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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many people are interested in them for their ostensive purpose, which was to have a non-centralized currency for regular, every-day transactions.

It seems that they're mostly currently being used for speculative investments (not a particularly good use for a currency) or for black market transactions.

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I'm interested in them from the perspective of eliminating morality police that charge predatory rates to 'risky' sectors of the economy. I see them as providing a more level playing field, though I do feel that competition among escrow providers with clear terms of service for both parties is an element missing from the equation.

> I'm interested in them from the perspective of eliminating morality police that charge predatory rates to 'risky' sectors of the economy.

Can you give some examples? I'm not sure what you mean.

If you make porn/erotica then a lot of payment processors want nothing to do with you.

Same with marijuana. I live in a US state that's legalized it, and every shop requires cash payment because no payment processor will talk to them.

As I understand it, that's less about morality and more about fraud risk.

For porn yes, for MJ it's about federal laws and banks wanting to obey them

And the federal laws are a result of the morally driven prohibition movement. They aren't founded on well reasoned logic, just the desire to control others.

That becomes pretty circular and more political/philosophical than this conversation needs to be. From a business perspective, online porn is high fraud which makes CC's a difficult thing to underwrite and MJ banking in general is risky because banks need to stay under the government's good graces. This is the business environment regardless of your moral opinion

I disagree, pointing to risk management as the root cause makes it circular. I certainly don't expect private enterprise to right the state's wrongs, but I don't think it hurts the conversation to point out the true root cause. It has been my experience that HN welcomes a little more thought beyond the utilitarian argument of what makes the trains run on time.

I just want an easy and quick way to transfer money.

You can get a Visa card backed with Monero from bitwa.la or use Monero anywhere BTC is accepted via xmr.to

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