PayPal’s Objectionable Terms Are Back, $2500 Fines for Content They Don’t Like
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Theres a few options - force all online sales to also accept bank transfers.
Create a gov owned company that competes with these services (like USPS).
Or regulate payment services on what can be considered things they don't have to service.
I think this would be a major boon to any economy that implements it well. People have no problem paying for small services in real life, because paying 30 cents is easy. Online though? It's not. It's hard for the people getting money and the people paying money.
I am not a Maxi, but Jesus what other options are there?
Slowly being phased out.
> checks
Already spotty usage.
> Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover
Censorship possible.
> barter
Viable, but foolish considering it's cumbersome and we live in an age where perfectly viable technological solutions exist. It's like having an iron but pressing your shirts between books out in the sun.
Viable, but foolish considering it's cumbersome.
I've done business with people all of the world in places that have weak or non-existent banking thanks to Bitcoin. None of the above options made that possible.
and if you're concerned about centralization
ethereum solana cosmos avalanche fantom monero aptos polygon ...
It's a bit abstract/esoteric, but using something like Bitcoin would re-humanize commerce vs the increasingly transactional nature of the world enabled by fiat/printing.
I disagree. I posit that money was created to establish a fungible, divisble, common store of value for the purpose of facilitating exchange of goods and services of dissimilar value that are not always needed by the counterparty. Without money, the barber would need to pay for his groceries with haircuts. This poses problems if the grocer or farmer does not want or need a haircut. No trust violations needed here - barter is simply more difficult without money, even if there is absolute trust in your counterparty's promise to deliver the goods or services they offer as described.
No, it wasn't. Money was created as a proxy for trading value because of the cumbersome nature of barter. If we have a commonly agreed upon way to exchange value (money), I can paint your house and you can give me money and I can use that money to go buy food or other people's services. The only "trust" in that is the chosen form of money. Hence why state currencies are less trustworthy and something like Bitcoin (which requires no centralized intermediary) is more trustworthy.
The blockchain is a great ledger, but the ledger is worthless if it does not match reality.
What reality is (especially with regards to money exchange) is a complicated and turbulent topic.
How does bitcoin handle any form of fraud, misrepresentation, or contract dispute?
It does not. At all. You have to go right back to trusting humans to solve those problems. Either in the courts, through an escrow, or through banks.
It doesn't need to. That's up to the individual to be more discerning (a long-term good thing as it re-establishes reputation as an asset and focus on community). On an international scale, services could easily be created (think BBB) that act as a reputation scoring system for buyers who want extra assurance (or even insurance which could be offered as a service to skeptical buyers).
They only agree to take on those roles when they have the tools available to offset the costs of doing that business.
In particular, they want to be able to do things like: Reverse transactions, correctly identify all parties, freeze accounts that are in dispute, fine users who abuse their services or mislead them.
So again - how are you avoiding trusting other people, exactly?
What I suggested was a company that assigns ratings to companies (banks do not do this) and offers opt-in insurance in the event that a transaction is fraudulent.
> Reverse transactions, correctly identify all parties, freeze accounts that are in dispute, fine users who abuse their services or mislead them.
This is the problem. I don't want those things present for all transactions, only some. These "services" can be used to unfairly target and censor people. What I described would not make that possible.
Use a credit card instead. Luckily, I payed paypal through a credit card. So I disputed it through the bank instead.
If you had a Celsius account with 10 BTC last year, you have 0 BTC today.
Pretty different situation.
The problem is theft of your funds without your consent over your unpopular political speech. Bitcoin cannot be taken from you by any third party, provided you self-custody and adequately protect your keys.
>If I buy a video card with bitcoin, but get sent a brick instead, how does "Blockchain as Arbiter" get my bitcoins back?
Unrelated to the problem being discussed, but still a problem. Unfortunately, this is not a problem unique to Bitcoin, nor a problem adequately solved by PayPal, as explained in other comments, so it's hardly a robust criticism against BTC.
Full dislcosure: I own BTC, but less than 0.5% of my net worth, I do not own it for speculative reasons, and I do not view it as an investment or store of value, only as an alternative payment network.
But again, that's the beauty of Bitcoin. There is no dense legalese with sneaky technicalities that allow other parties to seize your funds over the contents of your speech, so long as you self-custody and adequately protect your keys. I understand that's also not something all laypeople can be expected to do, but I prefer to have the option than to not have the option.
Swapping out dense legalese with sneaky technicalities for dense technical requirements with sneaky technicalities isn't particularly different.
Even then, you still aren't protected from signing bad contracts, either smart or regular
As much as I want to roll my eyes at this, it's important no matter what your political opinion is! For now we might be talking "unpopular" but what if you have political speech that is popular but opposes what the people in charge at the time think?
The use-case you mentioned is just that of a bank account. The right to have such a bank account should be enforced by regulation where it's not the case yet, as storing your wealth in an asset with such high volatility is not an actual solution.