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Can we disrupt payment processors already? This is getting really old. We shouldn't be bound by the moral compass of payment processors on what we can use our

by donatj 1y ago

Can we disrupt payment processors already? This is getting really old. We shouldn't be bound by the moral compass of payment processors on what we can use our own money for.

roguecoder 1y ago
Pix did it in Brazil. FedNow could do it, but it would require anyone in government to know how technology works instead of how to collect campaign contributions from the companies they regulate.
pull_my_finger 1y ago
Never a bad time to plug GNU Taler[1] >>> GNU Taler is a privacy-preserving payment system. Customers can stay anonymous, but merchants can not hide their income through payments with GNU Taler. This helps to avoid tax evasion and money laundering. [1]: https://www.taler.net/en/index.html https://www.taler.net/en/index.html
fidelramos 1y ago
That was precisely Bitcoin's goal as stated in its whitepaper [0] > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. > Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. > What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions. The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes. [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

by donatj 1y ago

Can we disrupt payment processors already? This is getting really old. We shouldn't be bound by the moral compass of payment processors on what we can use our own money for.

roguecoder 1y ago

Pix did it in Brazil. FedNow could do it, but it would require anyone in government to know how technology works instead of how to collect campaign contributions from the companies they regulate.

pull_my_finger 1y ago

Never a bad time to plug GNU Taler[1] >>> GNU Taler is a privacy-preserving payment system. Customers can stay anonymous, but merchants can not hide their income through payments with GNU Taler. This helps to avoid tax evasion and money laundering. [1]: https://www.taler.net/en/index.html https://www.taler.net/en/index.html

fidelramos 1y ago

That was precisely Bitcoin's goal as stated in its whitepaper [0] > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. > Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. > What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions. The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes. [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf