[HN Gopher] Visa moves to allow payment settlements using crypto...
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Visa moves to allow payment settlements using cryptocurrency
Author : pseudolus
Score : 225 points
Date : 2021-03-29 18:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| [deleted]
| baron816 wrote:
| What we really need is for the Fed to enable micro transactions.
| Make transferring money so easy and cheap that Visa et al can be
| disrupted. Facebook/Google would also be disrupted--people would
| be willing to pay $.03 to watch a video or read an article
| instead of handing over their data.
| dboreham wrote:
| People paid $$$ to politicians to not have that happen.
| telotortium wrote:
| > people would be willing to pay $.03 to watch a video or read
| an article
|
| Nope. Maybe for 1% of the price I'd be willing to do
| microtransactions.
| stcredzero wrote:
| This has been said before. Everyone who is invested in the
| advertisement model will then start to hate on the idea, for
| obvious reasons. In particular, media, including journalists
| who cover these ideas.
|
| However, the advertisement model truly sucks. It severely
| dilutes the interest of the actual consumer and actual fans, in
| favor of big companies who buy the advertisements.
|
| EDIT: As I mention below, this isn't theory. This debate
| happened between Penny Arcade and Scott McCloud nearly two
| decades ago.
| r00fus wrote:
| You think micropayments will somehow get rid of ads?
|
| There are a multitude of noteworthy examples where you pay
| for a product and still get ads (Cable, Hulu, unskippable DVD
| sections, etc).
|
| What will really curb the online ad industry is the ability
| for consumers to control their privacy, and make personal
| info a liability.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _You think micropayments will somehow get rid of ads?_
|
| No. However, it would theoretically give content creators
| who don't want to serve the interests of advertisers an
| alternative source of income that allows this.
|
| Basically, do what Patreon does, but with even less
| friction, and far more flexibly.
| spullara wrote:
| You should be able to get a report from publishing platforms
| on how much people paid for your cookie (per month?) just to
| better understand how much it would cost to not see ads. I've
| toyed with the idea of a "no ad" ad network that only bids on
| their own customers and replaces ads with either nothing or
| content of your choice. You end up paying a small premium on
| the amount they had to pay to remove ads.
|
| EDIT: Something like this but for consumer viewing rather
| than for the content publisher:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21319938/youtube-
| monetiza...
| gruez wrote:
| >In particular, media, including journalists who cover these
| ideas.
|
| Why would they care? They still get paid in the end.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I work in the "traditional" media--software not journalism.
| Ad sales are only celebrated for the money they bring in.
| Any optimizations around that are only there because they
| serve to increase as revenues, like any readership
| analytics.
|
| In my experience, and I can't speak for them, but it
| appears to me the journalists, at least any of the ones
| I've worked with, do not care where that money comes from.
| I think they'd prefer if it all could come directly from
| readership. I think it would serve to be more validating in
| more than one way.
|
| To that end I think proposing that journalists (as a single
| entity, no less) would decry the diminishing need for
| advertising in their industry without actually losing
| revenues is a bit of a loaded take.
| stcredzero wrote:
| I hope that can happen. I'm not sure if enough
| journalists are that far-seeing.
| RIMR wrote:
| They sometimes get more than just payment. If a publication
| promises to show an ad for a specific company, before a
| visitor can read a specific article, that company try to
| help drive visitors to that article to drive more ad views.
|
| This is why (using Twitter as an example) you sometimes see
| news articles for seemingly unrelated content show up as
| promoted Tweets straight from the journalist with
| "Sponsored by T-Mobile" at the bottom. Chances are,
| clicking through to the article will also lead to a
| T-Mobile advertisement.
| stcredzero wrote:
| Modulo some huge disruption. Most people are naturally
| reactionary, especially when it comes to fundamental
| changes in their livelihood.
|
| I'm not talking in theory. This is history. This debate
| literally already happened almost two decades ago. Scott
| McCloud and Penny Arcade!
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Actually news media would be lucky to get $.03 from a single
| pageview. Their RPM is quite low due to the lack of targeted
| audience.
| hahahahe wrote:
| I don't know why Visa/MC even exist in 2021. Literal financial
| leeches.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The Fed does not prevent banks from enabling microtransactions.
|
| It simply isn't profitable for banks to provide
| microtransaction services, especially considering that all
| microtransaction services to date have failed. (Contrast to P2P
| payment services like Venmo, which have flourished over the
| same time period.)
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Amazon attempted to do this with Amazon Flexible Payments
| Service [1]. It didn't get much adoption.
|
| [1]
| https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/08/the_amazon_flex...
| arcticbull wrote:
| Micropayments are a bad idea that feels like a good idea.
| They're bad for a fundamental human reason - each decision
| carries with it emotional and psychological burden. Make a few
| in a day and you land in decision fatigue [1]. Weighing the
| value of a purchase no matter how small over and over again
| makes the whole experience an utter chore.
| There is a paradox in that "people who lack choices seem to
| want them and often will fight for them", yet at the same time,
| "people find that making many choices can be [psychologically]
| aversive." [1]
|
| There's no technical reason why any wallet operator today, like
| PayPal can't do micropayments except _people don 't want them_.
| They think they do, but they don't.
|
| Concrete example: For most people, it's always been cheaper to
| just buy the content you want to watch from iTunes one at a
| time - and own it forever! But everyone uses Netflix instead.
| They continue to use Netflix even as it has less and less of
| what they actually wanted to watch in the first place! In the
| battle of more expensive vs more decision making, more
| expensive always wins.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue
| com2kid wrote:
| > Concrete example: It's always been cheaper to just buy the
| content you want to watch from iTunes, but everyone uses
| Netflix instead. They continue to use Netflix even as it has
| less and less of what they actually wanted to watch in the
| first place! In the battle of more expensive vs more decision
| making, more expensive always wins.
|
| No way is that true.
|
| A single season of a TV show varies from $10 to $20 on
| iTunes[1]. Movies are $10-$15 [2].
|
| For anything beyond light viewing, Netflix is a clear win.
| Watch 2 movies a month on it and you are well over break
| even!
|
| Now if you buy from iTunes, it is only pay once. But for
| people like me who almost never rewatch a movie, ownership is
| irrelevant. Streaming is a hands down winner!
|
| [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/robot-chicken-
| season-1... https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/archer-
| danger-island-s... https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-
| office-season-3/id...
|
| [2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/back-to-the-future-
| part-ii... https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-divergent-
| series-alleg...
| dwighttk wrote:
| Movies often drop to $4 or $5 (and you can almost always
| rent them for $4 and sometimes less) and complete tv series
| often go for $20-50.
|
| I don't currently have Netflix, but when I did have it
| there were rarely two movies per month that I wanted to
| watch that they had. Seemed like they mostly switched to
| niche tvlike series.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| How much TV do you watch a day? Buying a couple of seasons
| of TV a month is going to be about the same price as a
| couple of subscriptions to streaming TV. And theoretically
| it gets you exactly the TV you want, something which you
| need 5 subscriptions or so to do right now.
|
| I think consumers would be better off with the Season Pass
| model than having to subscribe to a bunch of services, but
| what really kills it is that it doesn't have all TV, or
| anywhere close. Season Pass isn't horrendously expensive if
| that's all you have, but it does get expensive on top of
| Netflix and/or cable.
|
| As for movies, you can rent them from $1 - $5, so a couple
| of movies per week can also be cheaper than a couple of
| streaming services.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > How much TV do you watch a day?
|
| Just a side comment, 'watching TV' today when TVs and
| monitors are common and cheap is different from 'watching
| TV' 20-30+ years ago, when TVs were more of a luxury good
| (I know displays still aren't free but they're much more
| accessible than they used to be). It's common for people
| to have netflix on in the background while doing things
| (e.g. studying, netflix and chill), to have netflix on a
| secondary monitor while gaming, to fall asleep to, etc.
| People probably don't 'watch' TV in the sense of sitting
| down and just staring at the screen like they used to,
| but they still 'watch' a lot of TV in the sense of having
| it on. From that perspective, it's easy to imagine
| someone watching 8+ hours of netflix a day: auto-playing
| sitcoms in the background during chores or studying,
| switching to a favorite show to watch during meals,
| binging multiple episodes or seasons of a new show on
| weekends, etc. That would rack up the cost quick using
| your pay-per-show model
| logifail wrote:
| > 'watching TV' today when TVs and monitors are common
| and cheap is different from 'watching TV' 20-30+ years
| ago, when TVs were more of a luxury good [..]
|
| Source?
|
| Today, people seem to spend a significant amount of money
| on purchasing an expensive (large) TV. They then spend
| even more money on subscription services for content to
| watch on their TV.
|
| Rewind 30+ years (when I was young): TVs were small, and
| the number of channels was too. No-one paid per month for
| access to channels. You watched what was being broadcast
| live, or you drove to Blockbuster and rented a tape. I
| don't recall that being considered "luxury".
| jacquesm wrote:
| > How much TV do you watch a day?
|
| None.
| tarboreus wrote:
| People watch A LOT of TV. Americans watch 4 hours per
| day, still ahead of the amount of time they spend on
| smartphones, approximately 3.5.
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/15224/daily-tv-
| consumption-by...
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a nice 7.5 hour workday right there.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Using my family as an example and guestimating some
| numbers...
|
| 1. One 24 minute episode of a show during dinner with the
| family. That's not strictly accurate, but it averages out
| around there. That's 30 episodes per month, at 13
| episodes per volume and $20 per volume (on itunes),
| that's ~ $46 / month.
|
| 2. One 47 minute episode of a show with my wife, each
| weeknight. That's 20 episodes per month, at $30 for 26
| episodes on iTunes, that's $23 per month.
|
| 3. Two movies per month with the family (one per two
| weekends.. I'm guessing here), at lets say $12 per movie,
| is $24 per month.
|
| 4. Some nights I watch TV alone, as does my wife. Lets
| call it one show per 1 between the two of us. So 30 shows
| per month at an average of something like 20 shows per
| season and $20 per season on iTunes, is $30 / month.
|
| So with that, we have
|
| 46 + 23 + 24 + 30 = $123 / month.
|
| Everything we watch is one of two services we pay for,
| for a total of something like $30 per month. Streaming
| wins by a LARGE margin.
|
| And that doesn't even count the mental cost of binging.
| If I binge and each episode costs me additional money, I
| have t justify it to myself. When I'm paying monthly for
| all you can watch, that isn't a problem.
| airhead969 wrote:
| There's two issues to deconflate:
|
| 1. Reducing fees associated with smaller payments - it would
| be nice to be able to buy a candy bar or give a street
| performer a tip without costing anyone an arm and a leg to
| put a transaction through.
|
| 2. More choices - too many choices are bad, unless you're
| framing a poster.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That seems like an overgeneralization. People are perfectly
| happy to buy low price things on Amazon or eBay.
|
| IMHO, transaction fatigue swamps the effect of decision
| fatigue. Where transaction = the energy required to realize a
| decision, once made. See: PayPal's valuation.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Concrete counterexample: The cloud. You can spin up and down
| servers whenever and you make micropayments for keeping the
| servers you have around.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| You can get the best of both worlds with a plug-in that
| allocates a fixed amount each month for whatever media you
| choose. Microbuy to your heart's content until the amount
| runs out, then decide if you've had enough for the month or
| top it up. The plug-in would roll your allotment over if you
| don't finish it.
| arcticbull wrote:
| IMO each time is still a purchasing decision. People are
| about as weary of deferring the making of the purchasing
| decision to an app as they are tired of making the
| decisions.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Just reduce the price until it isn't.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| 0 dollars?
| StavrosK wrote:
| You're describing coil.com and Web Payments, sounds like.
| [deleted]
| reggieband wrote:
| I think you are wrong and you are confusing your opinion with
| "absolute truth". It is a limited form of is/ought fallacy.
| Just because things are one way today doesn't mean they ought
| to be that way.
|
| I recall reading a16z blog post "Outgrowing Advertising:
| Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy" [1] and
| they mention many innovative business models coming out of
| China.
|
| For example, from the "Books" section of that blog post:
|
| > Books are also sold as bite-sized snacks. Readers pay per
| 1,000 words, for often-serialized works. Below is a
| screenshot of one of the most popular books from 2014, Yi Shi
| Qing Cheng . It has over 10,000 chapters and is still being
| updated -- now more than 46 times the length of the entire
| Harry Potter series. Because authors can publish chapters
| piecemeal, they are also able to incorporate reader feedback
| to quickly change plots or even kill off characters.
|
| > Some authors offer free books and illustrations, gain a
| loyal user base, and then collect money through tips. At the
| end of each chapter, an overlay button for tipping authors
| allows readers to tip from $0.15 and up.
|
| This kind of thing is built into WeChat and WeChat has
| significant penetration in the Chinese market. Twitch is also
| experimenting with a form of micropayments called "bits" [2]
|
| Right now in the West we don't have an equivalent of WeChat
| so we don't see the same things happening. Twitch is a very
| limited scope (live streams and mostly focused on gaming
| content). However, just because it isn't happening widely in
| the West yet doesn't mean that emerging economies aren't
| going to jump on this. And it also doesn't mean it won't make
| it's way here eventually.
|
| Our systems are preventing us from experimenting with these
| new business models. If we completely remove the friction
| that currently exists - let's see if clever entrepreneurs can
| make it work. The alternative is to fall behind the
| experimentation that is currently happening outside of our
| bubble.
|
| 1. https://a16z.com/2018/12/07/when-advertising-isnt-enough-
| mul...
|
| 2. https://www.twitch.tv/bits
| arcticbull wrote:
| Indeed, it's almost certainly my own opinion. The
| fundamental technology or platform to implement a
| micropayments system very much exists though, it's
| something PayPal could implement in a heartbeat.
| noxer wrote:
| There is no need to decide you start watching the money
| starts streaming you stop the money stops. If you only
| watched a few seconds its only fractions of a cent it doesn't
| matter. If at all it makes people less likely to watch crap
| and more likely to stop if it isn't what they hoped it to be.
|
| And BTW the standard already exists
| https://interledger.org/rfcs/0029-stream/
| mistersys wrote:
| This seems like a reasonable argument, however I must say
| that buying content from iTunes is usually not cheaper than
| an Netflix subscription, unless you don't actually watch TV
| regularly.
|
| With the highest level premium subscription of $17.99 a month
| you could only watch 4.5 movies a month, or 5 - 6 episodes of
| a TV show. I don't watch TV regularly, but if an average user
| watchtime of greater than 2 hours is accurate, as I'm getting
| from a quick search, that's more like 90 episodes a month.
| tshaddox wrote:
| But how many people actually watch 4.5 new (to them) movies
| or 5-6 new episodes a month? I suspect that's pretty rare.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| you think that's high? I usually binge at least 2-3
| seasons of a new-to-me show a month on netflix, prime,
| hulu, if I'm really busy -- my wife makes up for the time
| I miss watching new-to-her shows, or the kids watch new-
| to-them shows or disney launches a new movie... I mean..
| Wandavision, Falcon+Winter Soldier, Mandalorian, New
| Mighty Ducks are top notch and that's just disney...
|
| Netflix has the Witcher which I still need to watch, just
| finished two different ones on figure skating Zero Chill
| (Hockey+Figure skating) and Spinning out. Both really
| good shows that weren't on my radar. Recently finished
| Queen's gambit too--also great and not on radar...
|
| Lots of back-burner shows too (waiting for the next
| season).
|
| 7-11pm is usually dinner, tv with family put kids to bed,
| watch 1-2 shows with wife, then go to bed. Sometimes I
| watch old movies that are new to me just cause I heard
| they're good but haven't seen them yet. Grew up in 80's
| and just recently finished Fast Times at Ridgemont High
| for example.
|
| 120 hours of screen time's easy... weekends are probably
| a lot more.. maybe 8 hour sessions, definitely enough to
| watch 1 whole new-to-us series... esp. with lockdowns and
| covid.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > you think that's high?
|
| I don't really know. I'm sure plenty of people consume a
| lot of new stuff, but I just had a gut reaction to seeing
| "4 movies or 6 new TV episodes a month" mentioned as a
| _low_ bar. To me that 's a very busy month! But of course
| I have no data and no reason to believe myself and my
| family/friends/peers to be representative.
|
| Families with children are an obvious case that probably
| pushes up the average. But I also get the impression,
| based anecdotally on myself and my friends and peers,
| that there's also plenty of people who routinely find
| themselves considering whether they should even keep
| paying. There's definitely a common sentiment like "it
| seems like I browse around on Netflix for several minutes
| and see the same couple of dozen things that I've been
| seeing for months, I swear I remember hearing about some
| recent must-watch movies and shows, but I sure can't find
| them right now, and I just end up watching YouTube
| videos." I personally am definitely way over-subscribed
| to streaming services, and my YouTube Premium
| subscription is delivering _tons_ more value than all the
| others combined.
| dalbasal wrote:
| While I take your point that "micropayments" are that thing
| people are have been consistently wrong about for 25 years
| now... I'd be careful leaning to heavily on psychology in
| making prediction.
|
| There definitely needs to be a breakthrough UI, cultural
| shift or something... but people have the ability to
| background stuff given the right circumstances.
| Aunche wrote:
| That's a good point. I know a lot of people who buy an
| unlimited Metrocard even when they don't get their money's
| worth out of it just so they don't need to think about paying
| for their subway fare.
| majewsky wrote:
| I'm one of these people. I have a BahnCard 100, an
| unlimited-access pass from the German national railway
| company that works on about 95% of all public transit
| across the country (all railway except for some lines that
| are only tourist attractions; and all
| subways/trams/busses/ferries in 120 large cities).
|
| It costs me around 170EUR per month, which is way more than
| I would spend if I bought just a subscription for my city's
| public transit plus train tickets as needed. But even if I
| pay a few bucks more, it's totally worth it because it
| changes how I approach travel. I can wake up in the morning
| and decide on a whim to do a day trip to a city 200
| kilometers away for no extra charge. I can decide on
| Thursday evening to take Friday off and visit my parents
| (who live 500 km away from me) for the weekend.
|
| (Side-note: Obviously a lot of this is not possible right
| now because of the plague, but at some point, all parties
| involved will be vaccinated and I can resume my travels.)
| jetpackjoe wrote:
| The real reason to do a monthly unlimited is to not have to
| reload, especially when you are pressed for time.
|
| Going forward, in NYC, I'm just going to use OMNY, since
| it's not in all stations.
| boringg wrote:
| It's the same idea round buying a season ski pass vs pay
| each day. Or owning a car vs renting it for each need. It's
| not that its more cost effective it's the idea of having to
| do a mental hurdle every time you want to do something. The
| sunk cost is an enabler to go do something vs having to pay
| each time and _get value_ out of that trip.
|
| I've had this debate many times with friends. Am I hyper
| efficient with my spend? No, am I happy about my decision
| making process and/or less decisions to make? Absolutely.
|
| If I see micro transactions for reading articles SMH.
| Conceptually I see where you are going but it would have
| really bad ripple effects IMHO.
| boringg wrote:
| Also supporting a system you appreciate has an added value,
| less hassle etc.
| godelski wrote:
| It should also be noted that placing prices on things changes
| peoples decision processes dramatically. There's the famous
| experiment where a school tried to combat parents picking up
| children late (which caused teachers to stay late) by
| charging them a small fee. That caused the number of late
| parents to increase because it shifted the issue from guilt
| to capital. Zach Star used this example in a recent video
| along with others[0]. These types of decisions are extremely
| complicated because we're changing the entire incentive
| structure in a non-obvious way. This often creates
| "contradictory" results because we have bad priors in our
| model. What is "obvious" usually isn't (which is often why
| problems haven't been solved).
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGuwXSe6tAw
| amelius wrote:
| > They're bad for a fundamental human reason - each decision
| carries with it emotional and psychological burden. Make a
| few in a day and you land in decision fatigue
|
| So, introduce a "content-plan" which is just like the data-
| plan of your smartphone. I.e. a quota on the total payments
| per month for content.
|
| By the way each advertisement also carries with it an
| emotional and psychological burden.
| risho wrote:
| I tried switching ting as my mobile service provider a few
| years ago when it was something along the lines of 10 dollars
| per gigabyte and every time I wanted to watch a youtube video
| I had to ask myself "is it really worth 4 dollars to watch
| this?" "would I really spend 2 dollars to download this
| podcast when I could just download it for free at home?" . I
| eventually wound up switching to another provider that
| actually wound up costing me more money per month but a flat
| cost and a flat allotment of bandwidth. Even though the flat
| rate service was more expensive it was still preferable to me
| because I didn't need to spend mental energy justifying the
| cost of every action I made.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > buy the content you want to watch from iTunes one at a time
| - and own it forever!
|
| Can I actually download it? Or is it "as long as it is not
| removed from iTunes and you can log in"?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Your concrete example substantially detracts from your
| argument because it is just not true.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I'll accept that I was projecting my own calculus.
| max_ wrote:
| The mere fact that their people demanding these things means
| that they are wanted.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Micro transactions would open up new business opportunities.
| And I don't find it very taxing when for example going to the
| grocery store where you make a lot of small purchase
| decisions. One concern though is book-keeping and tax rules
| if you run an international small business - but I guess that
| can be automated too ... So that the state automatically get
| their VAT from every transaction and in turn provides a
| payment system completely free from transfer fees.
| MithrilTuxedo wrote:
| I can see some utility though. I'd love to be paid a penny at
| a time, and pay for things a penny at a time. I'd love for my
| income and regular bills to all be made into rates
| (pennies/second) rather than lump sums on some weekly or
| monthly schedule.
|
| Heck, make them functions, so there's no ongoing
| communication that needs to happen to represent value
| transferred between parties, until the function changes or
| the sending account runs out of money.
|
| There's so much I can imagine happening if value transfers
| could defined as functions instead of individual
| transactions.
| teawrecks wrote:
| The idea would be that people transact without consciously
| thinking about it.
|
| Ex. I pay per byte stored in my cloud backup, but I don't
| fret about which individual bytes I'm going to store, it's
| all captured in a high level strategy of which directories I
| want backed up. If I start spending more than I want, the
| solution isn't to individually comb through what files I want
| to back up, it's to tweak my high level strategy.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| That's a valid point, but you don't seem to be comparing it
| to the "fundamental human reasons" that dominant Internet
| media oligopolies supported almost entirely by advertising
| might impose emotional and psychological burden.
|
| I believe the stuff about decision fatigue, I just don't
| think you can immediately conclude "therefore paying for
| online content is a non-starter because of fundamental human
| psychology." I mean, people do still decide to buy things,
| including online content!
| TheBlight wrote:
| Never mind the question of why you think the Fed would be well-
| suited to provide micro-transactions, they've been possible via
| centralized systems for years. The issue seems to be there is
| no market for them. See this PDF for a theory:
| https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-...
| arcticbull wrote:
| Finally, something Nick and I actually agree on lol. That's a
| great write-up, too - thanks for sharing.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| This is possible literally now, but barely anyone actually
| wants it.
|
| - Full time content creators just want discoverability and
| traffic to their content, they have a thousand ways to monetize
| with ad revenue just being icing for many
|
| - Content consumers just want to watch their content, ads
| aren't annoying enough for most people to pay $11.99 to unlock
| _all of YouTube ad-free_ (~13 videos / day @ $0.03 / video)
|
| None of the current draw to the currently dominant platforms
| would be moved an inch by some other platform existing with
| microtransactions.
| grumple wrote:
| > - Content consumers just want to watch their content, ads
| aren't annoying enough for most people to pay $11.99 to
| unlock all of YouTube ad-free (~13 videos / day @ $0.03 /
| video)
|
| Bigger problem for youtube, imo, is that ad-block works on
| desktop, and also they don't have any content most of us
| couldn't live without.
| tyrust wrote:
| Those problems might not be as big as you think.
|
| >More than 70% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile
| devices.
|
| >Over 2 billion logged-in users visit YouTube each month,
| and every day people watch over a billion hours of video
| and generate billions of views.
|
| from https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/about/press/
| silicon2401 wrote:
| obligatory plug for firefox for android, which allows
| adblock on mobile. it's not as slick as the youtube app,
| but it's handy if you don't want to deal with the ads
| lm28469 wrote:
| > instead of handing over their data.
|
| If every article and every video you watch has to be paid for
| they'll have as much if not more data about you...
| ipaddr wrote:
| This is it. Any payment will connect a person more directly
| than the random targeting we get now connecting using sites
| visited, words you share with siri and what you put in your
| facebook profile.
| lifty wrote:
| I recently started playing with the Breez wallet
| (https://breez.technology) and they introduced a podcast player
| directly in the app, and small payments are sent to the author
| every few seconds, while you listen to the podcast episode.
| It's pretty nifty and I like it. If there would be widespread
| support in browsers for this kind of technology, I could see it
| get to mainstream adoption.
| hossbeast wrote:
| Interesting, why is this app under
| /apps/testing/com.breez.client ? I also note that, searching
| for "breez" on the google play store yields no results. Is
| the app not really launched yet?
| lifty wrote:
| You're right, I installed it using TestFlight on my iPhone.
| I guess they don't have a proper release yet.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I really don't want a centralized organization to have
| visibility of all transactions along with the power to cut them
| off.
| sschueller wrote:
| Visa is desperately trying to figure out where they can fit in
| before they are made irrelevant. Why pay visa fees when you can
| handle the transaction directly? It won't be bitcoin but another
| crypto surely will be fast and cheap and usable as easily as a
| debit card.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Visa is desperately trying to figure out where they can fit
| in before they are made irrelevant_
|
| Visa is agnostic to the settlement rails it runs on. Having one
| more option increases its leverage over its members.
|
| > _Why pay visa fees when you can handle the transaction
| directly?_
|
| You're only thinking of cash-like transactions. Add a lender to
| the mix, where the merchant can seamlessly accept cash the
| customer doesn't have, and Visa's value add becomes clearer.
| fny wrote:
| Don't forget Visa is in the data mining business too.
| [deleted]
| samfisher83 wrote:
| I think people like have payment protection. Visa was basically
| created by the banks and ultimately the credit system goes back
| to the banks. Let's say you buy something through eBay and pay
| through the Bitcoin what protection do you have?
| Spivak wrote:
| Absolutely none just like cash. This is an anti-feature to
| most but the raison d'etre for people who like BTC.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _the raison d 'etre for people who like BTC_
|
| Until they lose their money in a scam.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I buy mostly with a card, but even cash has protection.
|
| If my cash money gets stolen, i can call the police. If
| someone scams me, the chance is pretty big the rl scammer
| is going to be found and it's not unknown to get a refund
| of banks off it happens digitally.
|
| Crypto currency, as far as I'm aware, is really a magic
| trick. It's gone and no one can help you.
|
| ( Just in case someone mentions bitcoin has transparent
| transactions. Please lookup bitcoin mixing services first)
| xxel wrote:
| True.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The Fed recently released an update that they're ahead of
| schedule with their Instant Payments implementation (2023 GA vs
| 2024). The reaper is coming for bloated payments businesses.
|
| Why use crypto, Visa/MC, or any traditional payment incumbent
| when you can move funds instantly for about a nickel per
| transaction? If a lending component is required, that can be
| done independent of payment rails.
|
| https://www.americanbanker.com/news/fed-more-bullish-on-laun...
| kipchak wrote:
| I have to admit I have a very poor understanding of how
| FedNow and FedCoin are expected to operate or if they are
| expected to be tied together, with this article being one of
| the few I've found despite it's negative overall tone.
|
| https://cei.org/sites/default/files/John_Berlau_-
| _Government...
| anm89 wrote:
| Because you see risk in holding your assets in that
| ecosystem.
| legutierr wrote:
| There are other benefits to crypto beyond simply facilitating
| payments. For instance, smart contracts allow for
| instantaneous atomic settlement between parties given
| arbitrary conditions, via the application of transparent and
| verifiable logic with (near) zero risk in the execution.
|
| The fed's new payment system will not (cannot) offer that
| capability.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Is that internal to US only?
| [deleted]
| leereeves wrote:
| What are the fraud protection and chargeback policies on
| that? Those might be reasons to continue using credit cards.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| True, but then businesses will pass the processing fee to
| the customer if they want chargeback protection. They could
| even incentivize and say: "pay directly and save 3%". For
| small purchases, are you really doing a chargeback anyways?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Debit card fees are only pennies right now, basically
| free compared to credit cards, yet very few businesses
| offer a discount for debit cards.
|
| The reason is that people are willing to spend more using
| credit cards such that it more than offsets credit card
| processing fees. And I assume businesses as big and low
| margin as Target and Walmart and grocery stores have the
| expertise to figure that out.
| krustyburger wrote:
| There are rules in place that forbid charging the
| customer additional fees if a merchant chooses to accept
| the major credit cards. Small merchants sometimes get
| away with breaking these rules, but major firms like the
| ones you mentioned never would.
|
| So the choice becomes whether to accept the major credit
| cards at all or whether to only accept cash and debit
| cards and thus alienate many of their customers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > There are rules in place that forbid charging the
| customer additional fees if a merchant chooses to accept
| the major credit cards.
|
| This might have been true more than 10 years ago. I
| believe "Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer
| Protection Act of 2010" invalidated card network
| agreements that prevented differential pricing between
| credit card and other payment forms, and the below ruling
| by Supreme Court stated the merchant can advertise the
| price difference however they want.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
| center/guidance/new...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressions_Hair_Design_v._
| Sch...
|
| > Discounts to Customers A PCN cannot stop you from
| offering your customers a discount or another incentive
| for using a certain method of payment, as long as you
| offer it to all your customers and disclose the offer
| clearly and conspicuously. For example, you can offer
| your customers a discount or a coupon if they pay with
| cash or a debit card rather than a credit card.
| krustyburger wrote:
| Interesting. I know Target in particular offers a 5%
| discount to users of their in-house debit card.
|
| Even if it's within the rules, presenting customers with
| surcharges for using credit cards (as opposed to
| discounts for other payment methods) would probably still
| alienate many of them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I was unaware that Target offered a Debit Redcard that
| gave people 5% off. It seems that this is effectively a
| 5% discount for using any debit card, since the Target
| Debit Redcard is simply linking your existing bank
| account and doing an ACH transfer from your regular
| checking account.
|
| The only caveat seems to be a $40 fee Target charges if
| you try to buy something with insufficient funds in your
| bank account, whereas purchasing directly with a bank's
| debit card, you can tell the bank to simply deny any
| transactions for more than your available balance and it
| wouldn't cost you anything.
|
| But if you always have sufficient cash in your bank
| account, the Target Redcard debit card with a 5% discount
| seems like a no brainer if you're not getting at least 5%
| cash back with a credit card.
|
| Perhaps Target does not simply offer this to all debit
| card users that don't sign up for the Debit Redcard per
| an agreement with card networks where Target gets a
| concession on their processing fees in exchange for not
| advertising a 5% discount to all debit cards uses?
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Some gas stations show a cash price right on the price
| board. Doesn't seem to alienate customers since it's just
| a convenience fee in the end.
| ur-whale wrote:
| The key question for FedCoin will be how the supply is
| managed.
|
| If it's only an electronic USD, ok, useful but added value is
| rather little.
|
| If, on the other hand there is a pre-defined supply
| curve/schedule that is out of the hands of the people who
| open the spigot wide at every hint of an economic downturn,
| it would _really_ be a competitor to BTC.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I assume the Fed is not interested in relinquishing their
| control of the monetary supply simply because how the rows
| in the database are stored evolves.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Thereby making the whole Fedcoin proposition a rather
| boring affair: - already exists in
| other forms - brings little added value (a
| little less friction) - brings huge downside
| (USistan now can see every cent moving and potentially
| freeze it).
| rank0 wrote:
| I disagree. I think digital USD would be far more valuable
| than any blockchain tech I've seen so far.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Why on earth would you want the supply not to be actively
| managed to help temper a downturn? That's a _feature_.
| People don 't like losing the entire value of their
| investments due to transient mass panic.
| xur17 wrote:
| Does it scare anyone else to give the US government direct
| access to every single transaction we all make (plus the
| ability to reject / approve them at will)?
| pkulak wrote:
| Eh, they already own the currency itself.
| rank0 wrote:
| If the system were truly distributed and the source code
| available then the government would not have direct access
| to every tx. They can already subpoena financial
| institutions anyways.
| wsinks wrote:
| Of course. The Constitution of the US provides a right for
| privacy for all natural born or naturalized Citizens.
|
| I do not know enough about the crypto space to feel
| confident that this will end well, but we do need a faster,
| more distributed financial system, and part of keeping the
| world order will to be to help establish a truly global
| financial system, with all countries at the table so that
| that the natural interests of people that have heritage to
| a specific location can balance against each other.
| devmunchies wrote:
| https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec10.html
|
| > Article 1, Section 10 - _No State shall enter into any
| Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of
| Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit;
| make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in
| Payment of Debts;_
|
| regarding the financial system, IMO the GOVT stopped
| caring about the constitution when they got rid of the
| gold standard.
| mywittyname wrote:
| These are limitations on _State_ governments. Meaning
| only the Federal Government can do any of those things.
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C
| 1-2...
| mamon wrote:
| You do realize that Bitcoin transaction fees are like 100x
| higher that those charged by Visa?
|
| Also, most cryptocurrencies have scalability problems, it won't
| be easy for them to replace traditional payments, because they
| cannot handle billions of transactions per day.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| According to the article, Visa is looking at using "the
| cryptocurrency USD Coin" (whatever that is)
|
| So this has nothing to do with bitcoin (except inasmuch as
| any news article with the word "crypto" in the headline will
| trigger a bunch of FOMO buyers and drive up the price)
| exdsq wrote:
| It's a stable coin (it's pegged to the dollar) which runs
| on Ethereum
|
| https://www.circle.com/en/usdc
| doomroot wrote:
| Not on lightning network
| suikadayo wrote:
| There's hardly been growth in the value of transactions on
| Lightning, compared to the 20x growth on various L2
| solutions on Ethereum like Loopring, zkSync, etc.
| Lightning's UX is poor as well, where both parties need to
| be online at the same time.
| Spivak wrote:
| Lightning is a competitor to Visa...
| Spivak wrote:
| And all the solutions to this are to create a supplementary
| payment processing network that uses Bitcoin for
| settlement... ya know like Visa.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Monero is > 1600 transactions per second and it's set to
| scale with CPU power and network bandwidth along with further
| improvements to the underlying implementation.
|
| Proof of Stake is much greater still. Cardano and Polkadot
| for example.
| latchkey wrote:
| I thought CPU power was great until someone pointed out to
| me that this just encourages botnets.
| reedjosh wrote:
| While CPU power theft via malware is a real issue, it in
| no way prevents Monero from working well.
|
| It actually just adds more nodes to the network. And of
| the many forms of botnet malware, it seems one of the
| less harmful.
| cdiddy2 wrote:
| zk-rollups are going to help a lot in that regard. maybe not
| billions of transactions per day but at least an order of
| magnitude above what is currently possible, all with the same
| security as the base layer ethereum
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Why would ANYONE do this? With the volatility of cryptocurrency,
| it could easily end up costing 2-3x.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| Stablecoins deal with that pretty well, which might be what
| they're using here.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| They are using USDC stablecoin for settling it. That is fixed
| to the value of 1 USD.
|
| There are a lot of things happening in the space. SOOO many
| things that it's practically impossible to keep up.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| Funny that the article talks about Bitcoin jumping on the news.
| While the chain on which this settlement takes place is Ethereum.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| As much as I like Ethereum, it is not as "sticky" of a brand
| name as Bitcoin is.
|
| A lot of us that are deep into this space already see all the
| nuances, but there's a fat tail of people out there who are
| only just warming up to the idea that Bitcoin is not a scam.
| They're not quite ready to make the jump to Ethereum and smart
| contracts. Admittedly, most of these folks are the older
| generation that are not "digitally native" (i.e. millennials
| and younger).
|
| "Bitcoin" conjures a physical, visual image. That golden coin
| image with the "B" logo. Ethereum has chosen, for better or
| worse, a more ethereal representation for itself that I think
| is tougher for people to grasp.
|
| Remember when the internet was such a new concept that no one
| knew how to describe it? What did they call it? An information
| superhighway. Bitcoin achieves this in its brand name. At any
| rate, that's my theory for why it sticks so much better than
| Ethereum, and it's harder for people to remember ETH the first
| time they hear it than Bitcoin.
| brightball wrote:
| You're not wrong, but it's only a matter of time until it's
| use is widespread enough to become common.
| wsinks wrote:
| If you want to help it stick, just abbreviate it as "ETH"
| and pronounce it "eeth". Ethereum can be a challenging word
| for non-native speakers, and shortening your words will
| help you save time when you talk about it. Bitcoin is a
| better name because it combines a new concept with an old
| concept. "Bit" + "Coin".
|
| Or maybe the new answer is to call ETH "Eeth-coin". What do
| you think?
| devmunchies wrote:
| YEah i like eeth. that B that bitcoin uses really does
| have a good parallel to fiat currencies. needs a symbol
| too. an E with a line like $1,800USD per E1
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Ks is the symbol most folks use for ETH. Some use:
| brightball wrote:
| I personally would go with ETH and Ethereum because
| everything else is some flavor of the week "coin". Adding
| coin to anything but Bitcoin comes off as just another
| money printing scheme.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I like the convention of calling the currency "Ether"
| (pronounced ee-ther).
| mulmen wrote:
| As an older millennial it is alarming to me that the
| generation that invented and built the internet (boomers) are
| dismissed as not understanding it.
|
| > Remember when the internet was such a new concept that no
| one knew how to describe it? What did they call it? An
| information superhighway.
|
| This is exactly the thought I have had recently. In my humble
| opinion in 20 years we may consider a phrase like "crypto" to
| be antiquated. This time is exciting because we _don't_ know
| what happens next.
|
| Or said another way, blockchain is to Millennials what the
| internet was to Boomers.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Haha, certainly there were some brilliant boomers that
| built the internet, but the vast majority of boomers missed
| on the biggest applications of the internet. I used to sell
| cell phones to boomers back in the early 00's. It was
| difficult to sell them on more than an emergency plan and
| then to get them to make the leap further that they needed
| a wireless internet plan? They thought it was a toy that
| they didn't need. Now, of course, they all have iPhones,
| but in the early days it was a tough sell. I would say my
| generation never even questioned the value of having a cell
| phone or an internet connection or texting.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm a late boomer, and I bought my first cell phone in
| 2000. The thing that finally pulled me in was that the
| price came down. Way down. I was able to get basic
| cellphone service for 7 bucks a month. The younger crowd
| do a lot more on their phones, granted, but they're also
| comfortable paying more. A lot more.
|
| But still, germane to the parent post, at my workplace
| almost everybody has heard of things like the blockchain,
| machine learning, and so forth. And people talk at lunch
| about the wonders of the blockchain, and the wonders of
| machine learning, as if those things are magic. The
| colleagues who dug into how those things actually work,
| beyond superficial explanations in blogs, are all older
| than 55. We are also the ones who deeply understand how
| our own products work. Maybe this is good or bad. Needing
| to understand how something works in order to believe it
| may be a mental block in some situations.
|
| At home, I'm still the only person who can diagnose IT
| problems, the only fluent programmer, and can fix a
| toilet. The young generation is more comfortable as
| _users_ of technology, but haven 't experienced having to
| dig deep into the innards of something to make it work.
| This is something that can't be forced. There has to be
| an interest.
|
| Naturally these are generalizations, and not everybody in
| my generation was a techie, but I don't know if a larger
| percentage are techies today.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Yeah, I agree with this, because if you were an early
| user of tech in the 80s and even 90s to some extent, you
| had to be somewhat savvy. In the 90s, being a user of
| tech implied being a "nerd". There was still some level
| of stigma with spending much of your time engrossed in
| tech. I found it common for people to even brag about
| their ignorance about technology. It was common in
| popular culture, like movies and shows, even.
|
| But surely the folks that learned tech before it was as
| user friendly as it is today have an advantage over even
| younger people who aren't curious enough to learn.
| analog31 wrote:
| It might be OK. Hopefully the kids are still curious, but
| maybe about different things. I'm happy to keep their
| infrastructure running if they're willing to do great
| things with it.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ok but was that unreasonable at the time?
|
| My dad is a boomer and eagerly adopted technology into
| his business at that time. I can think of many examples
| of this. How many boomer parents of millennials provided
| us with computers and Internet access?
|
| Maybe I'm just sensitive to the ageism but I don't buy in
| to these generational stereotypes.
| leetcrew wrote:
| there are always exceptions. my parents aren't stupid.
| they can do all the basic things with a computer that are
| necessary to do a non-technical job these days. but they
| really haven't internalized a lot of stuff that's second
| nature to most younger people. just this weekend I helped
| my mom troubleshoot an issue with severely degraded zoom
| calls. I ran a speed test and determined they were barely
| getting 5% of the plan speed. I ran another test and
| discovered the connection had >20% packet loss. the
| solution was to turn the modem off and turn it back on. I
| asked my mom how long this had been going on. she and my
| dad had been living with severe packet loss for weeks and
| just assumed there was nothing they could do about it.
|
| btw, my work has nothing to do with networking. this is
| just my workflow for diagnosing connection problems for
| counterstrike.
| mulmen wrote:
| I don't see how this has anything to do with age. I know
| boomers who can do this kind of troubleshooting and
| millennials that can't.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's not an insult. But there is fundamentally different
| worldviews that form based on the time you were brought
| up in, and these worldviews persist as "memes" across the
| population. Of course there were savvy boomers that
| understood some or most of the implications of the
| internet, and will readily purchase the latest game
| console and are interacting with DeFi already...but my
| experience as a former computer technician and cell phone
| salesperson is that broadly speaking, that generation
| learns and experiments with technology at a slower rate.
|
| For boomers, network television and radio were the
| primary forms of entertainment in their formulative
| years. Because PCs either didn't exist or were so
| expensive and hard to use, very few boomers grew up with
| this stuff. It's like being a native speaker of a
| language. You master the language in a way that is very
| difficult for non-native speakers to achieve. That's
| nothing on "non-native" speakers of a language, but it's
| just that your earliest years shape how you think and use
| these tools and that's hard to overcome.
|
| @mulmen - can't reply to your thread below, but
| understand that these generational differences are
| broadly recognized and apparent in consumer behavior and
| well-documented. I'm not making up the generation gap
| with regards to digital technology. The fact that people
| close to you happened to be savvy with tech (were they
| mining BTC in 2011? were they crowdfunding Oculus in
| 2012? were they on Instagram in 2010? did they do a
| startup during the mobile boom?) doesn't discount broad
| demographic trends.
|
| Like the example I used above, the existence of non-
| native speakers that speak perfect English does not
| discount that fact that vast majority of people that
| learn a language past childhood struggle to develop that
| mastery. PCs did not reach mainstream adoption until the
| 90s. For boomers, they were already in their late 30s to
| 50s by the time this happened. You can even see this
| example in the cryptocurrency space. How many bloggers,
| podcasters, developers, etc in the blockchain space are
| boomers? Relatively few compared to their representation
| of the world population. This space has been largely
| driven by younger generations. That's a fair statement.
| mulmen wrote:
| Honestly it sounds like your worldview is the one skewed
| by experience. Having worked retail sales and tech
| support I don't think there's such a difference in the
| generations. I have millennial friends who are worse at
| troubleshooting tech problems than my parents. Some
| people "get it" and some don't. I don't think the year
| you were born has much to do with it.
|
| My entire family eagerly and reasonably adopted
| technology. The first computer I owned was an old model
| given to me by one of my dad's coworkers when he
| upgraded. He demanded I use it to learn something. He
| completely understood the benefit.
|
| All of our family friends adopted technology in their own
| ways. All my classmates had access to technology on par
| with my own. It was widespread. Millennials were not in a
| financial position to bankroll the internet revolution.
| Boomers did that just because they were the right age at
| the right time.
| pbronez wrote:
| I think the trick is that the internet revolution started
| from a very small group of people, at least relative to the
| whole population. It takes a very long time for things to
| go mainstream. Adoption time seems to be getting shorter
| with each new wave of tech, but these big conceptual jumps
| are still hard.
| mulmen wrote:
| Yes it takes time to go mainstream but I disagree that it
| happens along generational lines.
| woah wrote:
| Bitcoin has gotten the biggest free ride ever from Ethereum.
| 2 bull cycles now have been driven by increasing usage on
| Ethereum (icos in 2017, and now DeFi and NFTs), while Bitcoin
| absorbs most of the dumb money who hears about "blockchain,
| the technology behind Bitcoin" in the news.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| Bitcoin is the reason we have Ethereum in the first place,
| so I'm not sure if your statement is fair. ICOs were a
| pump-and-dump fad. DeFi is proving to be useful and there
| are already DeFi projects coming up on Bitcoin (rsk,
| sovryn) and the jury is still out on NFTs.
| suikadayo wrote:
| That's kinda what we heard about Lightning and payments,
| but we can currently see that there's more BTC on
| Ethereum, than there is BTC on Lightning according to
| http://btconethereum.com.
|
| I doubt there'll be any significant value locked in
| RSK/Sovyrn, when most of the liquidity is on Ethereum.
| Plus, it'll take time for BTC developers to learn
| Solidity, and most of the DeFi network effect will be on
| Ethereum and other EVM compatible chains.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| I agree with you on the network effects of eth having
| most developer mindshare, but one thing to keep in mind
| about lightning is that a lot of end-user channels are
| private, so if you're just counting the number of
| channels or liquidity locked up on lightning as growth,
| you won't see the full-picture.
| randomopining wrote:
| Check out STX - Stacks on bitcoin as well
| Geee wrote:
| Icos, DeFi, and NFT are just new ways to gamble. Bitcoin
| competes with gold as the best store of value. Most people
| aren't interested in gambling, but storing their wealth.
| nyxtom wrote:
| Ethereum gas prices are so enormously high that doing any
| transaction at all on it seems pretty cost prohibitive at the
| moment IMHO
| suikadayo wrote:
| It's actually less than Bitcoin's when doing a simple
| transfer. It's only bad when you're interacting with smart
| contracts. Layer 2 solutions like Loopring and zkSync also
| exist, with Optimism in July.
| kerng wrote:
| For settlements it's fine, like with Bitcoin lightning
| network. Since this uses crypto.com only now I'd imagine
| transactions are in CRO for now, then settled via Ethereum
| over time.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I mean, it's roughly $20-$40 to send an ERC20 token, which
| yes, is high for retailers and has to get fixed (with
| zkRollups, see: https://zksync.io/, it is fractions of a
| penny per trade)...but VISA and Crypto.com are going to be
| settling millions of dollars, and that fee does not waiver
| based on the transaction amount. So, it's not an issue for
| the aforementioned parties.
| arcticbull wrote:
| At that point why wouldn't they just wire the money. This
| seems like Visa trying to act hip.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| You need to interact with some of these Decentralized
| Financial applications to get an idea of the utility of
| stable coins like USDC and DAI vs an ordinary dollar.
| They're completely programmable. You can lock them into
| smart contracts that are completely auditable, open
| source, and verifiable on chain. You can earn yield
| lending out your USDC on protocols like Compound
| (https://compound.finance/) or Aave (https://aave.com/).
| You can provide liquidity for other crypto pairs such as
| ETH-USDC, or WBTC-USDC on Uniswap (https://uniswap.org/)
| or SushiSwap (https://sushi.com/). You can join a
| lossless lottery on PoolTogether
| (https://pooltogether.com/). You can remit payments in
| USDC worldwide, instantly, with no intermediaries by
| conducting a transaction on the ETH blockchain. There's
| high, high demand for crypto dollars, both within the
| crypto ecosystem as well as international folks who are
| unbanked and don't have access to USD. But besides this,
| after using DeFi, I can't stand the archaic nature of our
| existing financial system. It really is going to go the
| way of Blockbuster this decade. This is a smart move by
| Visa to stay ahead of the trends, to get involved, to
| earn fees, to stay relevant in this new, developing
| world.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Bitcoin will likely stay the dominate singular cryptocurrency
| for a long while, but Etherum has already surpassed it in terms
| of network effect, and will likely have more value held on it's
| blockchain than bitcoin in a matter of years.
|
| Bitcoin has shown it is uninterested in being anything but
| digital gold.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Etherium has already surpassed it in terms of network
| effect, and will likely have more value held on it 's
| blockchain than bitcoin in a matter of years._
|
| Etherium is more oriented towards transactions than Bitcoin.
|
| In the longer term, the value of Blockchain will be in
| facilitating transactions. In this, it's 100% analogous to
| the Internet. The current crop of blockchain is dot.com,
| where we're still figuring things out. People will look back
| on it and think it quaint for analogous reasons. I think
| Harry Dent has a section in a book about this idea.
|
| An even bigger explosion of value will be created with the
| next wave analogous to "Web 2.0." No more multi-day dead tree
| transactions for settling checks, equities, real estate
| transactions, etc...
| arcticbull wrote:
| > No more multi-day dead tree transactions for settling
| checks, equities, real estate transactions, etc...
|
| Those things don't really exist right now, though.
|
| The US is moving from ACH to RTP for instant settlements,
| so the multi-day thing is gone.
|
| Checks aren't processed in paper terms, they're scanned and
| converted to ACH transactions - and soon RTP.
|
| Equities are instant and electronic.
|
| Real estate transactions are legal transactions, and for
| the once every 5 years you need to get a title company to
| record the deed is that really a big deal? The real burden
| isn't the title recording.
|
| There's absolutely no reason any of these things have to be
| achieved with a blockchain. There's absolutely no reason to
| think any of these things would even be _better_ achieved
| with a blockchain. It 's not analogous to the internet
| because the internet was fundamentally more efficient than
| what came before it, not less.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Equities are instant and electronic._
|
| You can agree on a transaction instantly on a web page.
| But the actual confirmed trade comes the day after.
|
| _Real estate transactions are legal transactions, and
| for the once every 5 years you need to get a title
| company to record the deed is that really a big deal?_
|
| My wife works in banking, and yes, the cumbersome and
| primitive nature of this stuff introduces delays and
| opportunities for miscommunication that make it kinda a
| big deal.
|
| _There 's absolutely no reason any of these things have
| to be achieved with a blockchain. There's absolutely no
| reason to think any of these things would even be better
| achieved with a blockchain. It's not analogous to the
| internet because the internet was fundamentally more
| efficient than what came before it, not less._
|
| Dude, you clearly don't have any clue about how primitive
| lots of transactions still are. I'm glad that progress
| has been made in checking, but it seems like you only
| know about that, and have no clue what happens with title
| companies, and what banks have to go through to deal with
| them.
|
| Blockchain could clearly be better for that.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > You can agree on a transaction instantly on a web page.
| But the actual confirmed trade comes the day after.
|
| Does that matter? That's why we have loans.
|
| > My wife works in banking, and yes, the cumbersome and
| primitive nature of this stuff introduces delays and
| opportunities for miscommunication that make it kinda a
| big deal.
|
| Lucky thanks to trust and centralization it can be
| resolved instead of lost forever.
|
| > Blockchain could clearly be better for that.
|
| Lots of non-blockchain things could clearly be better.
| Since centralization and trust represents a massive
| optimization, a non-blockchain solution by definition can
| be more efficient.
| 300bps wrote:
| _Etherium is more oriented towards transactions than
| Bitcoin._
|
| Maybe Bitcoin is so much horrendously worse that makes what
| you said true but Ethereum is pretty terrible. Unless I'm
| missing something?
|
| If I want to send .001 ETH (i.e. $1.81) from my MEW wallet
| to my Coinbase wallet, I am charged $7.388 in fees if I
| want it confirmed in three minutes. If I'm not in a hurry
| and pick the slowest option that goes down to the low low
| price of $6.133. To send $1.81 from me to myself. These are
| network fees, not Coinbase (who will then charges me fees
| again to either sell or transfer the money).
|
| I love that there's a link right on the transfer page of
| MEW that says, "Why are the fees so high?" that basically
| tells you it might get better someday but for now it's how
| it is.
|
| I've been using Crypto since you could mine BTC with a GPU
| but I still don't get what the use case is outside of
| illicit purchases and "buy it because it goes up." Maybe
| I'm stupid.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Etherum gas fees are horrendous right now, totally agree.
| In my opinion the work that is being done on scaling is
| much better on Etherum than on Bitcoin, and bitcoin
| really has a very limited capacity for smart contracts
| compred to bitcoin.
|
| In my opinion bitcoin, by not taking scaling seriously,
| has declared it's self as only good for store of value,
| L1 bitcoin seems like it won't really become any more
| efficient and essentially all L2 systems require 2 tx on
| L1. Etherum will scale L1 a bit more with allows overfull
| blocks and then much more when PoS rolls out.
| redog wrote:
| I think that both will be made shorter lived by their fee
| structures. A colleague of mine today moved STORJ and it cost
| him 15 US dollars to move his crypto into a sell position.
|
| Bitcoin's fees are currently worse than eth and their
| development direction is ... toxic ...
|
| Bitcoin cash is currently what I expect to take the
| lead....though that could be quite a long time. 25-140
| years....give or take.
| twox2 wrote:
| "Bitcoin has shown it is uninterested in being anything but
| digital gold."
|
| That still makes it very relevant here. Bitcoin is the
| reserve, while Eth is the settlement layer.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Except that bitcoin has a settlement layer, arguably the
| most well protected one.
|
| Etherum is so much more than a settlement layer. In my
| opinion the biggest potential for bitcoin is to displace
| gold. It's only ~6x away from eclipsing gold's market cap.
| After that I think the growth story of it growing faster
| than index funds starts to get kind of tenuous.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > Bitcoin is the reserve, while Eth is the settlement
| layer.
|
| I think that's a Bitcoin holder's fantasy. If you're
| already using one chain for settlements, why use an
| entirely separate and unrelated one as well? Ethereum can
| be both. Actually, almost any other cryptocurrency can be
| both. It's only (original, core) Bitcoin that is so badly
| crippled.
| randomopining wrote:
| But doesn't Bitcoin have an advantage in the "value
| protection"/digital gold use case because it uses proof
| of work and has a finite number of coins?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It does, but its insistence on tiny blocks means all
| transactions are extremely expensive. Bitcoin Cash
| adheres to the original Bitcoin design, has moved to
| larger blocks, but still retains all the other
| advantages. And it's not the only one, few
| cryptocurrencies are as expensive as Bitcoin to transact.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| I'm not convinced that PoW with prohibitive hardware
| costs and hashrate concentrated in a single totalitarian
| dictatorship is better than other consensus mechanisms.
|
| Many other things than Bitcoin also have finite supply.
| randomopining wrote:
| Nothing as ubiquitous though...?
| pkulak wrote:
| Which is exactly what everyone who has it wants it to be. :/
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| I hold Bitcoin and the day that I sell the vast majority of
| it and move to something on the ETH chain grows closer
| every day.
| stcredzero wrote:
| In retrospect, it was pretty much designed to become that!
| arcticbull wrote:
| It was designed to be digital cash. That's the title of
| the whitepaper. It is very bad at that.
| Geee wrote:
| Bitcoin is the most secure store of value and settlement
| layer. It is digital gold, a maximally secure asset with
| minimal risk. Other functions such as microtransactions,
| ft/nft-assets and smart contracts can be built on top of
| Bitcoin, with different L2 solutions. For example, see
| https://rgb-org.github.io. This architecture separates the
| base layer from all the risks of experimental technology and
| speculative utility of smart contracts.
|
| This differs from other blockchains such as Ethereum, that
| try to build everything on L1. This is a problem, because it
| introduces a lot of risk and uncertainty on the base layer.
| Even on Ethereum, the most promising solutions seem to arrive
| on L2, making the premise of Ethereum rather pointless.
| kerng wrote:
| Crypto.com who issues CRO is the first to use this with Visa.
| Bitcoin isnt really in the picture here. It will be interesting
| to learn how this will work between ETH/USDC/CRO.
|
| Crypto.com had Visa debit cards where you get CRO "cashback"
| for quite a while.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| So do I pay like $30 tx fees to buy a coffee with it?
| nyxtom wrote:
| Exactly, the gas prices on ETH make any transaction at all on
| it cost prohibitive.
| kerng wrote:
| It's a settlement layer. CRO (which seems to be the partner
| via crypto.com) based transactions are cheap.
| rstupek wrote:
| Bitcoin transaction fees are pretty high as well
| christopherwxyz wrote:
| I think the hope is that Visa would process these transactions
| in bulk, not individually.
| blhack wrote:
| To those who continue to think that cryptocurrencies are a waste
| of time, or stupid, or a fad, or tulips, or whatever:
|
| What do you know that visa doesn't know? Like if you could sit
| down with a decision maker and convince them that this is a bad
| idea, what would you tell them?
| wrs wrote:
| Visa settling dollar-denominated accounts with member banks
| seems like it must be very much a solved problem, that
| furthermore doesn't need any kind of decentralized ledger or
| smart contract processing to accomplish.
|
| So either that's exactly why it's a bad idea, or my
| understanding of how this works today has huge gaps. (Which
| wouldn't surprise me a bit.) Can you clarify what's in this for
| Visa?
| skybrian wrote:
| Predicting the future is hard. It's not clear that Visa knows
| anything either; they could just be hedging their bets with a
| pilot program that could be discontinued.
|
| They do a lot of other currency conversions and charge for it
| too. Maybe they're hoping to get some good fees for this from
| some merchants who want it?
|
| I don't expect a lot of demand, but I'll speculate that perhaps
| there are some merchants who might prefer USDC over other kinds
| of currency conversion, depending which way has higher fees?
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/foreign-transaction-fee-vs-curr...
| shados wrote:
| That while it may be a good idea financially for them, the
| resources poured into cryptocurrency mining operations are an
| amazing waste.
|
| It likely wouldn't convince anyone in that position, but damn
| is that crap a waste we don't need right now.
| suikadayo wrote:
| USDC is on Ethereum (currently PoW but will be on PoS within
| this year or so) and other PoS chains. Ethereum PoS will be
| about 99% more environmentally friendly than Bitcoin.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Visa is making an option available to settlement partners,
| which sounds more like marketing than anything else.
|
| I wouldn't want to convince Visa decision makers of anything;
| they can market however they like! Settlement partners, on the
| other hand... I'll be very curious to see if any take them up
| on this.
| mywittyname wrote:
| They might be opening the gates to more onerous reporting
| requirements per the IRS. People are required to pay capital
| gains tax on crypto gains, and if people are servicing debts
| with crypto, then visa will probably need to issue some sort of
| tax document detailing the price of the currency at time of
| payment.
|
| I'm sure their lawyers and accountants understand this and are
| fine with such a system.
|
| From an investors perspective. There is the risk of extreme
| fluctuation in prices on exchanges. If people are paying their
| bills at one rate, but Visa is getting a different, lower
| exchange rate, then that could potentially cost the company
| dearly.
|
| This is probably something they've also thought about and
| presumably they are scheming to make additional cash from
| arbitrage.
|
| One could think that cryptcurrencies are foolish, while
| simultaneously thinking of ways a business could make money off
| of crypto or their holders.
| electriclove wrote:
| Say it with me.. Ethereum
| wsinks wrote:
| Go ETH!
| kerng wrote:
| And CRO!
| exabrial wrote:
| This is precisely what the Stellar Foundation is trying to do:
| instant, no/low fees, no mining needed.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Particularly since - per a Clubhouse call I lurked on - it
| appears ETH is heavily sequestered by a small number of whales,
| it appears to be increasingly inflationary, and if the call's
| participants are to be believed there are several difficult
| technical problems many, many months from being resolved. I
| lack the expertise to know how much of this is true, but I did
| think to myself after listening that XLM has none of these
| issues.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > ETH is heavily sequestered by a small number of whales
|
| And Stellar isn't?
|
| Not a judgement, just a plain old question - it was my
| understanding that Stellar was an airdrop with large chunks
| to the founders, but my recollections are TBH vague.
| doomslice wrote:
| The Stellar Development Foundation holds about half of the
| unallocated XLM.
|
| They claim they'll use it in the following:
| https://www.stellar.org/foundation/mandate?locale=en (and
| they are a nonprofit so I assume they can't just sell it
| all).
| ur-whale wrote:
| > The Stellar Development Foundation holds about half of
| the unallocated XLM.
|
| That's half of the answer :)
|
| How much does Jed McCaleb, of MtGox fame, hold?
| Sargos wrote:
| Ethereum will actually be deflationary in July. The people in
| that room seem pretty removed from what's going on in the
| Ethereum ecosystem.
| tpmx wrote:
| The actual press release has more information:
|
| https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
|
| It links to a blog post:
|
| https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2021/03/26/dig...
|
| Insanely wordy and very non-specific, but hopefully getting it
| straight from the horse's mouth is less confusing than reading
| someone else's misunderstandings.
|
| "Visa is piloting the capability with Crypto.com, a Visa partner
| and one of the world's largest crypto platforms, and plans to
| offer the USDC settlement capability to additional partners later
| this year."
|
| The way I read this: They plan to later this year allow some Visa
| customers (via some bank partners to Visa) to pay their credit
| card bills using the USDC stablecoin, presumably via crypto.com.
|
| Am I really understanding this correctly?
| firloop wrote:
| No, this wouldn't let consumers pay their bills in USDC, but
| rather allow banks and merchants to be paid in USDC.
|
| Settlement is the process in which an acquirer "settles" up
| with Visa, which happens after a transaction is authorized[0].
| The acquirer sends Visa a list of transactions and monetary
| amounts, Visa accepts this and forwards along money for the
| transactions to the acquiring bank.
|
| Visa is saying that they are now sending USDC (over the
| blockchain? unclear.) instead of fiat currency over traditional
| banking rails.
|
| Later this year, Visa will expand these capabilities to more
| acquirers/merchants.
|
| [0]: This page explains more. https://financetrain.com/how-
| credit-card-transaction-process...
| tpmx wrote:
| Ah. That makes more sense! Thanks.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Ok, but. Why.
| devname wrote:
| If bitcoin replaces the middlemen of transactions, why does
| Square and Jack Dorsey promote them?
| gerry_shaw wrote:
| Square is in the payment business. Credit cards are just one
| method. E.g., Square supports Interact in Canada for a flat fee
| of $0.10.
| pharmakom wrote:
| They are leveraging their massive reach to increase the value
| of private crypto holdings. This isn't allowed for regular
| stocks and shares so crypto is an opportunity.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It doesn't. Because on-chain transactions are (or will be) too
| expensive and slow for most people, creating a big business
| opportunity for middlemen.
| gruez wrote:
| >creating a big business opportunity for middlemen
|
| ...or decentralized settlement networks like LN.
| suikadayo wrote:
| Not really decentralized when people have to rely on third
| party apps like Strike to open channels for them, or they
| have to open the channels themselves while both users are
| online. It's a mess from a usability standpoint.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| ...which again provides an opportunity for middlemen.
| [deleted]
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _...or decentralized settlement networks like LN._
|
| Not very, though. Lightning recentralizes the Bitcoin
| blockchain to improve efficiency.
|
| "10 percent of [Lightning] nodes control 80 percent of
| funds on the network." -- _Bitcoin's Lightning Network Is
| Growing 'Increasingly Centralized,' Researchers Find_[1]
|
| [1] https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-lightning-network-is-
| growi...
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Bitcoin is unrelated to this news.
| system2 wrote:
| Bitcoin = Father of all coins.
| colineartheta wrote:
| Speculating here, but my observations of Dorsey/Square is that
| they see more long term value in being an exchange for fiat to
| cryptocurrency rather than (only) being a settlement house for
| payments. I see them acting as both exchange and clearing house
| (and debit and credit provider, and payroll service, and...),
| which, sure, Visa could too, but Square has/is building the
| infrastructure for those mutual use cases, and Visa is mostly
| playing catch-up.
| herenorthere wrote:
| Of course, it's the loudest voices that always get heard and
| are oft repeated, but I'd say most of us in the industry
| realize that cryptocurrency will never be a 1:1 replacement of
| traditional fiat currency--barring some significant breakdown
| of society and government. It's more of a complementary thing.
| Something more like internet and radio (i.e. both are still
| used today, one did not completely replace the other). Not the
| best example but you get the picture. And then there is 3rd and
| 2nd world countries where crypto can be used as a sort of stop
| gap solution until a viable form of government and banking can
| be situated.
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| They make money when you buy/sell Bitcoin through their app.
| (Cash app)
| tfang17 wrote:
| Visa is the Ethereum L2 people have been talking about for years.
| fareesh wrote:
| How would the gas fee work in this scenario?
| humblebee wrote:
| It looks to be for settlements which are done at the end of the
| day between banks, not on a per transaction basis between
| merchant and buyers.
|
| There is a thread on /r/CryptoCurrency that lays things out
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/mfqnfn/what...
| tyingq wrote:
| I wonder if Visa will enact a wallet blacklist.
|
| Edit: Well, perhaps whether that blacklist will become shared
| across more than Visa.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > I wonder if Visa will enact a wallet blacklist.
|
| You don't have to wonder: it's a guarantee and it's not like
| they have a choice.
|
| They're centralized and therefore subject to political
| pressure.
| Dolpahimide wrote:
| I'm sure VISA owns a buttload of ETH and they will just use their
| own system to settle everything themselves internally. Then they
| actually buy/sell ethereum when it fits their needs.
| UShouldBWorking wrote:
| We. Are. Switching.
|
| Only for the top 1% does a fiat government currency work and we
| are in the tail end of this cycle.
|
| The US knows this and it's why they are printing the dollar into
| oblivion. Get you Bitcoin Cash and Monero while you still can.
| [deleted]
| Datagenerator wrote:
| Are you being downvoted? Bitcoin Cash is the original, period.
| Longtime Bitcoiner here,transaction fees didn't exist for many
| years. Envisioned by the creators was money without borders nor
| barriers to entrance.
| Datagenerator wrote:
| Would lol so hard if they promote Bitcoin Cash the peer to peer
| electronic cash as settlement layer. The Bitcoin chain would halt
| because the difficulty can't adjust fast enough.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| The BCH chain almost halted when the split first happened. They
| changed the difficulty adjustment algorithm to get through that
| period.
|
| Also currently 1 BCH = 0.00898083 BTC.
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