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No, I get it. Give me a "Freedom Card" or whatever that generates a one-time use number/cvv combo, backed by cash, that I'm fully responsible for. If I give a g

No, I get it. Give me a "Freedom Card" or whatever that generates a one-time use number/cvv combo, backed by cash, that I'm fully responsible for. If I give a guy on the corner $5 cash and he walks off with it, that's between me and him. We don't need to resort to crypto. I don't care if there's a paper trail, I don't need to be anonymous. I just don't want money people to have any say in how people choose to spend their money.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
xboxnolifes 1y ago
Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with a credit card, you're explicitly not spending your money. Though i agree with the idea of a debit card that doesn't allow chargebacks, but without so many annoying restrictions.
- miiiiiike 1y ago
  Yeah, a "Freedom Card". Our money, they move it, no moralizing. We don't need crypto to fix this, just common sense legislation. No company or individual should be denied the right to receive funds digitally without due process. Companies should be free to transact with or exclude anyone, but there should be neutral infrastructure that facilitates the flow of money, with multiple players each with differing rules and risk profiles setup to help people and companies access it. No one financial institution should be able to dictate the speech allowed on a platform. What's the status of FedNow?
  - healsjnr1 1y ago
    The problem that seems to be being missed here is that while fraud is one reason Visa has say over what they accept, the much much much bigger issue is ATF, Money laundering and Sanctions. Cards like the Freedom card will never fly with either the Networks or the Issuing Banks as these kinds of payment instruments are immediately used to wash illicit funds. Visa's stance with Steam is bollocks, and it is another example of the monopoly they hold over payment processing. They shouldn't have the ability to impact a legit merchants catalogue. But the idea that we can have a Freedom card also doesn't checkout. The less known about what the money is spent on the higher the risk. And cost of complying with Suspicious Activity Reports regulations is really high (as the costs of you breach the requirements), so any attempts to create / run this kind of thing often don't stack up.
    - miiiiiike 1y ago
      You can still look for suspicious activity without having any leverage over what legitimate merchants offer.
  - welshwelsh 1y ago
    You think that common sense legislation is a more realistic solution than crypto? You can never rely on governments or corporations to have reasonable policies. Any payment system that is centrally controlled will inevitably be corrupted.
    - gimmeThaBeet 1y ago
      That's really at this point that's back to where I am with crypto. Through all the speculation and cruft, there is still a shot at owning our own payments, or rather no one owning them. The payment networks have power, and if you can twist the arm of the gatekeepers, people subvert that power. The only thing I don't know about these days is with the stablecoins, how do you avoid the government sinking their claws into you if you intrinsically (esp. if successful) have to hold that much in cash or short-term instruments? Or you have something like tether, which leaving aside anything else, you can definitely say is comically opaque for an entity that is nominally running $160B.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    > just common sense legislation. I think you underestimate just how much governments like the ability to control financial transactions within their borders, and in some cases (cough US) outside of it
- kergonath 1y ago
  > Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with a credit card, you're explicitly not spending your money. That point is not the problem though. They could just pressure Valve to refuse credit cards for all or some games. The financial aspect simply does not make sense, regardless of how you look at it (and many people had different takes in this thread). The only angles that make sense are an ideological crusade and the risk of being sued. The first is unacceptable and the second is an utter failure on the part of the legal system.
SJC_Hacker 1y ago
If you have a central authority which is keeping track of the ledger, they always have the ability to disallow any given transaction at their discretion or at the behest of some more powerful organization, e.g governments This is one of the problems that crypto was attempting to solve (if implemented properly and used correctly). There is a third party(the "network"), but its decentralized and at least for "proper" networks, no one organization has a controlling interest in the network Now any given miner/producer does not necessarily have to accept any random transaction. In practice however, for mature networks such as Bitcoin there are so many different miners/producers, its unlikely they would all conspire to disallow certain accounts or types of transactions. Now this is certainly possible for a crypto exchanges and therein lies the rub with cryptos - if you want to get the cryptocoin, you generally have to buy it with good old fashioned hard currency. Conversely if you want to convert the cryptocoin back into hard currency. And exchanges nowadays are facing increasing regulations from governments. Which means practically you are still largely under the thumb of those powerful organizations without some real gymnastics involved, such as trading crypto for cash with a real person in a back alley somewhere, or vice versa

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

xboxnolifes 1y ago

Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with a credit card, you're explicitly not spending your money. Though i agree with the idea of a debit card that doesn't allow chargebacks, but without so many annoying restrictions.

miiiiiike 1y ago
Yeah, a "Freedom Card". Our money, they move it, no moralizing. We don't need crypto to fix this, just common sense legislation. No company or individual should be denied the right to receive funds digitally without due process. Companies should be free to transact with or exclude anyone, but there should be neutral infrastructure that facilitates the flow of money, with multiple players each with differing rules and risk profiles setup to help people and companies access it. No one financial institution should be able to dictate the speech allowed on a platform. What's the status of FedNow?
- healsjnr1 1y ago
  The problem that seems to be being missed here is that while fraud is one reason Visa has say over what they accept, the much much much bigger issue is ATF, Money laundering and Sanctions. Cards like the Freedom card will never fly with either the Networks or the Issuing Banks as these kinds of payment instruments are immediately used to wash illicit funds. Visa's stance with Steam is bollocks, and it is another example of the monopoly they hold over payment processing. They shouldn't have the ability to impact a legit merchants catalogue. But the idea that we can have a Freedom card also doesn't checkout. The less known about what the money is spent on the higher the risk. And cost of complying with Suspicious Activity Reports regulations is really high (as the costs of you breach the requirements), so any attempts to create / run this kind of thing often don't stack up.
  - miiiiiike 1y ago
    You can still look for suspicious activity without having any leverage over what legitimate merchants offer.
- welshwelsh 1y ago
  You think that common sense legislation is a more realistic solution than crypto? You can never rely on governments or corporations to have reasonable policies. Any payment system that is centrally controlled will inevitably be corrupted.
  - gimmeThaBeet 1y ago
    That's really at this point that's back to where I am with crypto. Through all the speculation and cruft, there is still a shot at owning our own payments, or rather no one owning them. The payment networks have power, and if you can twist the arm of the gatekeepers, people subvert that power. The only thing I don't know about these days is with the stablecoins, how do you avoid the government sinking their claws into you if you intrinsically (esp. if successful) have to hold that much in cash or short-term instruments? Or you have something like tether, which leaving aside anything else, you can definitely say is comically opaque for an entity that is nominally running $160B.
- SJC_Hacker 1y ago
  > just common sense legislation. I think you underestimate just how much governments like the ability to control financial transactions within their borders, and in some cases (cough US) outside of it
kergonath 1y ago
> Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with a credit card, you're explicitly not spending your money. That point is not the problem though. They could just pressure Valve to refuse credit cards for all or some games. The financial aspect simply does not make sense, regardless of how you look at it (and many people had different takes in this thread). The only angles that make sense are an ideological crusade and the risk of being sued. The first is unacceptable and the second is an utter failure on the part of the legal system.

SJC_Hacker 1y ago

If you have a central authority which is keeping track of the ledger, they always have the ability to disallow any given transaction at their discretion or at the behest of some more powerful organization, e.g governments This is one of the problems that crypto was attempting to solve (if implemented properly and used correctly). There is a third party(the "network"), but its decentralized and at least for "proper" networks, no one organization has a controlling interest in the network Now any given miner/producer does not necessarily have to accept any random transaction. In practice however, for mature networks such as Bitcoin there are so many different miners/producers, its unlikely they would all conspire to disallow certain accounts or types of transactions. Now this is certainly possible for a crypto exchanges and therein lies the rub with cryptos - if you want to get the cryptocoin, you generally have to buy it with good old fashioned hard currency. Conversely if you want to convert the cryptocoin back into hard currency. And exchanges nowadays are facing increasing regulations from governments. Which means practically you are still largely under the thumb of those powerful organizations without some real gymnastics involved, such as trading crypto for cash with a real person in a back alley somewhere, or vice versa