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Stripe to start taking crypto payments starting with USDC stablecoin
- namanyayg 3y agoThey're supporting Solana which is basically a centralized coin with a superminority of 22 validators [0] and keeps going offline regularly [1]. They fail to support legitimate businesses and instead choose to support crypto, which is a world of grift and scams. Has Stripe sold their ethics? [0] https://solanabeach.io/validators https://solanabeach.io/validators [1] https://decrypt.co/216132/solana-outage-developers-say-could-happen-again https://decrypt.co/216132/solana-outage-developers-say-could...
- hanniabu 3y agoIt is a damn shame to see Solana getting integrations and put on the same playing field as Ethereum, since as you say it's quite centralized and was a product of Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud pumping it into "relevancy". But unfortunately those behind the projects and the project's treasury itself has become quite rich from the increase in price and can support bizdev and grants (bribes).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nailer 3y ago> But unfortunately those behind the projects and the project's treasury itself has become quite rich from the increase in price and can support bizdev and grants (bribes). I don’t think Stripe chose to demo Solana because of a grant.
- spxneo 3y agoIf the fish rots from the head then this "ny state of mind" doesn't begin with Stripe if you understand who I'm talking about. Its incredible that the harm that SBF has done with Solana and other ponzi coins would get direct support from Stripe
- J_Shelby_J 3y agoIMO, the old generation of crypto people will go to their grave mad that anything other than ethereum sees success. There are valid complaints about Solana, but the ones that get trotted out in online discourse are repeated until they become reality for the horse beater. Unfortunately for them, their reality is disconnected from actual reality.
- pedalpete 3y agoI consider myself old generation, but definitely don't have this perspective. I wonder if Ethereum is the AOL of crypto.
- arisAlexis 3y agoBut it does go down very often and requires "engineers" to bring it up. That's not a decentralized Blockchain at all. Why pretend it to be?
- k_vi 3y agoAll software has bugs. This is same as claiming ETH will always get hacked because of the DAO hack. As far as I can tell there is no fundamental design flaws in Solana that makes it so that it will always go down. There are bugs in the networking stack that are being fixed. An no, "engineers" don't bring it up. I run a validator and only i'm incentivized to restart it back up because of my stake.
- arisAlexis 3y agoEth or Bitcoin have never been down. If this software is especially bad then ..
- null0pointer 3y agoDon't worry, they fail to support legitimate crypto too. Legitimate cryptos being XMR, BTC, BCH, and ETH, predominantly.
- k_vi 3y agoThis is no different from ETH, Lido staking has ~30% market share[0]. Stake centralizing != less security. no amount of stake can allow validators to steal your funds, this affects only censorship resistance. So actual validator count is more important than superminority. In case of USDC I'm assuming Circle should be running their own validator, which is the source of truth. As someone who has used most networks, Solana has the best experience for transacting USDC. [0] https://dune.com/hildobby/eth2-staking https://dune.com/hildobby/eth2-staking
- harles 3y agoHow long do these payments take? Or are they layering a centralized system on top to pretend the crypto has moved?
- hanniabu 3y agoDepends on the chain. Bitcoin, which is unfortunately many people's first introduction to crypto, takes on average 10 minutes per block. Typically services then wait for finality which is 6 blocks, so about an hour. On Ethereum, each block is 12 seconds and 64 blocks for finality, so 12.8 minutes. If Stripe were smart, they'd be using an L2 like Base where block times are ~2s. On Solana, each block .45s and 20-40s for finality. But Solana makes a lot of sacrifices and tradeoffs to achieve this and thus isn't on the same level as Ethereum. Edit: From another article is appears they'll be using custody funds though, at least to start. So in that case transactions should be instant due to a centralized layer as you mention.
- J_Shelby_J 3y agoWhat sacrifices and trade offs does it make that an L2 with equivalent performance doesn’t also make?
- hanniabu 3y agoIt sacrifices decentralization and requires highly performant/expensive hardware to operate a node. And don't try to compare that with L2 because there's a huge difference with having this happen at the base layer.
- colesantiago 3y agoIt is a massive disappointment that Stripe is getting involved in facilitating scams and ransomware by accepting ‘crypto payments’. I think it’s about time to move off Stripe to other payment providers that don’t accept crypto since Stripe is becoming more hostile and banning customers and shutting down their accounts for no reason. I am betting that Stripe chose crypto to avoid more chargebacks (that crypto does not support)
- spxneo 3y agoI am quite taken back by Stripes decision here but dissing PG's golden boy will get me banned so I suggest everybody to read @bitfinexed on X on why USDC/Tether is extremely shady. but I don't know which payment processor like Stripe can do the following: - marketplace onboarding for buyers and sellers - crowdfunding - mass payouts/intermediary payouts - doesn't hide fees for dashboard
- nailer 3y agoTether is USDT not USDC. Different organisations with different degrees of capitalisation and different degrees of transparency.
- spxneo 3y agowe are all aware. seems weird that you would point this out.
- nailer 3y ago> > > I suggest everybody to read @bitfinexed on X on why USDC/Tether is extremely shady. > > These are not the same people. > we are all aware You wrote 'USDC/Tether is' as if that was a singular item. If you thought they were separate items you would have written 'why USDC and Tether are extremely shady'.
- hanniabu 3y ago> since Stripe is becoming more hostile and banning customers and shutting down their accounts for no reason Start using Ethereum, it prevents this. Stop using intermediaries. The solution is right in front of you, but you're too distracted by the scams to see what the technology enables. Yes it's unfortunate that so many scams exist and give the entire ecosystem a bad name, but scammers exist everywhere. Is email a scam because of scammers? Are phones a scam because of scammers? Is the stock exchange a scam because of scammers? No, and this is no different.
- yfw 3y agoThey used to take btc before
- bdcravens 3y ago2014 (and ended 3 years later) I actually received a Stripe t-shirt for finding a "bug" with the console (was showing "Test" even though the transactions were live on the blockchain) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792124
- TacticalCoder 3y agoTwo HN unicorns involved then. Although USDC is emitted by "Centre", Centre is 50/50 Coinbase and Circle. And Coinbase is another HN unicorn.
- pedalpete 3y agoI wasn't familiar with circle, but apparently they create USDC https://www.circle.com/en/ https://www.circle.com/en/
- thecleaner 3y agoIs Stripe profitable ?
- steve_adams_86 3y agoApparently they weren't for a long time, but they may have been last year (based on some cursory googling). They projected $100,000,000 EBITDA for 2023, but I'm not certain it panned out. Their cash burn over the years has been astonishing. It seems like a very difficult business to make money in, somewhat ironically. Sort of a "water water everywhere" situation.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoCan’t your bank just accept FedNow instant payments? You don’t need Stripe and stablecoins for them to do that. 20 second SLA, $100k value transfer at a time (to start, up to $500k based on specific institution risk profile), and they are free or very low cost. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/organizations https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/organi... https://www.moderntreasury.com/journal/fednow-launch https://www.moderntreasury.com/journal/fednow-launch https://www.moderntreasury.com/questions/what-is-the-maximum-amount-for-fednow https://www.moderntreasury.com/questions/what-is-the-maximum...
- inhumantsar 3y agofednow is great and long overdue but how many of stripe's customers and their customers' customers are able to get US bank accounts? Forex fees on credit cards tend to be painful outside of the US and wires aren't a viable option for most businesses.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoHow much of Stripe’s volume is cross border payments? It's a big TAM [1], but also one central banks are coming for [2]. It's not a business, it's a utility pushing ISO 20022 messages around a bus [3]. [1] https://stripe.com/resources/more/cross-border-payments-explained https://stripe.com/resources/more/cross-border-payments-expl... [2] https://www.bis.org/publ/othp62.htm https://www.bis.org/publ/othp62.htm [3] https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d215.pdf https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d215.pdf
- tail_exchange 3y agoStripe does way more than just taking USD payments. If that's all you need, then sure, but let's not pretend they are are interchangeable.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoAgreed, but lets not pretend their value add for these trimmings justifies them consuming the entire value transfer TAM as their valuation argument.
- brcmthrowaway 3y agoI thought stablecoins were a scam?
- pedalpete 3y agoStablecoins provide all the risks of crypto, with none of the rewards. They aren't inherently a scam, but that doesn't mean that they can't be part of a scam. Luna had a "stablecoin" but that turned out to be a scam, but that doesn't mean all stablecoins are scams.
- inhumantsar 3y agoTerra's stablecoin wasn't so much a scam as it was built on a house of cards. They backed it with their own coin and a dynamic mint/burn algorithm, basing it all on the assumption that they'd never have that kind of crisis. In the end tho they did and it became a feedback loop. Circle's treasury is (iirc) 1:1 with USD and T-Bills. If those fail the way Luna did then there are bigger things to worry about.
- Ekaros 3y agoAt best they are like PayPal... So pretty bad.
- jdminhbg 3y agoThere are two different kinds of stablecoins. One is algorithmic stablecoins, which you probably remember from the Terra/Luna collapse. It relies on issuing/redeeming one cryptocurrency for another to keep the peg, which works mathematically unless the divisor goes to zero, which is what happened. USDC is just a one-to-one stablecoin where for every coin issued there is one redeemable US dollar somewhere. People have accused Tether, which works on the same principle, of being a scam by not actually having a dollar for every USDT, but there's nothing inherently scammy or non-scammy about the system. It's like a bank, either they have the reserves they claim or they're committing fraud.
- imtringued 3y agoWhat motivation is there for stripe to accept cryptocurrency payments? It feels like someone is pushing for it without there actually being enough consumer demand for a large company to bother with this. Also, one problem with USDC is that there is not a single "USDC", every Blockchain has its own independent version of USDC. So advertising "USDC" is kind of meaningless, because you have to support Ethereum USDC, Solana USDC and so on.
- k_vi 3y agowhat is the right demand when stripe should be supporting? Currently there are 93M wallets holding stablecoins with a weekly transfer of 373B[0]. [0] https://app.rwa.xyz/stablecoins https://app.rwa.xyz/stablecoins