It's massively simplified our processes, and improved UX. Our customer base is already crypto-native, which is what makes this possible.
Users pay us simply by sending funds to our wallet. Our entire payment processing engine is under 300 lines, including USD-denominated fees in crypto. Payments arrive instantly, with almost zero fees, from any country.
We have no chargebacks or (traditional) payment fraud.
Our remote staff are paid in crypto, arriving instantly with no cross-border issues.
One might argue that crypto makes customers unable to demand a refund, or that it is impossible to send a refund to a customer who is so anonymous that the merchant cannot even communicate with them, but these are less obviously a "no-no" for a business.
Not even a bit. The tide has changed after endless failures on the side of cryptocurrencies.
You've said it yourself. If the only way to accept crypto payments is to have a "crypto-native" userbase, what does this say about its utility for society? If the entire crypto industry is self referential, then once you peel back the layers there's not much left but a big system that moves money around in a circle.
Aren't you describing all fiat currencies? How is the US dollar any different?
This argument was (and still is) valid for PoW algorithms, but energy consumption is now barely a factor for Ethereum, which is the main network we take payments on [1].
Ethereum is currently doing 30 TPS [0], and Paypal ~200 [1]. Assuming that energy usage scales linearly (a naive assumption, but for arguments sake), it could deliver similar value with 10x lower energy consumption, I don't find arguing against the adoption of PoS crypto solely based on sustainability very credible either.
[1] https://www.ing.uc.cl/en/boletines/engineering-student-scale....
Who is the government to say otherwise?
Without that you have an anarchic lawless society where individualism can flourish and people can exploit whatever they want without regards for the 2nd, 3rd, n-th order impact that an action might cause unto others, because it's invisible or severely hidden to them. Or that they simply don't care about said impact because their personal reward is worth more to them than the benefit of society as a whole.
Who is the government to say otherwise?
Oh yeah, that's right, the government SHOULD actually make policies to cut down on negative affects of things that some people want to do. You know, because that's the whole point of government.
Not because they are god, because they are how society codifies what it wants and sets policies to achieve it.
Cryptocurrency isn't even banned, only proof of work.
It's a completely valid thing for a government to set a policy about.
Especially now that the experiment has been allowed to run without meddling for many years, and the results are well and truly in.
There might be an argument about invalid interference on day one, but not now.
Banning proof of work is tantamount to banning computation, it's silly and infeasible unless you want to start monitoring what people calculate.
Which for anyone remotely sane is laughable on its face.
The purpose of a state-level policy (state as in government not state as in NY) is to have a state-level agregate effect, not to actually care about each microscopic individual instance.
If you make a policy that in effect Bitcoin is illegal, that will have a population-scale effect.
The fact that you can make an argument that 'it's just computation no different from any other computation' is ignorant of the point and kind of jeuvenile. You didn't say anything they didn't know perfectly well.
Why call me juvenile? That's not necessary to make your argument. It's rude too and against the rules.
> Enforcement practicality is a separate issue.
No it's not, enforcement practicality is the only important issue regarding a law. An unenforceable law is useless.
The question of if a thing is harmful or should be controlled or declared illegal, and the question of how the implimentation mechanics of controlling a thing might be done, are two completely different questions. If you had no way to physically prevent murders, that does not then follow that therefor murder shouldn't be illegal. Failing to realize that is yet another example of jeuvenile.
Practically every law, policy, regulation, code, etc has some element of arbitrariness, interpretation, and discretion or selective enforcement. This one is no different.
Why not a carbon tax scheme for everyone, period? This is what I'm asking.
Why is cryptocurrency mining banned, while other "profiteers" (oil companies, gas-electric companies and so on) would not be penalized equally?
The US has among the highest per-capita carbon emissions.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?most_rec...
Given that the global carbon tax is unlikely to happen, we might has well take action against proof of work now since it would still be a net benefit for mankind.
Because the world is not fair and a general carbon tax will not get passed.
That's discounting a federal carbon tax that would go this deep, because that's certainly not happening.
The goverenment, in liberal democracies, are the people elected representatives.
It's the will of the people and it overrules the will of some cryptobros.
Lithium-ion is a great comparison to because we should, even though there has been adoption of Li batteries, still be willing to say that massive scale lithium strip mining might be worse than having electric cars and it might be worth regulating away. Even if crypto was highly used, doesn't mean we shouldn't regulate it, particularly if it's externalities are worse than the alternatives (and they are).
Even if crypto did reach 50% of transactions or any of your other examples, and it can't, trustless environments demand waste so that kind of scale isn't possible without earth shattering waste, but for the sake of argument let's say it did, I'd still argue for it's abolishment at a societal level because it does transactions WORSE than everything else. Higher risk, fewer safeguards (oops wrong address, now my money is gone forever vs oops, I'll just call my bank), more emissions, more dark money, more money laundering, more room for scams... I could go on, but hopefully I've made my point.
A global currency has now been established successfully (done organically too with no authority behind it), but 15 years is entirely too short of a time frame to guarantee adoption. The primary growth issue has been secure on and off ramps for local users, but that's a short term problem. Amazingly, we already see adoption in some of the poorest corners of the world before the richest. But you already know why that is: first world countries are fine paying a higher premium on every transaction because we can be more wasteful. It does offer some additional services like chargebacks, short-term debt financing, etc. Others aren't as fortunate due to local currency values, local infrastructure, etc. Also worth mentioning, sending any kind of remittance across the globe has a punishing level of fees attached as well. I don't think you are justified to say what we have right now is good enough, because across multiple dimensions it isn't for millions of people. The adoption curves for other countries demonstrates this: there is a need for something new.
Visa claims their network can handle 24k transactions a second. There are multiple crypto that can approach that throughput without much increase in waste. Lightning network's energy use doesn't scale with the volume of transactions. The security of the network and transaction volume are different dimensions on energy usage, so I think you are off on that point.
Energy waste is definitely a concern, but IMO should not be the concern for a much needed global financial network. Energy waste must come from global emission agreements and local regulation. High non-renewable energy users should be taxed more. High individual users can also be taxed more. The good thing about crypto is the tradeoff of value add vs energy used is extremely clear to everyone involved. If it doesn't make money people stop doing it, or commit a crime that can be pursued (whether or not it will be is another issue). The economics are transparent, which is extremely important.
The externalities are not worse than the alternatives, and it's fairly obvious. The alternative is no global finance network. The alternative is an unstable money supply. The alternative is continued manipulation of powerful countries to perpetuate financial repression. The continued funding of middle-men. The slow erosion of financial privacy (TBF, only 1 crypto actually improves this).
We'll find the energy savings somewhere else, such as the overwhelming wasteful industrial and transportation sectors. Crypto will continue do what makes sense economically. It will continue funding renewable energy and lift up areas with low industry potential but high renewable energy potential.
The current system loses hundreds of billions of dollars in credit card scams. But CC companies are still profitable. Wire fraud scams are up to $3.5 billion per year. Crypto has a better chance of fixing these through new security processes (there's room for custodial wallets) than the current system. The bank is already going to tell you to take a hike if you were scammed. If you can prove it's identity theft then you will typically be made whole, but even then it's not guaranteed without additional insurance.
Cheers
I don’t care about the merits of bitcoin, but these simplistic crude and inaccurate legislation attempts are fundamentally market distorting and inefficient and restrict our rights.
[Spoiler: it's more than 30 years just for onboarding, for those who are curious. For the unaffiliated bystanders, next time you hear "Lightning network solves all issues, layer 2!" chant from the cult, remember that Bitcoin is still a tired old database at the bottom of it that is still looking for a problem to solve.]
Spoiler: eltoo & an upgrade with SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT along with channel factories seems perfectly capable.
But it will NEVER work for everyone.
> you want to discount it cause it can't immediately onboard the entirety of humanity within an arbitrarily short timeframe is
The "arbitrarily short" timeframe is 30 years. That seems kinda long to me. But then again I keep hearing "We're still early!" after 13 years of Bitcoin, so maybe you guys are targeting sometimes next century, in which case, my apologies.
Oh, and also, it's not _just_ to onboard, it's the first transaction. Anytime you want to settle, close a channel, create a new one, it's the same congestion. Unless you propose people initiate a channel for their newborn so the kid can eventually start using lightning when they get their third real job at 30? That _could_ work, hmm.
> there certainly will be a protocol capable of achieving that absurd high bar for a trust-less blockchain
"My project is gonna be working by the time for the final! I swear!" stopped working for me when I graduated high school and entered what some may call the real life. Seems cute that it's still alive and well in the crypto fantasy land to judge things by the publicity pieces instead of what they actually are.
Anyway, I'm not nitpicking. I'm punching holes through your tired arguments about an inefficient database and how it's the savior of humanity (just to pump up your coinz.)
To all knee deep bitcoiner, please understand that your future of finance wet dream doesn't actually ever scale to 1% of what's needed, stop burning fossil fuel, and find a new hobby, ffs.
> future of finance wet dream doesn't actually ever scale to 1% of what's needed, stop burning fossil fuel, and find a new hobby, ffs
This just seems needlessly vitriolic rather than a substantive argument.
I gave you a protocol that doesn't "take 30 years" and you say it's a pipe dream.
That brings quite a value. Without anti-fraud measures, you wouldn't have a monetary system.
"We also are making our operations more sustainable – including achieving carbon neutrality and procuring 100% renewable electricity in 2019, a year ahead of schedule."
Drastically lower than Bitcoin if this is anything to go by. So low you might as well put BofA into a fossil fuel burn limbo contest.
Given that result took less than three seconds of searching, I'm wondering if you have an ulterior motive in targeting BofA specifically.