Benefits of centralization: Someone can counteract harmful interactions.
Drawbacks of centralization: Someone can decide legitimate interactions are harmful.
It does suck when the “harmful interaction management system” goes haywire. But I’m not sure it sucks enough that I’d rather simply not have one.
Yeah it’s a personal level of comfort sort of thing. Some people value one side of the equation while some people value the other side. Strong case for vendors accepting both cards and crypto instead of just one.
I used to be one of the people firmly on the “someone can decide legitimate interactions are harmful, thus they should not ever exist” side of the argument, and I think this is certainly a good way of putting it.
For a lot of people heavily into crypto, they see the drawbacks of the existing system, but instead of pushing for reform and legal changes, they try technological abolition of the entire mechanism altogether, without then realizing the tradeoffs that brings (e.g. how a lot of people will go “it’s instant! Sellers don’t have to worry about chargebacks! Nobody can take away your money from you!” yet don’t think about how that also means a scammer taking your money is a permanent loss you can never reverse. (or if they do think about it, will argue that risk can be reduced to a point it is less harmful than the alternative, centralized companies)
I don’t deny crypto can be useful sometimes, or even be more beneficial when the centralized companies do eventually do something bad and people need an alternative payment mechanism, but I think a lot of people into crypto overestimate how beneficial it truly is compared to the tradeoffs.
“someone can decide you have zero dollars”
free speech until your bank account goes away
Regulation prevents that. You can’t regulate decentralized currencies, meaning you have zero protection 100% of the time.
yes, however the regulations will always have some corruption
Same for unregulated systems, only without transparency, limits or recourse
Both sides are bad
Yep. Just because one side is bad, it doesn’t mean the other is any good.
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling. Credit card companies are still a private owned government branch with no concern for human rights and criminals-enabling.
I learned recently FedNow is a payment processor ran by the Federal Reserve, with a fee of $0.043 per transaction. Making it much, much cheaper than every other payment processor out there.
It just launched two years ago; I’m wondering if this might become more of a thing moving forward for digital payments.
Say that any louder and it’ll be DOGEd overnight.
It’s also a heck of a lot quicker to process, (effectively instant) and works even on holidays.
And of course, banks like Bank of America, Capital One, and tons of other financial institutions simply refuse to use it, because that would mean spending money on changing their infrastructure, and making it more convenient for people to also use accounts outside of theirs.
Seriously, it’s been ages, and they’ve refused to use it at all, even though it’s purely a financial and technical upside for every user once it’s implemented.
Nice but floundered. Call me when consumers and small businesses can use it.
more and more good people are being called criminals
Criminals-enabling is what they call VPNs, E2EE encrypted communication etc.
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling.
As we all know, Visa and MasterCard have never been used by criminals. As soon as a criminal touches a card, the card turns into ash.
This. Corporate shit weasels or supporting human trafficking.
“We should restrict the free use of oxygen because terrorists can breath it to sustain themselves.”
C’mon. Crypto has issues, but this ain’t one of them. Pandering to people’s fear is how fascist seize power for themselves and perpetuate the horrors we feared in the first place.
Honestly, what’s the point of a credit card? Why don’t people mostly use debit cards? It gets just directly wire transferred from your account. No sort of junk fees or monthly subscription needed. Genuine Question.
My debit card is a master card.
They still need to go through a payment processor, using a debit instead of credit card isn’t really the solution to the current problems.
Tons of cards have zero fees. Some offer rewards and benefits at no real cost. I have for nearly a decade used a card with 1% back on purchases and 1% back on payments. Running all my usual spending through that and then just paying it off has net me a lot of money in that time that I just use for statement credit.
It’s easy to dispute charges should I ever need to. Rare since I’m cautious anyways, but the extra layer before my actual bank account is nice.
It has also built up a hell of a credit rating for me as well.
I live off a credit card, my money sits inside an offset account against my home loan the interest charged on that is calculated every 30 days at the end of the month so the more cash I have in there the less interest I pay on my mortgage.
The credit card is free with no fees or interest provided I pay it off on time with that date being every 30 days from the 15th of the month.
Thus at the end of the month when interest is calculated on my home loan I have more cash in my account then I would if I had of spent 2k that month on bills etc.
The other benefit is I earn points that the bank will exchange for cash with me so it’s kinda like free money.
For context I’m Australian with an Australian bank.
This set up is great if you’re disciplined for anyone due to the points etc however if you screw up spend beyond your means etc you will incur interest and that’s not good.
I make sure to never spend more then I actually have and it has worked wonders for me.
In the past 10 years I’ve probably been made about 7k back in points value.
Cash flights etc all for spending exactly as I do.
I should note the card is provided to me as part of my home loan package hence it has no fees attached as I pay an upfront cost for the “home loan wealth package”
If someone steals your debit card, they can directly take money out of your account. With credit cards, there’s a buffer between the product and the bank account, and it makes it easier to stop fraud
I’ve had my debit card information stolen before. My bank knew before I did, cancelled the fraudulent charges, and refunded my money without any action on my part. Doesn’t seem like a credit card would have been any advantage in my [admittedly anecdotal] case.
Banks can, but they’re not legally obligated to. With a credit card they are. (US)
It’s not fraud, it’s interest.
If you use a debit card and can’t cover a transaction, it just doesn’t go through. If you have a credit card then the bank pays and now you owe them, and they’ll charge you extra for that privilege.
You could just pay off your balance by the due date and you won’t be charged any interest.
This problem could be solved.
Well not to stop it before it happens, surely, but an easier time reclaiming your money due to the buffer.
Debit cards typically have PIN numbers.
I know these can be defeated in various ways, but its not usually as simple as, just steal someone’s card.
Also, you can just go to your bank or credit union, call them, report online or w/e: Hey, my card got stolen, these txns are fraud.
Might not be as streamlined or as fast as a payment challenge with a credit card, but its not that much worse.
But is it really worth all of the junk that you have to accept? I like the credit scoring, the monthly subscription, and, if you miss the date for paying back, the absurdly high fees. Well, yes, with the debit card you have, technically speaking, the risk of someone being able to make about 100€ worth of RFID payments, and then the code is needed again for the next 100€ RFID payments. For everything else that doesn’t involve RFID, the code is needed always.
The US implementation of chip and PIN left off the PIN. The reason given was “no one wants to put in a PIN every time” so for the vast majority of transactions you just hold up your card to the sensor or put it in the chip reader. PIN is only required for cash withdrawals in my experience.
What junk? Works same as a debt card but just not directly tied to a checking account, so less a big deal if it is lost or false charges made on it with companies reversing it. Get cashback on purchases, additional warranty on items, and able to do charge backs if company isn’t giving you a refund for whatever reason.
Most people who run into trouble are because they don’t realize credit cards aren’t free money so go beyond their budget. If you spend what you can afford and pay back each month question becomes more why should a debit card be used over a credit card?
Because people are reliant on debt because wages haven’t kept pace with expected standards of living.
Of for more ago well off people some cards offer perks like cash back or air miles and it’s free if you pay it off in full each month.
Also, in my country at least, you get more protection if you have an issue with the goods you’ve bought. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/section75-protect-your-purchases/
Fiscally responsible people do it because of the cash back/perks and 0% interest.
Fiscally irresponsible people do it because ‘free money’ (ignoring the 28% annual interest).
I buy stuff for work with my personal card and I’ve made probably thousands of dollars from the cash back. Even on my regular cards I get a couple hundred back off of stuff I normally buy.
There’s other benefits too like using points to buy plane tickets, fancy lobbies in the airport with free food, etc.
Because many people don’t actually have the money on hand. Some do but me and many others are spending money we don’t have yet. It’s a negative feedback loop of debt because capitalism sucks
Because I have to. A lot of platforms literally don’t support debit cards.
A lot of platforms literally don’t support debit cards.
You can get a Visa debit card from your bank; everyone takes Visa.
Yeah, I’m going to buy my games with bitcoin now.
Oh shit, the fee is higher than the price of the game, can I use Litecoin ?
Cumrocket is the way!
Thanks for the tip, I’m putting all my life savings into it then.
The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $0.67. Which means for a purchase larger than $34, Bitcoin is cheaper than the average credit card transaction fee.
I only buy games at $30 or cheaper. So that won’t work for me 🤷♂️
I don’t have a credit card. If you pay per transaction, is there at least no monthly base fee?
A credit card, in the US, has a transaction fee for the vendor, 1-3% of the purchase price, sometimes with a flat few cents fee on top.
The consumer has no transaction fee, but does pay interest (around 28% annually) if they don’t pay off the full balance every month (if they do pay it in full at the end of the month, there is no interest charge). Usually there will be a 1-2% cash back for the consumer as well.
Some credit cards also have an annual fee for the consumer. These generally have higher cash back rewards and higher vendor transaction fees than those that don’t.
Don’t forget secured cards, which require an upfront deposit, and cards with regular monthly or annual fees, simply for having them, regardless of whether you use them or not.
Thats the kind of credit cards you get offered if you are bad with credit cards (cough most Americans are cough thats kinda the whole business model cough), or, if someone steals your identity and you either don’t have enough time or money or otherwise can’t sufficiently prove to credit reporting agencies / banks that that is what happened.
Bitcoin is pretty old, newer cryptocurrencies are more efficient.
I’m glad we’re spending the equivalent of a couple dozen million households of electricity on it
You’re so right, environmental impact has not been assessed by any cryptocurrency ever made. Literally zilch. None. Nada.
Let’s not ask how much power Visa and MasterCard use for their global monopoly.
Literally orders of magnitude less? Are you not familiar with how proof of work crypto operates? Being energy inefficient is the whole point.
Meanwhile the US military’s energy budget eclipses global crypto mining essentially to maintain petrodollar dominance and American residents pay for it.
Litecoin is cool.
the fee might be higher at some points but you’re just blabbering. check mempool.space and actually look at what fees are at rn + consider that there are many chains and l2s that can be used for payment. B)
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying. That and do you expect enough normal people to learn about L2s and chains to make it worthwhile for Valve or whoever to implement support for anything besides the main chains of 2-3 major cryptos and stablecoins on ethereum main?
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying.
Average credit card transaction fee is ~2%. So a dollar of Bitcoin fees makes Bitcoin cheaper for any purchase over $50.
The transaction fee is not paid by the consumer (directly), and lord knows sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method.
sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method
Mullvad actually does this for their VPN service, which I think is great. For a VPN company that doesn’t want to store identifiers about you, taking crypto makes sense because that also doesn’t necessarily have identifiers about you attached that they could read or be required to store, unlike a card that requires your name, address, and card number.
Other than that though, no larger companies are going to do anything of the sort, let alone be likely to even implement it as a payment method to begin with. Tons of additional technical complexity for little to no benefit.
I hope the EU to come up with their own payment process to compete against and be a mainstream alternative to the US based ones.
Sadly, this is probably true. Unless they’re trying to steer customers away from more troublesome payment providers.
People who use credit cards don’t pay the transaction fee. If the product is priced at 10 Stanly nickle they only play 10 Stanley nickle. Lot of credit cards also offer cash back so people might get 1-5% back depending on what the category for the month is.
When it comes to transaction fees you are going to have to sell the vender on it than the consumer since they are the one paying.
Oh you’re definitely paying the credit card fee too, but since it’s the vendor who gets billed it’s just priced into the product. That’s why the product costs 10 Stanly nickle instead of 9 Stanly nickle.
Pay same in cash or credit. Priced in or not what the company asks for is what the consumer pays, so point being these crypto transaction arguments make no difference when it comes to fees. Like you said end retail price is already priced in.
Company wants 10 Stanley nickles consumer is charged 10 Stanley nickles regardless of payment method.
I mean either you care enough about payment processor censorship to go around them or you don’t. If the extra dollar isn’t worth it to you then that is what it is.
Nobody is going to rush to implement a payment system where the fees can change 5x hour to hour because that’s just customer dissatisfaction waiting to happen.
Credit card companies should be nonprofits under democratic control.
Euro has PSD2 which seems to be a step in the right direction
Isn’t that kind of what a credit union issued card is?
Could’ve would’ve should’ve
So many things could be so much better.
Poverty could end tomorrow if we wanted to.
War could end tomorrow if we wanted to
Healthcare could be free if we wanted to
Same for schools and education in general
“If we wanted to”
Let me rephrase that: if either the top 1% would let us, or if the 99% would just stand up and take what’s theirs, we could…
Part of me wonders if this is all a play to boost crypto values by the execs in these industries.
Devil’s advocate, it’s a play to get crypto banned cause it’s only used for illegal/disapproved activities.
Last time I checked, BTC transaction fees were prohibitively high to pay for 80$ AAAA games with them, and WAY too high to pay for a 5 USD single-developer itch.io game.
I haven’t looked at other Crypto in a while. I made some money off BTC, but I think it is wildly overvalued for a long time, and I’ve been disappointed in how un-currency-like other alternatives were, even those that have been around long enough that they are unlikely to be rug-pulls.
That said, if you need to get paid and Visa/MC won’t let you use them, I’m not going to attack you (too hard) for accepting Crypto. They are bad systems, but we live in Captialism, so you gotta get paid. They might be the least-worse system that is global and isn’t Visa/MC. I’m unlikely to buy your product that way, tho; I’m more likely to pirate than I am to participate in cryptocurrency again.
Neither side makes good points except about how the ither sucks. There arent any.
Crypto is to peacocking men what MLMs is to american housemoms.
If you do not know a lot about “crypto” then I would say the main thing to understand is that there is Bitcoin (not owned by any single entity) and then there is everything else. Other “coins” are owned by corporations that can make decisions about it and change it to some extent. These are extremely risky.
Bitcoin (btc) does have risk but much less. It is not owned by any company or person or country. It is like the internet, only exists because tens of thousands of internet providers(miners for Bitcoin) around the world make it possible. Bitcoin has, in its codebase, a limitation that any change must be agreed upon by 95% of these providers(miners). This way security patches and bug fixes can be added because everyone agrees those are good. Other harmful changes would never reach 95% agreement therefor could never be implemented. There is a limit of 21 million Bitcoin and this number can never increase unless 95% agree to it… which they never would. This is in stark contrast to normal money which is constantly printed(at random rates depending on who happens to be in control at that moment) so that the supply increases making its value drop.
Scamming happens with cryptos, Bitcoin, euros, dollars,yuan… and always will.
What about Ethereum? I always thought Bitcoin was something to avoid since it’s proof-of-work.
yeah, to me bitcoin is rather a interesting pioneeing project which now is obsolete. there are a ton of decentralized DLTs that re not bitcoin and not even a blockchain in some cases (like Holochain for example)
Monero should be used. It’s the only really private/secure coin, although I think it’s proof of work too.
I’m really hoping we figure out an alternative to monero that is less energy intensive though. It’s bonkers inefficient compared to other coin to mine, super anonymous though, so trade offs
Etherium, Solana…etc are the next level of more risky networks. They have distributed upgrade/change protocols as well but are not as decentralized as bitcoin. As for how efficient a coin is, I am not comparing that metric as efficiently does not correlate to risk. This post was just referring to risk.
there is Bitcoin (not owned by any single entity) and then there is everything else. Other “coins” are owned by corporations that can make decisions about it and change it to some extent. These are extremely risky.
What? Just ridiculous misinformation. Every coin but BTC is owned by corporations? Huh?
Personally, I’m not aware of any other coin that is not connected to a person or company. Can you name me a few? Note that coins like ethereum has clear central ownership and are not developed by community itself.
Tomorrow, ETH founder Vitalik (I think that was his name?) could tweet that he has taken a side in Israel-Palestine conflict, potentially angering good portion of ETH user base and dropping it’s value.
Monero?
Isn’t this a right wing meme about centrists, but with the text changed?
The Bitcoin side wouldn’t catch you, because that interferes with the user’s choice to hit the ground.
The one is used by the mafia, the other is the mafia. Which one are you siding with?
The mafia, they seem to have all the money.
Yes let’s definitely side with the scam that’s been around for two decades and its only practical use is to rug pull chumps yes this is good advice
Bitcoin is a lot of things, it’s not a scam. Some cryptocoins aren’t scams either or didn’t start as one.
A lot of crypto coins are scams
Bitcoin and any blockchain based payment system is not a viable alternative to payment processors at world scale. Unless power requirements per transaction go down literally exponentially, it will never be.
Having said all that: Bitcoin does work on the current limited scale, it works better and easier and faster han all payment processors, and most importantly: Bitcoin isn’t a giant dick wanting to insert itself into every orifice of your body
Fuck Visa, fuck MasterCard, fuck American Express, fuck all of them you fucking psychopathic narcissistic assholes
Bitcoin may not be a scam per se, but its main usage is to facilitate scams. The biggest of which is being a market that speculators can manipulate to make the currency they actually want.
Lmao, crypto tech bros coming out of the woodwork trying to get popularity for their bag holder’s game…
Also pretending that shit hasn’t been bought up by wall street
What? They have like 5%. You should revisit your stance
I honestly never understood how Lemmy, a privacy and decentralisation focused community, is so vehemently anti-crypto. It’s worse than genAI. Every time it is mentioned, everyone goes “crypto is a scam”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any good faith discussion around it, just “scam”, “pyramid scheme”, and “only criminals use it”.
Let’s get something out of the way immediately: shitcoins are a literal pyramid scheme and a scam. Anyone can make their own cryptocurrency in an evening, and anyone who throws money at them is either a fool or a gambler.
But I really don’t understand what people mean when they say Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Monero are a scam. Sure they can be used to scam you, just like Amazon gift cards can. Maybe it’s about the price volatility, but the price of all 3 mentioned before is up on a day, week, month, 6 months, year, and 5 year scale. It’s volatile, but is not a scam. If you bought and sold at two random points in time, it’s more likely you made a profit than “got scammed”. You know what actually is a scam? Credit scores, overdraft fees, having to pay to check your balance, and so many other fucked up practices in the US banking system.
“Criminals use them” is just the worst fucking argument, especially in a space like this. Are PGP, VPNs and TOR for criminals too? Do you think getting rid of crypto would stop crime?
And yes, proof of work fucking sucks. The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is a problem. I am not a cryptobro who spends all his time making trades and is here to tell you that crypto is the salvation. They are far from being “good” for everyday use. I just wanted to point out how it seems that critical thought gets shut down at the sight of those 6 letters, and I hope someone can explain to me what they find so terrible about crypto (aside from environmental concerns and shitcoins)
The entire concept is fundamentally flawed
You are basing a economy with real economic stakes on something that is massively unstable and very resource intensive.
I think the Lemmy userbase is too small and its easy for a few vocal voices to dominate the conversation.
There are often contradicting points that the Lemmy hivemind holds.
Like Lemmy wants to abolish the police but also wants to empower the police to take away people’s guns??? (Talking about the US btw)
Lemmy loves their doublethink
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme because it only keeps its value as long as people are constantly buying it. If no one wants to buy it, the value of any amount of bitcoin is zero. This is why people who have bitcoin are trying to convince anyone else to keep buying.
Your local government-backed currency does not have this problem, because you get paid with it, you pay taxes with it and vendors in your country have to accept it.
Lemmy is quite left-leaning, and the impetus behind creating Bitcoin was right-wing Austrian school economics. Now, it’s being pushed by literal fascists.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen fascists pushing Bitcoins, but then again I don’t frequent those spaces. I struggle to see how they are ideologically similar though. Doesn’t seem like a very authoritarian concept
And can we really say we know what brought about the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper?
I don’t know any crypto bros who aren’t also MAGA/libertarian/fascist
Many MAGA/libertarian/fascists love ice cream. Does that mean ice cream is bad? We should be able to make up our own minds about things instead of turning everything into a partisan issue. A broken clock is right twice a day.
They aren’t pushing pro-ice cream laws, this is a disingenuous take.
After a few cycles people start to realize blah blah blah explanation is really just when is the price going up. We’ve all heard it all by now. It starts feeling like being sold on a timeshare. We aren’t new clients to try to sell this topic too
We already know all the explaination and blockchain crap. We know the spiel and sat through it all through multiple cycles. It’s at this point like trying to sell a car to a car salesperson using tactics they already know.
So that’s the lack of enthusiasm. We are less likely to be new to this.
But then why still be anti bitcoin?
Because (like genAI) crypto-coin people as a general population will not shut up and it gets annoying to keep hearing the same spiel. And it’s an insulting one, about how everyone not on the Bitcoin train is a stupid loser and we’ll be kissing their ass and wishing we were them when the whole thing really rockets off. Sometimes that part isn’t entirely explicit, but I hear it in almost every pro-Bitcoin rant.
