What's urgently needed is payment neutrality, like net neutrality. It's absurd that the net was discussed more heavily and way earlier than cash.
Though for most of my life internet has been getting more and more centralized. At least everything outside of China is centralized almost entirely in US these days.
Rather sad reality of things, but what can we do heh...
other reasons are heavy payment regulations, human habits, fraud, network effects and more. tech does not fully solve it.
More to the point, it's still misleading to call a ship the water.
Asymmetric key cryptography is all the same thing. Digital signatures are cryptography. The "secret" being obscured cryptographicially is the information needed to produce a verifiable message.
Your definition of cryptography might make sense to someone more than a century ago, but the state of the art has advanced greatly since then.
The reason why you define cryptography like this, is I think political. For example, I am not sure you would extend the same logic to cryptographic voting schemes. Cryptocurrency is just another application of cryptography to solve coordination problems.
That's the key, not the message.
> For example, I am not sure you would extend the same logic to cryptographic voting schemes.
Isn't the purpose of a cryptographic voting system to keep your vote secret?
> The reason why you define cryptography like this, is I think political.
Yes, it's because people don't want things like end-to-end encryption associated with scams, and they're not wrong.
There's lots of schemes of course but that's the basic concept. (And of course I don't think anybody would seriously consider ECC signatures (which don't use encryption) as "not cryptography")
Signatures are cryptography. Signatures work because of cryptography.
And even ignoring that of course your whole "cryptocurrency isn't cryptography" stance completely falls apart for all of the many projects that are built on zero knowledge cryptography.
Calling that "encrypting the hash" is assuming the conclusion. The mathematics are the same as encryption, but the consequence is different. In particular, the thing allegedly being "encrypted" isn't a secret -- the hash both isn't confidential and isn't required to be.
> And even ignoring that of course your whole "cryptocurrency isn't cryptography" stance completely falls apart for all of the many projects that are built on zero knowledge cryptography.
No, would imply that Monero is actually cryptocurrency and Bitcoin isn't. But if that's your position then you'd need to get everyone to stop calling Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
Crypto's been associated with illegality almost since inception, and that associations lends the power that be carte blanche in ignoring or even blacklisting anything surrounding it
In a purely technical "I can send/receive payments without worrying about charge backs or random middleman restrictions", it has solved it. But it hasn't solved the issue of having the vast majority of merchants accepting crypto, the issue of crypto price volatility (or associated risk of stable coins), or the friction/unreliability of turning cash into crypto.
Particularly, the last 2 issues go hand-in-hand as an issue. You can get around cash->crypto friction/unreliability by only having to do it infrequently, but that exposes you to the volatility of the crypto price.
And that's not even getting into the issues of crypto UX as a form of common currency for the average person. It is not a simple process to know how you should create wallets, manage your wallets, what information should you or should you not expose, what networks can/can't you send certain coins over, what coins should you be using, why are there hundreds of different coins, etc, to not fall for scams.
The price volatility seems like a red herring. If you're using it as a currency then you're not holding it for significant periods of time and the entire point is to make it an automated process, so you're buying some cryptocurrency for cash and then immediately spending it. How much volatility do you really expect in the timespan of a fraction of a second?
Meanwhile the conversion shouldn't be a hard problem. You have a service that allows you to buy cryptocurrency with a credit card or bank transfer and then an app that uses that service to buy cryptocurrency and transfer it to a merchant that accepts cryptocurrency, and then any merchants being unfairly targeted by the payment networks can do that. And the cash to cryptocurrency service can be operated by a different party than the app so the former can't be assaulted for having the wrong customers and the later isn't directly interacting with the payment networks.
I suspect the real problem is this: The chargeback process for credit cards isn't compatible with anything where the merchant is delivering fungible goods to the customer that they can't feasibly recover if the customer was using a stolen card or issues a fraudulent chargeback, and cryptocurrency is one such thing. So then the service that allows you to buy cryptocurrency with a a credit card gets screwed, because customers issue a chargeback to them or use stolen cards on their service even though they actually provided the cryptocurrency as promised.
Which is a huge existing problem with the payments system. The payment networks dump the cost of fraud onto innocent merchants and then lose the incentive actually prevent it even though they're the only ones in a position to do it, e.g. by issuing chip cards that could be read by any ordinary PC/phone via open standards and therefore enable "card present" transactions to happen over the internet.
And then if you expect cryptocurrency to solve that problem, it can't do that on the side of the transaction where the cryptocurrency is the thing you're buying.
Maybe I don't understand how people use bitcoin but I wouldn't call your description that of a currency but more like a payment processor.
I want a currency, e.g. USD to be stable enough that I can comparison shop in it, quote prices to customers in it, and hold some as "cash or cash equivalents" on my balance sheet without undue risk from price fluctuation.
USD achieves this, BTC doesn't, which is assume is why people are using the get-in-get-out model being mentioned here of only holding it for as short as possible.
Meanwhile the historical purpose of holding cash as "spending money" (i.e. liquid assets) is from a time before computers could allow you to keep it as actual investments until the instant you do actually want to spend it.
As for using it for pricing, things are typically priced in USD because it's the world reserve currency, or in the dominant local currency in a given country. That doesn't mean that other currencies aren't currencies. Shops in many countries will often accept both local currency and USD even if prices are only listed in one of those, and so what? Anybody can look up the current exchange rate in real time on the internet. Why is it a problem to list prices in USD and then accept that amount of cryptocurrency (or Euros or Yen) at the current exchange rate?
My dollar will be worth a dollar tomorrow and will sit in my wallet. My crypto currency is worthless on most of the planet. Do you take payments in LoL skins or vbucks?
Then why are there so many places you can exchange a Bitcoin for thousands of dollars?
The closest bitcoin ATM is 20 miles away from me in another town at a sketchy gas station. Let me just hop over and grab 3k out of it and get robbed.
That is the point of me mentioning that points 2 and 3 are linked. If you are only immediately purchasing crypto and then using it for a purchase, your middleman risk has moved from the payment processor to the crypto exchange. Every purchase you make now relies on whether or not you can make the exchange at the moment. Which is point 3.
The alternative is you make larger exchanges of money, which means you need to deal with volatility: point 2.
If the price of crypto was stable (at least about as much as any major currency), you could exchange much of it in bulk, and delays in exchanging it back into cash would be less of an issue. Even less of an issue if more merchants accepted crypto: point 1.
Steam used to accept Bitcoin, but they shut it down because volatility in combination with long transaction processing times lead to a payment shortfall, requiring you to send more money. In times of high transaction fees this meant that you would have to pay $20 in transaction fees to cover a $2 shortfall and if you didn't, steam would have refunded the bitcoin and deducted the transaction cost anyway. It was an incredibly poor experience so they shut it down.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/...
>And that's not even getting into the issues of crypto UX as a form of common currency for the average person.
The conventional banking system is just as complicated and less secure, yet people have adapted to its flaws. What's the difference between FedWire and ACH? Why does it take time for checks to clear, and why does it show that I have a balance immediately? What are money orders? Why are banks only open on weekdays when the entire economy relies on them to function?
For the thing in the OP though, some kind of crypto rail for these kinds of transactions probably would make a difference. The trouble is that Visa/MC don't just impose these restrictions for moral reasons, it's mostly because of higher charge-back rates and fraud.
I guess that means they solved the UX problem... but from what I have read, its actual usage in practice is basically a failed experiment at this point.
because people like having the ability to dispute charges when they get scammed. they also like the ability to access their account by speaking to someone at the bank when they forget their credentials. (the dude that lost his bitcoin hard drive in a dumpster only recently gave up is search of landfills) if you see all these crypto companies end up creating layers that create shittier banks with extra steps.
that's also the reason payment processors don't like certain fields like nsfw/sex work, gambling , etc because a lot of fraud happens in them and therefore they cost more for them, At least that what their stance is, and I have no reason not to believe them because if you try to take online payment that's what you will see with time when your platform get targeted by shady individuals.
also governments like control. how do you freeze crypto like you freeze a bank account ? their wet dreams is people to stop using cash and only use electronic payments, that way they can freeze your whole life with a single order. (the official stance is to stop criminals, but they decide who get designated as such. said something they don't like ? welcome to the list)
to make thing worse, crypto has been almost exclusively used for shady things like gangs money laundering, scams, etc.
and in the end the blockchain does not solve any real problem. it's a technical solution in search of a problem.
To help with that new laws were passed.
If you want to buy crypto for fiat currency legally, like on some well known crypto exchange, newest laws require naming recipient of crypto you are sending and if that wallet is self hosted or exchange hosted (and which exchange). You either need to provide full name of person or company, or confirm it’s your other account you are sending crypto to.
There is one actually private crypto, it’s monero, but - surprise - it’s nor available on legal crypto exchanges so you cannot buy it by any official means.
BTCPay Server[0] seems to be the most popular way to accept crypto payments on self-hosted hardware with no third party processors.
Can you let me know in this thread how it goes and what are your thoughts after doing it?
> transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week [...] The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of Bitcoin itself drops dramatically.
> [...] the amount of Bitcoin needed to cover the transaction can change. The amount it can change has been increasing recently to a point where it can be significantly different.
> The normal resolution for this is to either refund the original payment to the user, or ask the user to transfer additional funds to cover the remaining balance. In both these cases, the user is hit with the [$20] Bitcoin network transaction fee again.
Besides that, there are other cryptocurrencies (Solana? Stellar?) which have effectively zero fees and are much faster than Bitcoin.
>Besides that, there are other cryptocurrencies (Solana? Stellar?) which have effectively zero fees and are much faster than Bitcoin.
They are faster because they are not very decentralized. The entry costs for vendors to independently audit and verify payments the blockchain is greater.
So I suppose you could accept payment in an anonymous cryptocurrency, and then take that to whatever exchange you want.
It's flawed, but I think the end goal is to create a "circular economy" based on anonymous currrency, so you never have to cash out.
People don't like it when crime pays (easily and well).
Moving large amounts of cash is risky and hard to hide. It also offers the public a very easy to understand medium of exchange, which is why most consider it worth keeping despite its illicit use.
That they provide what resembles a neutral payment platform is a side effect of those goals, and that neutrality hinges on regulated banks being willing to provide accounts to those excluded by Visa/MC in order to convert cryptocoins to legal tender. Banks are largely just as unwilling as payment processors, for the same regulatory and political reasons as payment processors, which is why this is ultimately a problem of neutrality regulation rather than of crypto.
I do buy it. Collective Shout, Mad Fucking Witches and others have all been trying to cancel media personalities and companies for years by appealing to the advertisers, especially effective in traditional media where they money is drying up. They're hardly a fly by night group, and it's not their first time appealing to payment processors.
0. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/400-vi...
Crypto will too, after it becomes well regulated, and then it will lose its appeal and crash. No one wants to mess with some convoluted cryptography based money system if they don't have to.
So do criminals use only the "Most" or also.the other ones that can't be reversed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payment_System_(United_...
But then the payment networks prohibit merchants from providing the full value of the discount to people not insisting on payment methods that impose those costs, which ought to be an antitrust violation because it's obviously uncompetitive to prevent an alternative with lower costs from actually passing those lower costs on to the customer. And then fraud is rampant, costs billions of dollars, makes certain types of services non-viable, but gets folded into the price of ordinary goods and services to keep ordinary people from realizing that they're still paying it.
Have never used a chargeback and wouldn't want that ability in the vast majority of transactions. If I'm buying something on steam I know what I'm getting and they already have a robust refund capability regardless. If there was a good alternative to CC I'd happily use that.
I use cards because they're the defacto standard for online payment, but that's the only reason.
(side note: This issue becomes more obvious with the addition of the afterpays of the world, which charge iirc 7% fees to the merchant but forbid them from surcharging the difference)
Do they? Or are they "forced" into it by intentionally hidden fees?
If consumers were given an explicit option to save x% and forego chargeback protection, I think most would.
And there's a long history of people taking credit for things they were barely involved with.
It would be an awful shame if free-speech-loving Americans' anger at the action American payment processors towards an American game distributor were diverted to some unreachable, unaccountable group on the other side of the world.
I think this is sufficient to show there are plenty of non-religious reasons to refuse involvement. Framing pornography as a purely religious issue is a misdirection.
I thought the EU was working on digital cash? What is the status of that?
Haven't heard about the EU version of it being anywhere in the works and I work in places where I should hear it.
Nightmare.
Since it's EU with it's data minimization principles and privacy boner, of course they though about a checkbox to not share the address when not needed and argued about the default behavior in various committees for about half a year at least.