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We have normalized the treatment of the financial and payments systems as things that exist primarily to perform law enforcement surveillance functions. It's th

• lazide 1y ago
  It’s the ‘greedy coward’ leadership model - tends to work pretty well for most businesses, until it does’t. usually all at once.
• ngruhn 1y ago
  The alternate is crypto. That will service anyone for ANY reason.
  • sabas123 1y ago
    Which is not necessarily a good thing.
    • coolcase 1y ago
      It's like a kitchen knife. Can be good or bad.
      • close04 1y ago
        Correct in principle but not all that insightful because it's something almost universally true. "Fentanyl! Ads! Widespread surveillance! Can be good or bad". You have to look at the reality. Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime.
        • CelestialMystic 1y ago
          > Crypto has been used overwhelmingly for scams and crime. So has regular currency.
          • vkou 1y ago
            The overwhelming use of regular currency is crime? Where?
            • CelestialMystic 1y ago
              There are transactions happening all the time in regular cash for weapons, drugs etc. Large banks have been found to be knowingly processing funds from terrorists, drugs dealers and have got fines. If you anti-war, you would also include the wars that are financed partly by the ability to print money. These transactions while not the majority of transactions I would wager is far larger in terms of dollar value that the whole crypto ecosystem. The reality is that criminals will find loop holes in a system and they will exploit it if it is worth exploiting. Many of the checks done in banks now impede transactions. I was buying a car (private seller) and I couldn't transfer the cash without going through a fraud check, even though I had signed the transaction with a card reader in the app. It turned a 30 minutes of test driving the vehicle and checking docs into 3 hours of wrangling on the phone. BTW I am not the only person having these problems with banks in the UK. As for what crime we are referring to as well in this scenario needs clarifying as well. I suspect that most of crypto transactions are through darknet drug markets. These markets reduce the risk of violence to basically zero when purchasing drugs. While I am not one of these people that is pro-legalising all drugs, the reality is that people are going to buying them.
            • throwaway1854 1y ago
              Wherever any consumer-level illegal drug transaction has happened, which is everywhere.
              • vkou 1y ago
                The overwhelming use of fiat in my town does not consist of buying and selling street pharmaceuticals.
    • notpushkin 1y ago
      But not necessarily a bad thing either. If everything else fails, I know I can still have two things to pay with: cash and crypto.
      • coolcase 1y ago
        Gold being the ultimate. Cash can be diluted and crypto has unlimited supply (via alt coins). Gold is backed by physics and minted in neutron stars!
        • briansm 1y ago
          Strictly speaking, directed energy is the ultimate. Both crypto and gold are both just embodiments of energy, gold being the physical embodiment (via mining and refinement) and crypto being the virtual embodiment.
          • coolcase 1y ago
            Not really. Gold has no more energy than carbon per gram. E=MC^2. And total energy is unavailable. Carbon had more available chemical energy. (Why we can burn coal not gold). Bitcoin doesn't store any energy. Bitcoin is like a F1 car going around a track forever, with your name scribbled on it.
            • _Algernon_ 1y ago
              Both gold and bitcoin are a variant of "proof of wasted energy" or more euphemistically "proof of work". Why that makes it valuable is beyond me, but it isn't really a new thing considering the historic value of gold being much more than its utility as a material.
              • briansm 1y ago
                The 'value' in them is that they demonstrate that energy is currently so cheap and abundant to Us that we can waste it frivolously. It's a sort-of flex, showing off, a demonstration of (energy) wealth. Humanities's peacock feathers.
  • eru 1y ago
    Well, that and cash. Btw, crypto (like bitcoin) is only an alternative because of convention. The complete history of bitcoins is globally trackable, and people could all decide that they'll pay more for bitcoins that came from Satoshi's initial hoard, or that they'll refuse to accept bitcoins that were ever seized by the FBI. (Yes, there are mixers. But you'd just refuse to accept any bitcoin that took part in the mixer transaction, if any FBI coins were in there.)
    • jack_pp 1y ago
      How would you even price it? Have special markets based on coin origin?
      • eru 1y ago
        That's already the case. Some collectors already pay more for specific coins. While some other people buy their coins for investment only directly from miners, so they don't have to worry about who else might have held a coin.
    • lawn 1y ago
      You can't send cash digitally, hence crypto. I'd like to introduce you to Monero, which isn't globally trackable and also properly fungible so you can't refuse mixed transactions (since all transactions are protected).
      • immibis 1y ago
        Apparently "Liberty Reserve" was a (now defunct) digital cash service. As in you'd mail them cash and they'd add it to your account, and you could withdraw and they'd mail it back, minus a fee. And you could log in and transfer it. Apparently it powered online drug marketplaces before Bitcoin existed.
        • Ozarkian 1y ago
          You're not wrong. But Liberty Reserve was able to be shut down because it was centralized. Banking regulators in various western countries leaned on the Costa Rican authorities to shut it down. Try doing that with crypto. Who are you going to arrest?
  • twelvechairs 1y ago
    This is a major reason (maybe the major reason) crypto keeps going up. Many people want money to avoid government oversight - for reasons both benign (e.g. avoiding having money confiscated arbitrarily) and nefarious (everything from tax avoidance to funding crime and war). Not long ago we lived in a world where currency from anywhere other than the nation you were in (or maybe somewhere close by) was impractical to use on a daily basis. Things have changed now and the government's use of money as a tool to keep control of citizens is loosening. For better and worse.
    • throwaway2037 1y ago
      What percent of Bitcoin transactions are money laundering or other crime related? It must be astonishing. FT Alphaville has a good article about it: "How much does cryptocrime pay?": https://www.ft.com/content/f40b7ac7-bb50-4712-aa7f-5219c2b18789 https://www.ft.com/content/f40b7ac7-bb50-4712-aa7f-5219c2b18... (free sign-up) To quote: 2025 Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report ... The authors have so far tracked over $40bn of crypto transfers to illicit addresses made in 2024, though they reckon the final total will be north of $51bn. Ouch.
      • AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        That seems like a pretty insignificant number? World GDP is more than $100T. $50B is one half of one tenth of one percent, and even that is a significant over-counting because it's a measurement of revenue rather than profit and is counting all transactions to a given address regardless of their nature and potentially double-counting them. Some drug dealer is making $20,000/year selling drugs, but the drugs are sold for $50,000 because they had to spend $30,000 on grow lamps and electricity and rent in order to produce them. The same drug dealer also uses the same wallet to sell ordinary lawful gift cards for cryptocurrency and they only make $5000 from that but it's against revenue of $200,000 because the markup on gift cards is small. For that they're attributing $250,000 of "crypto transfers to illicit addresses" to this person but there was only actually $20,000 of unlawful gain. Overstating the problem to demonize the target.
      • peab 1y ago
  • renewiltord 1y ago
    This is one of my favourite word shifts. Back in the '70s this would have been quite the claim of sexual debauchery. I still chuckle at it.
  • audunw 1y ago
    Crypto isn’t an alternative to a bank. Not any crypto I’ve seen at least. The primary purpose of a bank is to issue debt. That’s why they were created. A bank has to be able to “print” money to issue debt. This isn’t a flaw as some crypto fans like to think, it’s a very important feature. Debt issued by banks replaced the informal promise-based debt people used before we had banks. You didn’t need money on hand, or to borrow some coins from some rich dude, to get help building a barn. You got help from people in the village in exchange for some other goods or service you’d provide them in the future. Bank issued debt with “printed” money is the replacement to that, and it only works if money can be created on demand. Crypto can’t “print” money on demand, by design. So it can’t replace banks.
    • immibis 1y ago
      Bitcoin can't, but defi can. An entity can issue a ERC-whatever token that acts as a bond, minted in exchange for whichever other token (e.g. ETH), and redeemable for that plus interest at their discretion (e.g. you could create a redeem queue). The bonds can be traded in secondary markets immediately upon creation - no need to file for listing (you need to create a swap pool and seed it with a little of each asset though). An important difference is that your new token can't ever be confused with base money. In banks, we have base money, and we have bank money, and we pretend they're the same thing because banks are pretty reliable (not 100% but pretty). In crypto, the system won't let you lie like that. (Though you can create another new currency backed by a mix of currencies - this is what DAI does.) Another important difference is trust. I can easily issue bonds in the real world and then just run off with the money and not repay them. If I try, a lot of heavily armed men will hunt me down. That doesn't really happen in crypto, and as things are now it can't happen, because if you make your identity and location known and issue crypto bonds, the same armed men will hunt you down for issuing crypto bonds instead of ordinary bonds, which is a crime itself (see what happened to Kik/Kin). So you'd have to stake something else to make people trust you.
      • Jarwain 1y ago
        I've always found it ironic how crypto basically make it not necessary to trust, but nobody trusts it.
  • immibis 1y ago
    The future of legitimate activity is that it will be performed on the same platforms designed to protect criminal activity, because it will be treated as criminal, despite not being so. If BuyMeACoffee was run like a dark web drug marketplace, it could support every country.
  • browningstreet 1y ago
    Given that Coinbase is crypto, and Coinbase was just added to the S&P500, and Coinbase has KYC, that's true only for a subset of crypto users.
• elric 1y ago
  Debanking small accounts isn't something that I'd heard of before. But debanking "undesirables" is certainly a problem. Over here (Belgium) we have legalized prostitution, but it's very hard for sex workers to open a bank account. There's some legislation that forces banks to offer them a basic bank account (at a steep fee) if they can prove that they've been rejected by N banks. Which is a start, I suppose. Banks have basically become an extension of law enforcement, tax collectors, anti-terrorist operations, and morality police. Which is ironic, given how many banks brazenly break laws on the regular, how absolutely depraved parties with bankers are, etc. They're hardly paragons of virtue. Yet they get to gatekeep "virtue".
  • roenxi 1y ago
    I agree; but if we're bank-bashing I'd like it to be comprehensive: What with all the attention they have to put into cooperating with the authoritarians they also aren't particularly good at their theoretical purpose, which is pooling people's money and investing it productively. We're watching an ongoing capital crisis in the West where we've been out-invested by nominal communists; it is absurd. The banking system has sticky fingers all over that mess. Then they get political protection through financial crisises where they should be taken out by bankruptcy but the powers that be prioritise having reliable people in what is effectively law enforcement rather then putting good capital managers in charge. So, y'know. Upside is the banks do a great job of shutting down sex workers and political activism. 10/10 mark for reporting what everyone is doing to law enforcement. Downside is that turns out to be a big distraction from all the wealth creation banking can enable.
    • soco 1y ago
      If the entire picture was so dark nobody would have used banks for anything, all across history. The banks were created by those having the means to open banks, not by charities, so it should be obvious that they will serve primarily their masters. You could make a similar argument for crypto: it does help some people to send money to the back of Africa, but is mostly enabling scams. My point is, the more there's money involved the darker the picture. If only we cared enough to make it better, but it's all boiling the frog.
• ThePhysicist 1y ago
  These companies aren't public utilities, no one would complain about a US bank not doing money exchange business with entities in the Ukraine or Belarus, why would that be different for US companies offering donations over the Internet? The fact is that all platforms that facilitate cross-border money transfers between two parties without clear services or good being exchanged are used for all kinds of money laundering, and governments try to contain that for good reasons. In the end they probably don't care much about the revenue they make in these countries as it's probably negligible. Again, their good right to do so, I don't see any issue with this at all.
  • jonathanstrange 1y ago
    Of course, people would complain about a bank not doing money exchanges with Ukraine or Belarus. Moreover, payment system providers, money transfer systems, and banks are to some extent public utilities, especially when there are no viable alternatives. They are essential for business.
    • deleted 1y ago
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  • elric 1y ago
    The article claims that funds were held after being donated. That certainly goes way beyond "not choosing to do business". The claims were refuted by BuyMeACoffee, which changes things. But if I, as a donator, donate money to someone using your service, and you then don't give that money to its intended recipient, you've effectively defrauded me. Had you said in advance "I can't do that, because you're trying to give me money to $foo which I don't support", then that is your right as a business.
  • throwaway2037 1y ago
    What's wrong with a US bank sending money to Ukraine? Sure, they might ask for an explanation, but I doubt they will reject. Example: You need to send money to a family member (immediate or extended), or want to donate directly to the national treasury (yes, you can do this), or another war-related non-profit. These are all legit. There is probably more risk in money transfers to Bulgaria or Romania, due to online scammers. Belarus is a wholly different matter. They are one step away from Russia-level sanctions, due to aiding Russia during the invasion of Ukraine.
• mppm 1y ago
  I think at this point it would be preferable for the government to take over the payment infrastructure directly. This is often seen as dystopian, but it's a dystopia that has already come to pass for the most part. If we made it official, at least the rules for what can be blocked or refused or frozen would be out in the open.
  • KingMob 1y ago
    I mean the current US govt is doing all sorts of awful things in the open, so I'm not sure this will be an improvement. I no longer believe that "sunlight is the best disinfectant", and haven't for a long time now.
    • roenxi 1y ago
      The best disinfectant doesn't kill everything. Nobody's ever managed to assemble a government that doesn't do awful things out in the open. One of my complaints about the Trump era is people are correctly identifying a bunch of problems with how the US government operates but for some reason they're only a problem when Trump does them instead of being a more general concern even if other people are involved. Eg, Trump is almost certainly spying on his political opponents. Using infrastructure built by Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden that everyone who took notice at the time pointed out would be used by people to spy on political opponents. This isn't a Trump problem. It is people assuming the government is always on their side despite copious quantities of evidence otherwise and regular elections.
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      • KingMob 1y ago
        I'd be pretty likely to agree with you, but I have you tagged as "pro-Musk". If you think an unelected oligarch wrecking everything with his hand-picked kids is an improvement over government, I dunno what to tell you. I loathe government, but I loathe monarchs more.
• internet_points 1y ago
  [flagged]
• rprend 1y ago
  I suspect people wouldn’t actually like the alternative. An alternative world where it’s relatively easy to get an MTL, or consequences for AML aren’t huge, looks a lot like crypto. Imagine banks and money processors doing rugpulls or going bust.
• idiotsecant 1y ago
  This is why I've been a hardcore crypto evangelist since before it was briefly fashionable and then wildly unfashionable. My opinion has not changed.