Neoliberalism effectively stopped any history. We are living in a Neoliberal Atemporality. Or more precisely: we have lived through it and are now about to leave it. Not sure what will follow next, but one thing is certain: the history is about to reboot itself.
HN is traditionally anti crypto, but just want to point out that literally no one in this world can stop you accepting Bitcoin payments. That's the true power of decentralization.
As a consumer, I would only pay with Bitcoin if it was something that I really really wanted. Usually there are competitors that will accept credit cards, so I would prefer them. Bitcoin offers nothing to me that I value.
One potential benefit (which merchants so far don't show you) is that cryptos is free for the merchants to accept. Credit cards can take a massive chunk out of your profit and they're open to charge back fraud.
Cryptocurrencies remove those fees and the risk for charge back fraud, so the merchant earns more when you pay them with cryptos. To incentivize this they could charge you less than if you paid with a credit card.
According to [1] right now, if you want your bitcoin transaction to have a good chance of being in the next block, the fee is 18,450 satoshis, i.e. $1.11
LOL, "broken".
However, unlike you I am not trying to advertize any cryptocurrency here. Only wanted to talk about decentralized solutions. And bcash is exactly an example of a NOT decentralized cryptocurrency.
Anyway, I don't want to argue with you. Have fun with your s*coin.
> Presumably, displaying a bitcoin address isn't illegal, and you are not in control of who sends you coins.
Both parts of your statement are naive and wrong.
Soliciting payment in any currency other than the national currency is illegal. No one is going to be fooled by claims of "oh I just put our corporate bitcoin address up for...uh...personal aesthetics; we weren't actually suggesting customers can pay us that way".
In any case, where is the documentation for the annual audit? When the tax department looks at the corporate bank statements, what do you think they'll see?
I own a company here, we are required by law to hire an external auditing agency. Do you think the auditing agency is going to, what?, just lie to the government for me when it is obvious to them I'm accepting payments in bitcoin since there is no documentation for local currency payments?
The tax departments come to our office every year and goes over the books. They are looking for tax evasion, money laundering, and so on. But it would be pretty trivial to spot if someone is getting paid in Bitcoin.
I'm trying to imagine how you think the conversation would go when they audit the company Bitcoin account, "Oh, gee, some bitcoin got transferred to the company account. Dunno how THAT happened! Ha ha. Guess it was just a DONATION! We were definitely NOT breaking the law! Don't look at our invoicing system that shows we marked that as a payment received for order #81351."
Just like nobody can _stop_ you from murdering another person or demanding a bribe or any number of terrible things.
I don't understand the point of your vehement sophistry. Everyone understands how societies work. There are laws. People get punished after the fact for transgressing them. Cryptocurrency is not somehow magically exempt from that reality.
The person you replied to said that cryptocurrencies are illegal where they are. You said nobody can stop you from accepting cryptocurrencies. Just like nobody can stop you from doing any other illegal thing, like not paying your taxes or taking drugs. Sure, you can do these things and you may even get away with it, but if you get caught, you get fines or jail time or whatnot. If cryptocurrencies are illegal where the person you responded to is, sure they technically can accept cryptocurrencies, but if they get caught, its no different than getting caught doing any other illegal activity. You might say "well, its hard to get caught!" but you could say the same thing about laundering money, evading taxes or buying drugs, yet people get caught doing these things all the time.
"Crypto" should not be exclusive to mean "cryptography" however it is undesirable to reuse a shortening within the same field. Which is true in this example given "cryptocurrency" relies on "cryptography". Whoever came up with the term "crypto" for "cryptocurrency" did not think it through enough. Especially on any technical website, the usage of the newer and less relevant [1] shortening is unnecessary. TL;DR simply use the term cryptocurrency if you're discussing cryptocurrency.
[1] Yes, since cryptocurrency depends on strong cryptography. If the latter is broken, cryptocurrency is also, but so it the entire Internet.
I agree that they it shouldn't be used if it's possible to mix them up (crypto shouldn't be used to mean cryptography either if it's possible to mix it up with cryptocurrencies). This was not such an instance.
The English language is ever changing, we re-purpose and come up with new words all the time. In daily use "cryptocurrencies" is long to type and say, so when the context is clear it's easier to just use "crypto".
Note: I actually try to use "cryptocurrencies" too.
> (crypto shouldn't be used to mean cryptography either if it's possible to mix it up with cryptocurrencies)
> The English language is ever changing, we re-purpose and come up with new words all the time.
Except that my argument isn't that the old meaning is older (ie. no appeal to tradition, nor is appeal to novelty valid); it is that the older meaning is:
1) Far more important than the new one, and
2) Far broader, widely available and adopted (NOT a niche)
3) Is a dependency for the new one.
Those are 3 very good reasons why using crypto for cryptocurrency doesn't make sense, except perhaps if you're talking within the circles of that niche (hint: not here).
> In daily use "cryptocurrencies" is long to type and say, so when the context is clear it's easier to just use "crypto".
Use an autocomplete to make 'crypto' change to 'cryptocurrency'.
It is obvious to you. However the practice of using that abbreviation for that term is widespread, and is used wrongly and is being confusing all too often.
Browsers? Not necessarily browsers. iOS and macOS have native support for that. Not sure about other OSes but hey it isn't me who's too lazy to type what they mean.
An opinionated commenter? An? You're assuming I'm alone in this. The amount of upvotes on that comment alone suggests otherwise.
I still need to pay for food and rent/mortgage between now and then though. No point in comparing BTC acceptability in 10 years time if I can’t support myself until that point in time.
Edit: For me converting BTC in funds I can use to buy food (not just for myself but also my kitty), pay my bills (rent, electricity, gas, water, internet, mobile, AWS) is a pain in the ass.
Sure there are online stores they will accept bitcoin, but not my local supermarket, sure some isp’s will accept butcoin but then I’m limiting my options of who I can use.
With PayPal (yes I hate them just as much as everyone else) I can get an invoice paid and have the funds in my bank account seconds later.
I like the idea of a decentralised Payment process. But atm it’s not for me for a number of reasons not just acceptability.
Never said you should give up anything. Only that things take time. In 2009 you couldn't buy anything with cryptocurrencies. Today you not only can buy many things but in many countries (and regimes!) cryptocurrencies are the only way to preserve a little of what's left from previous wealth. Think Venezuela.
Yeah, I'm probably one of the people that you are describing.
Crypto-money does not work. I would love if it worked, I also would love if somebody learned how to reverse entropy growth or got time travel working in some way. Yet, none of those work. (And yes, crypto-money isn't on the same level of those two, maybe some day somebody will manage to make it work, if so, great!)
Be sure that your label of "anti crypto" is much more a tag over you than the large HN crowd.
I'm not saying paypal is blameless (especially since their customer service is broken and proving yourself innocent is difficult) but their behavior is driven by government regulation against fraud and shady businesses.
It's easy to say use decentralized solutions, like Bitcoin but then customers are more susceptible to fraud(no chargebacks for example)
If the richest and most powerful countries say "there is no climate change" and "others want to destroy our economy", then the answer is a pessimistic one. The same applies to countries that say "yes, there is a climate change and we must do something", but in the end avoid doing anything to unwind the death spiral.
> Most rich countries acknowledge climate change and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US.
You could generalise that to:-
Most rich countries acknowledge <foo is a problem> and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US.
Where <foo> is healthcare, corporate governance, lobbying, women's rights, racism, income equality, prison incarceration rates, police brutality.
Growing up in the UK in the 80's I was fascinated by America and planned on one day visiting if not living there.
Now? If I leave the UK (and I probably will) it'll likely be Germany or Holland, they aren't perfect (what is?) but they look a lot better than the US/UK these days.
The problem is: if you remove yourself, it's still going on back home. It's probably better to stay where you have some power to try to change it for everyone's good, particularly when foo is something like climate that affects the whole world. (or that's what I tell myself when Canada beckons)
Maybe but then on the flip side in my country we've had a decade of things getting progressively worse up to and including the massively pointless, expensive and dangerous Brexit.
I'm pretty tired of it to be honest, I don't recognise this country any more.
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