Scary if it works out their way and Cloudflare becomes an even bigger giant.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Sta...
I agree with you that we're moving away from banner ads to some novel way of monetizing traffic, and therefore content published by authentic human beings.
Or those could be separate options
I wonder if micropayments had been solved before taking the easy route, we would have been in a much more healthy global scenario today.
Of course Cloudflare is riding the stablecoin hype here a bit. At least they are large enough they might be pull this off
Just to note, that Cloudflare is a public company which means that they have both internal and external auditors.
They definitely need to worry about fraud, but the first two things they need to worry about are sanctions screening (don't do business with the four countries the US doesn't like) and AML (anti-money laundering).
Stablecoins are a potentially huge vector for this kind of badness, so it would be unwise for Cloudflare to try to yolo this (but they probably will, because almost all tech companies try to work with finance this way).
Like, I hope this doesn't happen but I find it hard to believe that there won't be a concerted effort to get around AML using cyrpto.
Not just countries; a changing list of organizations and individuals as well.
> Issuers would be subject to the Bank Secrecy Act, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) would be required to write tailored anti-money-laundering (AML) rules. S. 1582 would require that FinCEN facilitate "novel methods … to detect illicit activity involving digital assets." S. 1582 would require issuers to certify that they have implemented AML and sanctions compliance programs. The bill would prohibit anyone who has been convicted of certain financial crimes of being an officer or director of an issuer.
OFAC compliance is a regular thing in Internet companies. AWS and Cloudflare maintain blocklists designed to help other companies stay OFAC compliant and agree with US sanctions lists. These are all well-known.
Do you have any proof for this assertion or is it time to milk crypto cynicism for upvotes on this site again? The GENIUS Act (which regulates stablecoins) specifically calls out complying with AML and sanctions lists. So there's a clear regulatory regime.
Look, it's a fact that lots of criminals use cryptocurrency (see all of the ransomware attacks over the past decade). Secondly, crypto has 100% been used to get around capital controls (particularly in China some years back).
I assume that internal drug syndicates are using crypto (as it makes sense for their business).
Now, what do stablecoins offer here? Simply put, if you send your crypto to some stablecoin issuer, then you can redeem for fiat. There's clearly substantial ML risks here, and more particularly lots of unsophisticated (from an AML perspective) counter-parties here. More specifically, the models used for transaction monitoring and reporting are less likely to pick up on the signals associated with crypto ML/crime activity.
Like, this seems super clear to me, and I'm not making any value judgements here (personally I think that stablecoins/crypto are mostly turning into regulatory arbitrage, but that's not germane to my point here).
> The GENIUS Act (which regulates stablecoins) specifically calls out complying with AML and sanctions lists. So there's a clear regulatory regime.
You should look at the penalties for getting this wrong. Particularly in OFAC, they are no joke (personal responsibility for issues). And untested regulatory regimes tend to get altered based on what happens in the market, and this is gonna be a wild ride.
The point I'm trying to make is that there's loads of dirty money in crypto (I think that's fair given all the ransomware). Banks/financial institutions who support crypto off-ramp are gonna be hard pressed to determine how much of the crypto assets they see are legitimate vs criminal.
So, the likely outcome of lots of crypto/stablecoin providers with fiat off-ramps is that it provides a way for this dirty money to get laundered into clean fiat/assets. This is gonna be a real headache for these providers, and I really can't see how they ever do due diligence/AML/KYC on all of this money.
That being said, dirty money has always and will always exist (barring some totalitarian global state) so this isn't a new problem, just one that I think will be concerning for financial institutions and regulators.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...
As opposed to all the other giants. Clouflare is the only one with the heft to take on Google, AWS, Azure, etc.
But certainly worth keeping an eye on, especially as they branch out into things like stable coins and payment processing.
> Scary if it works out their way and Cloudflare becomes an even bigger giant.
Are you proposing that you do not share OPs sentiment, since there are larger companies?
- Cloudflare is smaller in market cap than you would think, they are not "big tech" as to how I would consider it
- have been them following for years and there is nothing atm. that would indicate of them being "evil"
Azure, AWS, Meta and probably even Alphabet