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Comment by Torai | Hacker News Reader

> The EEA describes itself as a standards group designed to help enterprises build their own interoperable technology, mostly using private versions of the ethereum blockchain.

Ether price soaring right now, but isn't Master Card's bussiness direct competition of the public Ethereum blockchain as a payment system?

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I don't understand why the coin would increase in value, it's the tech that they are looking at, to use among themselves on private block chains.

For now, because the public chain doesn't have the privacy and scalability they need. They expect that to change, and which point they plan to migrate some applications to the public chain. In the meantime they're being careful to stay compatible, and contributing development resources. Also JP Morgan has a client that bridges public and private chains.

Source: I watched the EEA conference, and some smaller presentations later.

Interesting, are they funded in anyway by eth coin?

As far as I know the big corporations haven't invested in ETH. There are also some ICO-funded startups involved. I don't think the Ethereum Foundation is funding any private chain efforts, though they are collaborating with the EEA.

Them using the tech privately is seen as an indication of support (or at least interest) in the platform. So the public coin benefits from exposure and validation of its tech.

They were reportedly doing research about two months ago into using Ripple as a cross border payment solution.[0]

Circle is using Ethereum presently for cross-border payments.

It might be that they're investigating Ethereum for a similar purpose.

[0] edited for link: http://www.amis.org.mx/amis/img/convenciones/2017/PDF/Plenar...

Not really. Ethereum payments sell on being trustless, which means you have to upfront the money. Mastercard deals in credit. You'll never get the benefits of a credit based system in ethereum. This is why all ethereum dapps stink so far too. People are used to exchanging trust for goods and perks.

mastercard deals in credit? banks deals in credit, mastercard is a payment network.

This is true. But mastercard facilitates the liquidation of this credit via their payment systems, which people will continue to use. Initially people will likely use ether as a store of value/hedge against the traditional economy. Also dapp fuel, as we all hope.

Furthermore, take a look at coinbase as an example of a company profiting heavily on this new payment system. Mastercard has an opportunity to capture some of the new value being created in the ecosystem. They don't have to fall off the map if we all start using ether. If they do, they failed to innovate. I suspect their execs understand this.

Coinbase makes a percentage on each purchase/sale of a cryptocurrency, much like how a bank makes money when we buy forex. As far as I know, they don't take a fee for transfers of cryptocurrencies, which is more along the lines of what Mastercard does.

Ethereum is a platform and is not meant to be a payment system per se. One can however build a payment system (and other things) on top of the platform.

I have always thought that but it just crossed my mind that credit cards are basically just terrible loans. You could still give out loans in cryptocurrencies. Maybe Master Card could just switch if a particular crypto currency gained wide adoption. They could start issuing new cards with some sort of technology that allowed for cryptocurrency transactions at businesses. Or maybe they can use existing card tech, I really don't know anything about that.

What makes them terrible loans?

Also, much of the benefit of credit cards is from the fraud protection and mediation that companies provide -- it's not so much that they're loaning me $X00, but that they're covering the transaction details against fraudulent use and provide a dispute mechanism if don't feel the merchant has lived up to their offer post payment.

I find it much more likely that MC is trying to be the MC of cryptocurrencies -- eg, by packaging up a USB dongle that automates transactions using "secure" means, which they then insure against abuse. From that perspective, ETH makes a reasonable platform.

I think he just meant because it's a 20%+ loan typically. But really a person shouldn't be holding a balance on a credit card.

Credit card loads are the best to me as a consumer, since there is 0% interest for 1,5 month on average.

So maybe I don't understand this, but one of the purported advantages of cryptocurrencies is that the supply cannot be expanded by loose credit.

Thus it is seemingly impossible (to me at least) for a bank to for a bank to extend credit.

Even if the supply of the currency can't be expanded, can't credit still be issued from the supply of currency that the lender has?

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