[HN Gopher] Payment processors' bar on Japanese adult content en...
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Payment processors' bar on Japanese adult content endangers
democracy (2024)
Author : thisislife2
Score : 127 points
Date : 2025-07-20 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (automaton-media.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (automaton-media.com)
| kkfx wrote:
| The fact we have PSPs endanger Democracy, because we could
| technically exchange eCash P2P, there is exactly ZERO reasons to
| keep up the banking systems, and banksters knows that well,
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240213185758/https://www.cimb....
| unfortunately people seems to be unaware of that...
| Telemakhos wrote:
| How is this a danger to "democracy?" The centralization of
| payment processing under a surveillance-friendly network that can
| debank people for socially unacceptable behavior was never on any
| ballot. Instead, surveillance capability is a regulatory
| requirement promulgated by governments that despise privacy,
| regardless of which party holds office. The mistake here is in
| thinking that there's "democracy" left to save.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > The game director's statement was most likely triggered by
| the news that Manga Library Z is shutting down. The platform,
| which has preserved digital editions of out-of-print manga for
| the past 14 years, was initially pressured by international
| credit card companies to remove manga that contained certain
| words, and then abruptly forced to terminate all of its payment
| contracts, leaving it with no way to secure revenue for its
| authors. The cause cited for this was transactions involving
| adult content.
|
| -------
|
| Japan is a democracy. And yet payment processors from another
| country are powerful enough to bypass Japans political system.
| landl0rd wrote:
| Japan is reliant on use of those payment processors. Pretty
| sure Line Pay, crypto, Rakuten Pay, etc are all viable
| alternatives. I fail to see how a comic book site is at all
| relevant to democracy because some processors don't want to
| process payments for pornographic comic books.
| dragontamer wrote:
| You don't see how extra-legal foreign companies setting
| country wide policy is a threat to the local voters?
| landl0rd wrote:
| It's not country-wide policy though. They aren't deciding
| what people can and can't buy. They're deciding of what
| they will or won't _facilitate the sale_.
|
| The American pornography industry has solved this problem
| by 1. recognizing that there is higher risk, like "oh no
| honey that $5.99 charge from onlyfans on the statement
| must have been fraud! do a chargeback." and 2.
| recognizing that the optics of selling pornography are
| bad and not everyone wants to assume what is essentially
| an externality (bearing that optics cost) without being
| paid extra for it. So there are providers that handle
| "high-risk" payments like that. Or they take crypto.
|
| One of the cool things about the fact that companies are
| profit-seeking and really like making money, is that when
| they turn down what looks like an opportunity to make
| money you can be pretty sure it's for a good reason.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > American
|
| What does this have to do with Japan?
|
| The fundamental problem addressed here is that these
| Japanese people, one way or the other, are complaining
| about how our culture is influencing them. And your
| response is to tell them to be more American?
|
| Presumably speaking, the Japanese people would want a
| Japanese solution here.
|
| I don't live in Japan but I think I can at least get the
| gist of this guy's argument.
|
| > One of the cool things about the fact that companies
| are profit-seeking and really like making money, is that
| when they turn down what looks like an opportunity to
| make money you can be pretty sure it's for a good reason.
|
| Historically speaking, for profit companies of different
| cultures misunderstand and even abuse the locals. Because
| you know, profits to the foreigner and reasons that the
| local doesn't care or even may be opposed to.
|
| For the locals to feel threatened by that (and claiming
| that democracy is at stake) is... Well, a trope at this
| point. It keeps happening so we probably should be
| sensitive to the gist of the argument.
| landl0rd wrote:
| It's a case study of how you can either work to assume
| those costs and build them into the price of the product,
| rather than being willfully blind and claiming they don't
| exist or should remain externalities, and maintain
| relationships with processors. It's also a case study of
| when you can just bypass them and use other payment
| methods.
|
| This isn't an "American solution", it's an example of
| ways around a problem with the industry.
|
| I'm not sure how refusing business (which, if these costs
| weren't real, would reduce "profits to the foreigner") is
| supposed to contribute to "misunderstand[ing] and even
| abuse."
|
| I guess I can understand why they're sensitive, but they
| have multiple homegrown sets of payment rails they can
| use. If they want to use the foreign ones they can
| reasonably accept that a large multinational is "less
| Japanese" than the Japanese ones.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I think they could have used another alternative if they
| were given a generous timeline to switch over. The lack of
| this seems to indicate that the goal was to sabotage them
| rather than an amicable separation.
| ur-whale wrote:
| The only thing that endangers freedom here is the fact that there
| are centralized payment processors in the first place.
|
| There's an existing cure for that particular disease: Bitcoin.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Tell me you know nothing about transaction overhead without
| telling me you know nothing about transaction overhead. All the
| blockchain currencies require orders of magnitude more power to
| process a transaction compared to a debit or credit
| transaction. Bitcoin is primarily used by governments (like
| NK), hacker groups, and organized crime to launder money.
|
| The solution is not blockchain currencies. European credit card
| transaction costs are a fraction of what they are in the US
| because US regulators just sat back and allowed Mastercard and
| VISA to establish a duopoly.
|
| In much of the rest of the world it's also possible to near-
| instantly wire-transfer funds to pay for things, at negligible
| cost. In the US, everything is forced to go through the federal
| reserve, is expensive, and slow.
|
| We are the laughing stock of the rest of the world. The banks
| have tried to set up alternatives. Zelle is a good example, but
| Zelle's most annoying problem is that you can only have one
| account per phone number or email address.
| nikolas- wrote:
| > everything is forced to go through the federal reserve, is
| expensive, and slow.
|
| This isn't entirely accurate, there is a private clearing
| house that supports instant payments in the United States.
|
| https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/CHIPS
| https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The cure is worse than the disease
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Really? Feel like specifying so in an informed and rational
| way?
|
| I mean, you claim a system of voluntary, consensual payments
| that people can decide or not to use vs. formal channels
| depending on their need for avoiding politically charged
| bullshittery and financial censorship of all sorts is somehow
| worse than... the long arm of major governments and their
| corporate partners to restrict whatever they please for
| whatever political reasons they please at any time?
|
| Truly, the irrational crypto hatred by some on this site is
| the stuff of idiot parody.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Really. The only good thing crypto has going for it is that
| it is litmus test for unresolved anti-social
| behavior[1][2][3]. Thus, it serves as a warning beacon to
| avoid when engaging in the dating pool.
|
| Unfortunately, this means it's also a contributory factor
| in the male loneliness epidemic. Though, good luck changing
| any actual beliefs and behavior on this topic.
|
| 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0
| 1918...
|
| 2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/027623662412681
| 22?i...
|
| 3. https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/14475
| corranh wrote:
| Putting aside the question of whether Bitcoin is even useful
| for transactions or if it's just 'number go up' technology,
| Bitcoin processors don't let Businesses accept Bitcoin for
| adult content either.
|
| See e.g. https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/115003105543-Ca...
| numpad0 wrote:
| You don't need payment processors to exchange Bitcoin, or
| rather, the processors are P2P'd and compensated by code
| enforced transaction fee. I guess those can be banned by
| manually correlating wallet addresses with known "terrorist"
| groups, but we haven't reached that stage yet.
|
| The downside of not using commercial "off-chain" processors
| for Bitcoin or most true decentralized cryptocurrencies is
| that latency of a proper, classic, fully secure, "on-chain"
| transaction is something like up to 15 minutes. At least it
| was that much last time I looked at it.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Why would one possibly need a SaaS payment processor for
| crypto? Unlike with traditional banking, running your own
| crypto node and processing network transactions is not some
| huge investment that one may want to offload to a third
| party.
| Muromec wrote:
| To offload dealing with problems (technical and legal) and
| risks to the processor. Like everything SAAS basically. If
| they get hacked, it's not your money being lost for
| example.
| duskwuff wrote:
| And on the other side of the equation, exchanges observe
| where their customers' coins are going, and may blacklist
| customers who transact with suspicious counterparties (like
| coin mixers).
| 6yyyyyy wrote:
| Much evidence contradicts your theory.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| People seem to forget that most countries aren't down with "adult
| content." Japan famously has censorship; while it's outright
| illegal and censored online in India, Russia, China, and no
| shortage of other countries. It's illegal on both sides of
| conflicts - like Russia and Ukraine (possession in Ukraine by
| itself is grounds for up to 3 years in prison). Some countries
| like Australia permit it, but "extreme" content (aka anything not
| "vanilla") is technically illegal regardless of the age of the
| viewer. This is also _not_ necessarily based on religion: China
| is officially atheist, Vietnam is as well, but both will put you
| in prison for importing it. Ironically, it is post-Christian
| countries that are most tolerant.
|
| From the global stage, America is not some overly puritanical
| country while everyone else goes along without religious purity
| concerns. The big view is that the majority of countries censor
| it or ban it, even democratic ones, with no religious motive
| required. The Western world is the exception, but that's changing
| in the UK, Australia, and now the US with age gating, payment
| processor refusal, or other restrictions.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Japan has censorship as a result of the American occupation.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Correct; otherwise it would likely be illegal in Japan
| completely, judging by the nations around them.
| kanbara wrote:
| japan has fully legal drawn porn of children and tentacle
| beasts and whatever else, you just need small bars over
| genitals and beasts. you can buy it in a bookstore anywhere
| across the country freely, how is this not "down" with adult
| content? weird take
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Last time I checked, you need an ID.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'm astonished though that people sell ero fan manga from
| popular series at Komiket, like Sailor Moon (you know...
| "I'm Usagi Tsukino, I'm 14 years old") [1]
|
| [1] though there was the episode that didn't get released
| in the US where she used a magical item to transform
| herself into an adult so she could go in a bar and get a
| drink
| teitoklien wrote:
| India's ban wasn't legislative, it was done by the supreme
| court.
|
| It has one of the most weirdest and also defacto the most
| powerful supreme court globally by authority.
|
| It can pursue its own laws, legislate them, overturn even laws
| passed by supermajority in parliament if it doesn't agree with
| it and thinks it's not what original constitution makers
| would've wanted.
|
| The Court can take up cases on its own (suo motu) without any
| petition being filed. This allows it to respond to media
| reports, letters, or social issues -- an almost unheard-of
| power in most democracies.
|
| I don't think indian society or gov should be blamed for
| banning adult content, supreme court by itself passed the law
| and gov didn't wanna contest it as they didn't feel the point
| to spend political capital to reverse it.
|
| India is the origin of kamasutra texts after all and isn't that
| sex negative as you might think ( it has the highest population
| for a reason)
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > India is the origin of kamasutra texts after all and isn't
| that sex negative as you might think ( it has the highest
| population for a reason)
|
| I think you're making a mistake here. It is completely
| possible to be appreciative of sex, and hate pornography.
| Even in the US, "Feminists Fighting Pornography" was a
| powerful cultural force for almost 2 decades.
|
| Only in the Western world is "pro sex" = "pro pornography" in
| most people's minds. Everywhere else, these are separate
| issues, with pornography bans actually being from a pro-sex
| cultural position (I.e. it shouldn't be commoditized online).
| teitoklien wrote:
| I know for a fact they don't hate pornography, i've been
| around their culture. They banned it because the judges
| felt like it.
|
| There were no major protests to ban it, no government
| ongoing policy, nothing. It was just done because the court
| felt like it.
|
| People were indifferent after that too, gov didn't even
| comment, praise or shun the court. Life just went on and
| people just used vpns, gov doesn't even care and doesn't
| even enforce the ban outside of the 100 major urls and
| domain the supreme court itself decided and never revisited
| it.
|
| India's supreme court is extremely unusual compared to
| other countries, it's as powerful as the executive branch
| if not more, the legislative branch have no say in electing
| supreme court judges the previous judges elect the next
| ones.
|
| it just uses its power very sparingly out of fear that the
| legislative branch might come after their powers if they
| use them too much.
|
| banning a few major porn sites, banning electoral bonds
| (india's version of superpac), creating new right to
| privacy laws without consulting the parliament (because the
| court feared gov isn't taking digital privacy seriously
| enough), legalise lgbt rights without any parliament input
| as it felt it needed to protect those citizens freedoms and
| rights to self identify and form their own families with
| legal protection.
|
| are some places where the court has used its ultimate
| powers
|
| I personally like India's supreme courts, they are
| partially the reason why india is relatively stable
| compared to other south asian nations. Overall they use
| their super powers extremely responsibly and sparingly.
| Accounting for both political environment and balancing it
| against the long term interest of the nation's citizens
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Only in the Western world is "pro sex" = "pro
| pornography" in most people's minds. Everywhere else, these
| are separate issues, with pornography bans actually being
| from a pro-sex cultural position (I.e. it shouldn't be
| commoditized online).
|
| The general problem is that when pornography bans are
| passed, they're characterized as being against for-profit
| hardcore pornography, but then they're worded broadly
| enough to also cover everything from sex education to
| medical depictions of human anatomy to actual human beings
| flirting with each other on the public internet with no
| profit motive, and then enforced against any of those
| things according to the whims of government officials.
|
| Or worse, the law is written in such a way that it puts
| liability on third parties who then aggressively ban those
| things to avoid potential liability whether or not the law
| should or would have been enforced against them.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Pakistan also has had an extremely powerful supreme court -
| though mostly acting on the behest of the military
| establishment. It has the same suo moto powers. It has over
| time effectively rewritten parts of the constitution, deposed
| prime ministers on the shoddiest base, forced the parliament
| to reverse parts of a constitutional amendment after it had
| passed almost unanimously. One supreme court justice raided a
| hospital at one point, to talk about acting like an
| executive. Though that might be over now after a recent
| constitutional amendment.
|
| I am no legal historian, but I would assume this has
| something to do with how the British set up the courts.
| teitoklien wrote:
| Nope it's not just power that builds decent stabilizing
| systems but how people/their culture use that power.
| India's unusual supreme court stabilises it from executive
| overreach or other risks because its court judges control
| their own elections and are far more liberal than indian
| society or its politicians so it tends to use its extra
| powers to stabilize rather than compromise the system.
|
| I do agree what you said shows the risk of such systems and
| powerful courts if created in a vacuum without considering
| who'll control it.
|
| Pakistan uses those powers to do the exact opposite of what
| indian courts would ever do. Also it's also because in
| pakistan military is an independent political actor that
| serves its own interest unlike in India where military is
| toothless and just operates on politicians diktats often
| literally at times instead of following intent.
|
| Indian courts also cannot execute on its laws or fund its
| own budgets or laws. So even if it creates laws it only
| does ones it knows that parliament wouldn't resist too
| heavily and will actually enforce it for them to avoid a
| constitutional crisis . Indian courts are deeply afraid of
| ruling parties especially if they have more authoritative
| leanings or are more organised.
|
| In pakistan the military helps courts finance and execute
| on stuff superseding the parliament which is why it's a
| corrupting force. In India , parliament under union home
| minister strongly controls over internal security matters
| and the police forces with prime minister and his cabinet
| controlling the military.
|
| it's not because of british court system, british never had
| such courts nor is it even a republic the british system is
| more similar to a constitutional monarchy with a powerful
| parliament.
|
| India is a republic UK is a democratic constitutional
| monarchy hence it's called a kingdom Pakistan is just run
| by the military most of the time and by elected leaders
| some of the time. so it's a system that oscillates between
| dictatorship and majoritarian democracy (not a republic)
|
| but yea supreme court cannot depose prime ministers in
| india. india set its own checks and balances out of pure
| fear of the consequences of what happened in pakistan. it
| still doesn't fully trust its military to this day. out of
| fear of pakistan's case and intentionally keeps regional
| ethnic regiments to avoid the military from ever unifying
| or working together.
| kmfrk wrote:
| Definitely going to be "interesting" to see what happens once
| places like UK+EU commit to age verifying interent users soon.
|
| * https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-
| ver...
|
| * https://ageverification.dev/Roadmap/
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Japan famously has censorship;
|
| In Japanese culture there's often an 'official' layer of proper
| behavior that in some sense is a pretense and in reality people
| are much more free-wheeling, including in the adult sector
| where Japan is pretty big globally, which is likely
| understating it. The country is actually very sexually
| liberated.
|
| The pernicious thing is that the US and Anglosphere work
| exactly the other way around, legally you can say anything but
| it's the people who chase you around the globe and you have
| Mumsnet and American soccer moms hound you across the ocean.
| Which is a moral tyranny any dictator is envious of. The US was
| the only Western country where Leon was censored, the actually
| made like a 20 minute shorter version for the US market.
| Censoring actual art, not just porn or slop, is foreign to
| anyone in continental Europe or Japan.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > Some countries like Australia permit it, but "extreme"
| content (aka anything not "vanilla") is technically illegal
| regardless of the age of the viewer.
|
| As a curious case, South Park: The Stick of Truth had a scene
| that was censored in a few countries (Australia and Germany
| among others) due to it's BDSM content...
|
| I will also note the odd case back in the day of Germany having
| such strict rules with violence/etc that many of the Command
| and Conquer games had humans replaced with robots. [0]
|
| Or even names of things. FF8 had 'nunchaku' changed to
| 'shinobu' because nunchucks are illegal in the UK [1] and
| "Castlevania: Bloodlines" for the Genesis/Mega Drive was named
| "Castlevania: The New Generation" in europe (although that also
| had a lot of blood removed).
|
| > UK, Australia, and now the US with age gating, payment
| processor refusal, or other restrictions.
|
| But also, I should note that Australia has had fairly strict
| laws on the book for quite some time and has a long history of
| using Refused Classification when they get the itch, hell the
| Re-release of Westwood's Blade Runner is RC. And unlike the UK
| (at least for now) there's not the digital/import loophole [2].
|
| [0] - My Austrian friend on IRC said that at least the voices
| were really cool.
|
| [1] - Perhaps someone assumed the whole world of FF8 was a
| British Colony?
|
| [2] - My understanding is that somehow downloads and
| 'importing' never got covered in the law.
| tptacek wrote:
| We just had a thread on this; probably don't need to recycle 2024
| stories for it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606184
| xterminator wrote:
| Each country central bank should have its own national payment
| processing system. Why is this not a thing? Spain has Bizum, for
| example.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| FedNow is relatively new for the US in 2024.
|
| One thing to note is that by design, the US banking system is
| very decentralized and that makes any sort of migration or
| mandate like herding cats. There are 141 banks in Spain and
| 4135 in the US.
|
| US banks are generally not allowed to exceed 10% of deposits
| through mergers and there are only three passing that
| threshold; JPMorgan Chase at 15%, BofA at 14%, and Wells Fargo
| at 11%.
| evan_a_a wrote:
| The EU has already figured this out with the recently passed
| instant payments regulation [0]. As of 2024 are 5,304 banks
| in the EU [1], so the number of banks really isn't an excuse.
| The US banking system lags the rest of world by a mile,
| because there is no will to force modernization.
|
| [0] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant
| _pa...
|
| [1] https://www.ebf.eu/factsandfigures/
| evan_a_a wrote:
| Bizum is for P2P instant payments and it's operated by a
| consortium of Spanish banks, not Banco de Espana.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't buy that the attack on Steam was just some Australian
| cult activist groups. This isn't one off event anyway. They're
| just a distraction.
|
| 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.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Why not? The celebrated it as their own success.
| michaelt wrote:
| There are also a lot of religious anti-pornography folks in
| America, and with views on sexuality they are eager to impose
| on others. I doubt the pressure came from Australia alone.
|
| 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.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| The majority of the world censors or bans pornography, not
| just America. In Vietnam, China, Russia, Ukraine, just to
| name examples, you can go to literal prison for possession,
| not just pay a fine. Ukraine considers possession alone
| grounds for up to 3 years. This is despite Vietnam and
| China all-but-requiring atheism to run for positions.
|
| 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.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Who is saying that it was AUS alone? The signatories are
| majority Australian then UK and one or two US depending on
| how you count (UK working in the US).
| numpad0 wrote:
| I always wondered how it was like to live in 70s with bombs
| going off in random corners of utopias and random backwater
| fundamentalist groups claiming responsibilities. That journey
| of mine is now over.
| minraws wrote:
| Wasn't Crypto supposed to solve this like a decade ago?
| Genuinely curious, as a 20 something, software developer who
| never understood why we don't have decentralized/globally
| neutral payments/transactions systems like internet.
|
| 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...
| anon191928 wrote:
| why we don't have neutral transaction has many reasons. tech
| might not be there to scale millions of transactions without
| central server.
|
| other reasons are heavy payment regulations, human habits,
| fraud, network effects and more. tech does not fully solve
| it.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Transaction throughput is nonexistent for cryptos. The money
| arrives when it arrives. Some frameworks within crypto solves
| it by trusting known signatures skipping the oft mentioned
| consensus building, I suppose that has its downsides
| considering they're not so popular.
| drdaeman wrote:
| It was supposed to be a decentralized digital cash, but we
| collectively turned it into some weird abomination. Nowadays,
| if you say "crypto" people will think of investments, scams,
| transfers that sidestep various sanctions and regulations,
| risks - anything but a decent payment method. It's sad, but
| that's what happened.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Crypto was always a stupid name anyway because people
| confuse it with cryptography. Come up with a different name
| for the thing where you use it as a digital payments system
| instead of a speculative bubble machine.
| beeflet wrote:
| cryptocurrencies involve cryptography
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| To begin with, no they don't. They use hashing and
| signatures, which are mathematically related to
| cryptography and often packaged in the same libraries or
| used together to construct cryptographic protocols, but
| cryptography (literally "secret writing") is specifically
| about making information indecipherable, which is the
| thing cryptocurrency typically _doesn 't_ do.
|
| More to the point, it's still misleading to call a ship
| the water.
| beeflet wrote:
| This is an absurd definition of cryptography. Are you
| going to say that zero-knowlege proofs are not
| cryptography? Are pedersen commitments not cryptography?
| Are ring signatures not cryptography (they use symmetric
| cryptography internally)?
|
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The "secret" being obscured cryptographicially is the
| information needed to produce a verifiable message.
|
| 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.
| LtWorf wrote:
| A "signature" is literally just encrypting a message with
| your private key.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's _signing_ a message with your private key. The
| message itself, unless separately encrypted (and which in
| practice would be under a different key), is still
| plaintext.
| Muromec wrote:
| That's how RSA works, but not how ECDSA works.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| You can engage with Crypto and to some degree it's been
| normalized as a weird investment, but the minute you try to
| justify usage in a more "normal" setting, to the public eye,
| you're placing yourself alongside money laundering, drug
| trafficking and Ponzi Schemes
|
| 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
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > Wasn't Crypto supposed to solve this like a decade ago?
|
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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_.
| andy99 wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You shouldn't be using _any_ currency as a long-term
| store of value. Even if you want to be denominated in USD
| and minimize risk, the interest rate on cash in a
| mattress is zero and the interest rate on US treasuries
| is non-zero.
|
| 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?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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.
| beeflet wrote:
| Cryptocurrencies are volatile specifically _because_ they
| are used as a speculative investment rather than a means of
| exchange. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
|
| >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?
| gryn wrote:
| > Wasn't Crypto supposed to solve this like a decade ago?
| Genuinely curious, as a 20 something, software developer who
| never understood why we don't have decentralized/globally
| neutral payments/transactions systems like internet.
|
| 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.
| kiicia wrote:
| If you can get crypto currency, maybe yes in some cases.
| Currently available currencies are not anonymous, but
| pseudonymous. You can track who transacts with whom.
|
| 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.
| timbowhite wrote:
| > never understood why we don't have decentralized/globally
| neutral payments/transactions systems
|
| BTCPay Server[0] seems to be the most popular way to accept
| crypto payments on self-hosted hardware with no third party
| processors.
|
| [0] https://btcpayserver.org/
| jgilias wrote:
| The future is not evenly distributed. I invite you to install
| Primal (a social network app), and send a 50 cent payment to
| Jack Dorsey just because you can.
|
| Can you let me know in this thread how it goes and what are
| your thoughts after doing it?
| michaelt wrote:
| You can hear Steam's experience with bitcoin straight from
| the horse's mouth here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/5931
| 10/announcements/detail...
|
| _> 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._
| ronsor wrote:
| In practice, Bitcoin transaction fees are much lower
| nowadays. I've never spent more than $1.00 in fees on
| relatively large sums.
|
| Besides that, there are other cryptocurrencies (Solana?
| Stellar?) which have effectively zero fees and are much
| faster than Bitcoin.
| beeflet wrote:
| Transaction fees are lower because no one really uses the
| L1 network for commerce anymore. It goes back to the 2017
| block size war.
|
| >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.
| Spivak wrote:
| Are there currencies you would actually do something with
| other than it being a way to move $local_currency by
| means of exchanges? Because I'm not sure it really solves
| anything when exchanges find themselves with the same
| regulations as Visa.
| beeflet wrote:
| Yeah, you have anonymous cryptocurrencies like monero or
| zcash.
|
| 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.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| All we need is fast ACH (seconds, even low minutes will do)
| with no charge back. From there you can develop single-charge
| ephemeral accounts and you're good to go. Sadly crypto will get
| us there faster. It just speaks volumes that a pseudo
| decentralized solution will beat the logical and easier
| centralized solution because of misaligned incentives
| daveguy wrote:
| And then you can have untrackable and irreversible scams,
| money laundering and ransomware without the crypto? Yay?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| "Transaction is irreversible via automated system" and
| "transaction is irreversible via court order" are two
| different things. The first is a problem when you have
| merchants that legitimately provided a service (e.g. adult
| content, buying fungible commodities that themselves can't
| be clawed back) because customers issue chargebacks against
| merchants that _didn 't_ scam them, e.g. because the spouse
| disputes a charge for adult content that the person who
| made the purchase doesn't want to admit to buying. But the
| second is the thing you need to prevent scams and
| ransomware.
| jdietrich wrote:
| We already have that in many countries. It doesn't change
| much, because the vast majority of consumers prefer to use a
| payment method that does have chargebacks and various other
| consumer protections. As long as you have a majority of
| customers who want to pay via Visa or Mastercard, then the
| vast majority of merchants will need to accept those payments
| and play by their rules.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payment_System_(United_.
| ..
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The premise is that the thing consumers want is
| "chargebacks and various other consumer protections" but in
| practice the problem is that those things are really hidden
| costs, i.e. merchants have to pass on the cost of
| chargebacks and fraud to honest customers. In a normal
| market this would result in the merchants passing on those
| costs to the customers who require a payment method that
| incurs them, i.e. there would be a 5-10% discount for using
| a different payment method, or more than that for
| industries with a high rate of customer chargeback fraud.
|
| 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.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Could not agree more.
|
| 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)
| bsder wrote:
| > What's urgently needed is payment neutrality, like net
| neutrality.
|
| I thought the EU was working on digital cash? What is the
| status of that?
| Muromec wrote:
| From what I heard It's a scaleup of Dutch IDEAL, which is a
| wrapper around SEPA. End user scans a QR code generated by a
| merchant with their bank app and everything magically works,
| including sharing the address. Bank app shows the amount and
| merchant name on the screen before approving and merchant
| gets the confirmation right away. I having used
| VISA/Mastercard network that much for years because IDEAL
| exists.
|
| Haven't heard about the EU version of it being anywhere in
| the works and I work in places where I should hear it.
|
| https://wero-wallet.eu/
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| I assume you're referring to this[0]. I had to go searching.
|
| 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...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| No.
|
| Democracy is endangered by the fact that the government likes to
| use payment processors to stomp on stuff near the edges.
|
| The dogs on the right rallies around when the government tries to
| pressure gunmakers, the cats on the left don't rally around such
| threats very well.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| You will have better luck getting people to adopt Monero than to
| get legislatures to pass payment neutrality. Same with
| enforcement. The trend in Western democracies is less freedom,
| more control, more surveillance etc.
|
| Mind you, both odds are negligible.
| draxter65 wrote:
| The same payment companies are very happy to take payments on
| porn sites. This manufactured outrage makes no sense. It's scary
| what a rather small activist group can accomplish.
| nine_k wrote:
| Not at all. Square, Stripe, PayPal all outright refuse to deal
| with anything porn. Visa and Mastercard put out severe
| limitations, and (AFAICT) refuse to process payments to sites
| like pornhub.
|
| This is not only due to reputation risks (even though these are
| real), but also because of the higher rates of fraud and
| chargebacks.
|
| I'd say that anything that by its nature materially hampers the
| customer's ability to think rationally is risky for a payment
| processor, because it will always be a fertile ground for fraud
| and scams. Porn and gambling are obvious examples; alcohol is
| another, but (strong) alcohol is usually pretty strictly
| regulated, down to state-run monopolies in a number of
| countries.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Other's have said this but it isn't a moral crusade by the
| payment processors', but rather their capitulation to various
| moralizing advocacy groups.
| r33b33 wrote:
| Just use bitcoin
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| A handful of US companies take a cut from nearly every payment on
| the planet, and now they're caving to pressure from Twitter mobs
| and puritan lobbies, censoring global content just to avoid
| upsetting shareholders.
|
| Visa and Mastercard haven't brought anything new in years. Their
| infrastructure still dominates out of habit, not merit.
| Meanwhile, alternatives like stablecoins and European systems
| like EPI or the digital euro are gaining ground.
|
| Their boldness is honestly surprising, especially now that real
| competition is finally emerging.
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