It's interesting that at no time is legality or regulation discussed.
Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
11–20 of 113 posts
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#12This looked initially like a cool idea, then I realized that to trade with someone you have to have a mutual credit line with them, or through someone who already has a credit line. How is this any different than the current model, where the bank/government/central money issuer is our mutual credit line and why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people managing the credit for everyone? You could g…
Hi. You are correct, you need to have some credit line, possibly indirect, between you and the other party, if you want to send money or receive money with Offset. This is the core of how Offset works. > why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people managing the credit for everyone? I thought about this question for a long time myself. As a first note, I don't think Offset should completely replac…
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Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#13An actual credit card is blazing fast too. I don't know how this is immune to inflation.
At best this honestly is a solution looking for a problem.
At worst it's yet another ico scam.
I don't know why anyone would be interested in this. Sorry to be harsh but I worked in payment processing. This is a project going nowhere because it doesn't do anything new or useful
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#14This looked initially like a cool idea, then I realized that to trade with someone you have to have a mutual credit line with them, or through someone who already has a credit line. How is this any different than the current model, where the bank/government/central money issuer is our mutual credit line and why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people managing the credit for everyone? You could g…
Hi. You are correct, you need to have some credit line, possibly indirect, between you and the other party, if you want to send money or receive money with Offset. This is the core of how Offset works. > why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people managing the credit for everyone? I thought about this question for a long time myself. As a first note, I don't think Offset should completely replac…
> I expect that fees with Offset will be much lower than what you get with your banks.
For p2p loans this makes sense. For credit card, my bank currently pays me 1.5% of the money they extort from businesses. I'm paying the same to the business whether I use cc or not, so I take the kickback (my refusal to participate will not hurt the system, since debit cards are the only other option since cash is not viable for online commerce). So advertising 'low fees' really means that I'm going to have to pay money to do things I currently get paid to do.
> It takes about three "bash" lines to set up an Offset node in the cloud, and you have your own credit hub.
This seems insecure in the same way as bitcoin - if a guy gets your private key number thing, you lose everything. Whereas with real CCs your bank will make you whole if fraud happens, since instead of an algorithm being the law we have humans who can can revoke transactions. With friends loaning to each other this is a lesser issue since your algorithm can allow reverting transactions, unlike bitcoin where everything has to be final for the currency to be usable. I guess i can set my credit limit with a merchant to the exact amount i owe for each transaction? But still feels a bit unsafe.
The big issue I see with this is that poor people will always be seeking money and rich/financially reponsible people will never need to get money through this. Aside from rare events like buying a house or extended job loss, in which case they'll end up getting money through rich/financially responsible friends instead of the poor ones they always loan to. So the system will get split into a few 'providers' and many 'leeches.' What do you think about that?
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#15From the website:
Incentives: Blockchain: Rewards first adopters. Offset: Early and late adopters have the same money creation power.
Does this mean there's a negative incentive for early adopters? I.e we take on more risk with an untested technology but late adopters get the same benefits at lower risk, once the technology is mature.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#16Congratulations. You have reinvented tally sticks. Snark aside, I wish you lots of luck, have thought about this model a lot, think there is probably a small place for it in the world. Two suggestions from random stranger on the internet, take them for what they're worth: * don't use the word "money." This is a private credit network, not money. Private credit networks sometimes become money, but they don't start out…
> there is a tension between store of value and medium of exchange
This tension only exists under Keynesian reasoning. It goes away when you use a theory that does a better job handling equilibria.
The Keynesian claim is that if you have a deflationary medium of exchange, people won’t spend it. This isn’t actually true - the end result of a predictable deflationary asset (e.g. something with a fixed or essentially fixed supply) is similar to the situation we have now, but more efficient. Instead of having, say, 10% of your money in cash and 90% in spoos to avoid getting screwed by inflation, you can just keep 100% of your money in cash. You will have the same exposure to global capital growth, people too poor to have a brokerage account will have exposure to growth as well, and you don’t have to deal with converting between spoos and cash when you spend money.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#17A nation-state will ban or monopolize any competitive alternative to state-backed currency or debt (obligation transfers). Just look at current macroeconomic policy around the world, vast sums of obligations ("debt") being created.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#18Very interesting. I had a somewhat complicated question about sanctions, but I think the main question boils down to whether you are based in US.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#19Is this related to the Offst project that was released about a year ago (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756353)?
I thought it was a neat idea when I read about it then, but never got around to looking into it further. I’ll have to make some time soon to try it out.
Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
#20From the website: Incentives: Blockchain: Rewards first adopters. Offset: Early and late adopters have the same money creation power. Does this mean there's a negative incentive for early adopters? I.e we take on more risk with an untested technology but late adopters get the same benefits at lower risk, once the technology is mature.
If it’s useful for you, you’ll adopt it whether someone who comes along later is better or worse off.