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Comment by llanowarelves | Hacker News Reader

May as well get ahead of this, every time someone is yoinked from a platform:

"If you don't like it, build your own <piece of underlying infrastructure>". [repeat recursively].

More productive comment: protocols > platforms.

This is true in many situations, but setting up full self-maintained payment processing isn't really a feasible option for small or even larger development teams. Payment processing is heavily regulated with many legal requirements, not to mention the countless security threats.

Would be feasible with crypto though.

"Crypto payment processor SpankPay announced on Monday that it would shut down because of financial discrimination"

They were using crypto. Didn't help.

I think the problem was in the gateway to USD. If they only accepted crypto, and paid it out to the sex workers, then it would work. But in the real world your average John has a credit card, not crypto, and your average sex workers can't pay their rent or buy groceries using crypto. The problem was, and always is, the gateways to fiat. And I don't see a solution to that.

So then how do the sex workers use their wages?

The comment you’re replying to has the same concern.

You're right, I jumped to a conclusion although I still don't think the comment is very constructive

Your comments here are way less constructive, fwiw. Those in glass houses ...

Shell corporations?

There's is no user-friendly solution, but I don't see why it would not be possible to send money to/from a -say- Kraken wallet to a wallet used to buy/sell sexual services from an app. It's just a bit of hassle to transfer.

Not including the on-ramp from fiat to crypto inside the app would solve the issue, I would think.

The first half of paying for the services maybe. But you’ve just pushed the problem of converting from crypto to $DOLLAR to the service provider.

I don’t think Coinbase for example would knowingly allow a prostitute, whose inbound source of tokens is coming from a digital pimping service, to convert them to USD and then ACH the cash to her local bank.

No it wouldn't, because that's just kicking the can down the road to the exchange provider.

This didn't seem to bother anyone when people were told to EG create their own facebook or Twitter.

Those are not regulated. I think you missed the point.

I don't think regulations would be the main thing stopping someone creating their own Facebook.

...and then the people who were pissed at Facebook and Twitter went off and made their own Facebook and Twitter because making a website has very little in the way of barriers to entry.

Financial services is a very different arena.

If you don't like it, go build your own universe.

Elon Musk is going to colonize his own planet, but that may turn out not to be enough.

The barrier of entry is high in the payments market. You have to follow a lot of regulations, get other payment providers to accept you, and most importantly have enough liquidity. If you are missing even a single one of these factors, then you're only playing around with Monopoly money.

government > protocols

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