / prepaid SIM card right?, you can get one down the road and you're ready to go with UPI again. I am going to say this in no uncertain terms: zero-knowledge proof crypto payment protocols have a MUCH better user experience (and a MUCH higher success rate!) than requiring every single person--as, remember: I maintain that every person everywhere deserves privacy... this is a right that we should be ensuring for the people of our democratic state, and should be table stakes for innovations in payment technology--to maintain piles of burner phones (which isn't even all that easy to do, btw) while carefully managing the opsec inherent to having multiple pseudonymous identities. > Call me authoritarian all you want, but we have things called laws, regulations, taxes that crypto is great at evading. Great: as long as you continue to hold authoritarian viewpoints, I certainly intend to continue calling a spade a spade.
yata69420 4y ago
> This is where the future is headed, not crypto. Well, sure, your business interests will win if you ban competition. If crypto is useless, it will die organically. If crypto is useful, it will thrive. Why does the government always need to ban new things? If FTX wasn't a "crypto" scam it would have been some other type of scam. When TikTok gets shitty, people will stop using that too. This is supposed to be what makes capitalism strong, and instead we have authoritarians trying to disrupt any threatening innovation.
- colesantiago 4y ago
  How can crypto be called 'innovation' when it has made everything it has promised worse. What is crypto's innovation that hasn't been done before? Why should we use something more complicated, archaic, full of speculation, scams and a system that is engaged in a destructive mining process that requires burning up the planet to solve useless puzzles, which is even worse than the current system?
  - saurik 4y ago
    The privacy provided by ZKP protocols like TornadoCash and Zcash is apparently so functional and so powerful that people like yourself are afraid of it and want to see it banned... and yet you say it isn't "innovative"? That's rich ;P. The reality is that people everywhere deserve privacy. It might should be telling that the country I most associate with your authoritarian take on this matter is the very country you (correctly) hold in such contempt: North Korea.
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      I have to admit this is a bunch of technobabble and gobbledygook that real people don't even use in the real world. Imagine going up to someone and saying 'Can you send me money through TornadoCash or Zcash?', they might think you're a criminal or something, oh wait. North Korea is a big customer of crypto, so the glove fits there, in evading sanctions. No legitimate usecase.
rojeee 4y ago
The this comment amused me because I worked for a company which was working with NPCI to replace UPI with a blockchain based system. NCPI wanted to replace the current system because it was deemed too centralised and they were investing money in trying to decentralise it. Not sure what happened with the project though... Presumably it continues behind the scenes. See [0] for some quotes from the CEO of NPCI on his thoughts about blockchain. Also the comment about private money is not true. There was a free banking regime in Scotland in the 1700s and 1800s. See [1] and [2] for some discussion. I've read a reasonable amount on the subject and economists typically agree it was a successful regime. [0] https://www.ledgerinsights.com/payment-rail-npci-indian-blockchain-platform/ https://www.ledgerinsights.com/payment-rail-npci-indian-bloc... [1] https://iea.org.uk/blog/free-banking-was-robust-and-effective https://iea.org.uk/blog/free-banking-was-robust-and-effectiv... [2] https://menghublog.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/on-the-success-of-free-banking-in-scotland-1716-1844/ https://menghublog.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/on-the-success-o...
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
UPI isn't better, it's the same fiat system as any other fiat system, it does nothing beyond being just yet another fiat payment protocol.
- colesantiago 4y ago
  still objectively way better than crypto.

saurik 4y ago

> You mention 'first world narratives' I don't see India complaining about payment issues or surveillance. I mean, I realize people have weird connotations associated with this phrase--and maybe it should be put out of its misery (but I will remind you that you're the one that started us down using this terminology, not me: I only talked about the "first world" because YOU--not ME--decided to start talking about the "third world", when you decided to pre-attack a strawman) but India is considered the "third world", not the "first world". I can't tell if I struck a nerve there, but I meant "the Western Bloc". https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries... Regardless, UPI doesn't offer privacy, as like... that just isn't within the scope of the design criteria for authoritarians such as yourself. On the other side of that particular divide, those of us disagree with the surveillance state, that makes all of this tech you are enamored with a non-starter: I want decentralized and private money--something at least as, if not MORE, private than paper cash--because I actually believe us non-terrorists deserve privacy despite the clear existence of terrorists. https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farming-your-personal-data-without-your-consent https://scroll.in/article/1045536/are-your-upi-payments-farm... > On February 22, while returning from his morning run, Kiran Jonnalagadda, a technologist, went to buy a coffee from a cafe in Indiranagar in Bengaluru. When the cashier asked him for his phone number while billing, Jonnalagadda refused. However, after making the payment, he was surprised that he got a message on his number from the merchant’s bank, thanking him for making the payment. Yeah: I fundamentally don't believe that anyone--including my bank--should know who I am making payments with. I don't want anyone--including my bank--to be able to discern things about my sexual orientation or my medical conditions based on where and when I make payments. I continue to believe that everyone, everywhere, should have the right to such privacy, and that a world with a CBDC--or where all payments are made via cards and digital mechanisms such as your beloved UPI--fundamentally undermines that right. > Several privacy experts have pointed out that this data sharing is part of UPI’s architecture, which is premised on collecting huge amounts of data from users and sharing it with multiple participants involved in a particular transaction. Being data-centric is one of the reasons, they say, UPI can sustain without any fees, as opposed to other digital payments, such as card transactions, which cost money. Ugh. I mean, this is so much worse than I even thought this was going to be... and you seriously want this? You want the entire world to turn into the full-on dystopian version of surveillance capitalism, with every transaction being data-mined and where we are perpetually the product instead of the true consumer? This is just horrible, and if the occasional grift that comes with crypto is the price we have to pay to avoid this kind of authoritarian viewpoint, then I'm going to have to side with crypto. > The amount of data shared on the digital spending habits of consumers is significantly more in UPI as compared to traditional forms of digital transactions. “In a card payment system, such as credit cards, there are fewer parties,” Lakshmanan explained. “Further, the data stored is not identifiable, since it stores credit card numbers, that too in a redacted fashion.”

colesantiago 4y ago
You put in a lot of effort for only just one issue that 300M+ have no issue with. The trade off for privacy is for growth and usage, just like WhatsApp. Eventually both will have privacy features built in down the line so this will be a solved problem, just like now that WA has E2E encryption, I see the same for UPI. Crypto had 16 years to reach the amount of people that UPI has reached and what does it have to show for it? You talk about privacy whereas the majority of cryptocurrencies are not privacy friendly and even if a tiny minority are, the exchanges have (rightly) banned them and require KYC to trade them, making this 'privacy coin theater' pointless. Either way, the third world have technologically superior payment systems than the US, at least in a few months when FedNow comes around, which is yet another reason not to use crypto. > Kiran Jonnalagadda, a technologist... Of course it's always the 'technologists', I am afraid 1 person is not a good sample size, but to entertain this anecdote: You have heard of a disposable / prepaid SIM card right?, you can get one down the road and you're ready to go with UPI again. So what is your proposed solution? All I can see with crypto is a complete Rube-Goldberg contraption of a system that is good at losing people's money. If your solution is another privacy pump and dump shitcoin, that isn't going to fly with the lawmakers and regulators, they will simply not allow this to happen and brand it as an unregistered security. Call me authoritarian all you want, but we have things called laws, regulations, taxes that crypto is great at evading.
- saurik 4y ago
  > You put in a lot of effort for only just one issue that 300M+ have no issue with. This is the same argument people use to defend attempting to ban secure end-to-end encrypted communication technologies--that clearly people don't really care so let's just take that away from them "because terrorism or whatever"--so color me unimpressed. The reality is that people everywhere deserve privacy, and all of your authoritarian reasons for taking that away from them are going to have a very high wall to climb to justify taking away that right. > You have heard of a disposable / prepaid SIM card right?, you can get one down the road and you're ready to go with UPI again. I am going to say this in no uncertain terms: zero-knowledge proof crypto payment protocols have a MUCH better user experience (and a MUCH higher success rate!) than requiring every single person--as, remember: I maintain that every person everywhere deserves privacy... this is a right that we should be ensuring for the people of our democratic state, and should be table stakes for innovations in payment technology--to maintain piles of burner phones (which isn't even all that easy to do, btw) while carefully managing the opsec inherent to having multiple pseudonymous identities. > Call me authoritarian all you want, but we have things called laws, regulations, taxes that crypto is great at evading. Great: as long as you continue to hold authoritarian viewpoints, I certainly intend to continue calling a spade a spade.

yata69420 4y ago

> This is where the future is headed, not crypto. Well, sure, your business interests will win if you ban competition. If crypto is useless, it will die organically. If crypto is useful, it will thrive. Why does the government always need to ban new things? If FTX wasn't a "crypto" scam it would have been some other type of scam. When TikTok gets shitty, people will stop using that too. This is supposed to be what makes capitalism strong, and instead we have authoritarians trying to disrupt any threatening innovation.

colesantiago 4y ago
How can crypto be called 'innovation' when it has made everything it has promised worse. What is crypto's innovation that hasn't been done before? Why should we use something more complicated, archaic, full of speculation, scams and a system that is engaged in a destructive mining process that requires burning up the planet to solve useless puzzles, which is even worse than the current system?
- saurik 4y ago
  The privacy provided by ZKP protocols like TornadoCash and Zcash is apparently so functional and so powerful that people like yourself are afraid of it and want to see it banned... and yet you say it isn't "innovative"? That's rich ;P. The reality is that people everywhere deserve privacy. It might should be telling that the country I most associate with your authoritarian take on this matter is the very country you (correctly) hold in such contempt: North Korea.
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    I have to admit this is a bunch of technobabble and gobbledygook that real people don't even use in the real world. Imagine going up to someone and saying 'Can you send me money through TornadoCash or Zcash?', they might think you're a criminal or something, oh wait. North Korea is a big customer of crypto, so the glove fits there, in evading sanctions. No legitimate usecase.

rojeee 4y ago

The this comment amused me because I worked for a company which was working with NPCI to replace UPI with a blockchain based system. NCPI wanted to replace the current system because it was deemed too centralised and they were investing money in trying to decentralise it. Not sure what happened with the project though... Presumably it continues behind the scenes. See [0] for some quotes from the CEO of NPCI on his thoughts about blockchain. Also the comment about private money is not true. There was a free banking regime in Scotland in the 1700s and 1800s. See [1] and [2] for some discussion. I've read a reasonable amount on the subject and economists typically agree it was a successful regime. [0] https://www.ledgerinsights.com/payment-rail-npci-indian-blockchain-platform/ https://www.ledgerinsights.com/payment-rail-npci-indian-bloc... [1] https://iea.org.uk/blog/free-banking-was-robust-and-effective https://iea.org.uk/blog/free-banking-was-robust-and-effectiv... [2] https://menghublog.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/on-the-success-of-free-banking-in-scotland-1716-1844/ https://menghublog.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/on-the-success-o...

GoblinSlayer 4y ago

UPI isn't better, it's the same fiat system as any other fiat system, it does nothing beyond being just yet another fiat payment protocol.

colesantiago 4y ago
still objectively way better than crypto.