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Venmo is essentially a stable coin
by thehappypm 1y ago
Venmo is essentially a stable coin
- benjaminwootton 1y agoYou are correct but with Venmo or PayPal there’s a middleman charging fees who can lock your funds. A decentralised PayPal is appealing.
- topranks 1y agoNot really. The “solution” for decentralisation - proof of work - makes the system a lot more expensive (think: higher fees) than a centralised database.
- jekrb 1y agoPayPal also has their own stablecoin, PyUSD https://www.paypalobjects.com/devdoc/community/PYUSD-Solana-White-Paper.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/devdoc/community/PYUSD-Solana-...
- lern_too_spel 1y agoThat middleman can be compelled by the government to return your funds. A foreigner who empties your wallet on a decentralized PayPal cannot.
- thehappypm 1y agoWhat fees?
- kccqzy 1y agoAn implicit fee by not paying you any interest for money held in Venmo. Also notice there's no option to automatically transfer received money into your real checking account. They are banking on you forgetting your money is there and they are earning the interest but not passing it to you. For this reason I prefer receiving money via Zelle but pay with Venmo.
- diamond559 1y agoAs if you make any real return holding money in a bank account.
- Zanfa 1y agoJust to be clear, Tether and Circle also have complete control over their respective stablecoins if they so choose. They have the exact same power to reverse, freeze and block any transaction or balance just as PayPal and Venmo do.
- notpushkin 1y agoCan you elaborate?
- topranks 1y agoThe mechanics are sort of different. It’s on a blockchain so a true “reverse” is not possible. But the smart contracts they write look up a blacklist, which only they control. They can block, unblock or burn tokens. To “reverse” something they could burn those tokens, and then just issue more and send the new ones to the original address. So yeah it’s like PayPal or whatever. Except with blockchain thrown in so they can say the rules don’t apply to them.
- School-Cotton 1y agoWhat? How so? If by "stablecoin" you just mean "any USD-denominated balance maintained by a third party in a ledger" then every bank balance is a "stablecoin".
- arcticbull 1y agoOther way around. Stablecoins are essentially Venmo for crime. They get zero benefit from a blockchain. They are centralized, trusted and permissioned. Circle can freeze the USDC in your self-custody wallet at any time and you’re on your own bud. This whole thing is antithetical to crypto’s core ethos. You could replicate USDC with a website where you log in with a password and move money between numbered accounts and they don’t run any AML/KYC checks on you. If you did that it would be super illegal. In fact someone did exactly this, it was called Liberty Reserve and everyone went to prison. But because it’s got the magic of the blockchain laws don’t apply.
- djrj477dhsnv 1y agoGood. AML/KYC laws are a huge abuse of state power.
- arcticbull 1y agoGreat opinion.
- beeflet 1y agoGreat rebuttal! The government has existed for hundreds of years before these sophisticated mechanisms of surveilling the money system and the people were introduced. And it will continue to exist should they be removed.
- arcticbull 1y agoYou know everything was shit hundreds of years ago right, the wildcat banking system collapsed into miserable failure and the bearer instruments were eliminated because of the risk of train robberies.
- topranks 1y agoGood news! They’re back!