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Coin: A step in the wrong direction

techendo.co

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Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#2

Post by carsongross »

The hating on Coin is unbelievable. It seems like a great first step towards backwards-compatible card consolidation.

Are there going to be issues with it? Of course.

Will it last in the long run? Well, the phone thing is obvious, kids. I bet these guys are aware of that and have a plan.

Regardless, its an innovative piece of hardware that moves the ball. That's better than any of the shit I've built.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#3

Post by jmduke »

I dislike this article: it seems to suffer from 'perfect is the enemy of good'-itis and willful misunderstanding of how complex -- and difficult -- commerce can be.

The author basically argues that things should be wonderful and easy and the service providers should handle it all (ignoring the difficulties of such a provision):

I should use a plastic card, cheap, easily replaceable, low cost (free in most cases), and my card account should buffer my purchase as long as the combined total of credit/cash in my accounts is greater than or equal to my purchase. I should then be able to place either the entirety of my purchase or parts of my purchase in separate accounts that provide different benefits. (Think, business, flight mileage, cash back rewards, etc) The service should often be smart enough to learn where I move my purchase and do so automatically if I so choose.

and

I believe we should be moving away from cards altogether. I think google wallet, square, and other RFID/NFC technologies are thinking about the future, where our devices are consolidated and integrated with the world around us. Bitcoin, a virtual currency, proves the success of something that exists purely in the aether, and keeping a Bitcoin wallet on your phone is easy.

How is going from 'wallet filled with cards' to 'one card' not a step in the right direction to 'no cards'? Maybe the technology or industry isn't moving as fast as the author would like, but it's entirely hyperbolic to say that Coin's trajectory runs opposite from the author's ideal vision.

Coin's goal is to abstract the ownership of a credit card away from the plastic itself. If you want RFID/NFC to succeed -- as the author does, as I do, and as I'm sure many other people do, then that's a good thing.

(The preorder legality side of things isn't my domain, so I can't really comment on that.)

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#5

Post by nayefc »

What this article suggests is pretty much impractical. The writer clearly does not understand the financial / payments infrastructure. Coin is not perfect, but at least they're taking a practical and pragmatic look on the problem.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#6

Post by sciguy77 »

By his logic wouldn't Kickstarter be illegal? Many KS projects charge users before making a product (they use Amazon to process the payment, but the user's credit card is still charged, which may very well be a Visa). I think this is a little silly.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#7

Post by rickyc091 »

jmduke wrote: post #3

I dislike this article: it seems to suffer from 'perfect is the enemy of good'-itis and willful misunderstanding of how complex -- and difficult -- commerce can be. The author basically argues that things should be wonderful and easy and the service providers should handle it all (ignoring the difficulties of such a provision): I should use a plastic card, cheap, easily replaceable, low cost (free in most cases), and…

The one plastic card approach seemed to describe https://walla.by/the-wallaby-card

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#8

Post by aclimatt »

To clarify about the pre-order issue: There's nothing inherently wrong with asking for funds to push the development of a product forward. Kickstarter has done a great job of promoting that model, and the world has seen a lot of good come out of it.

However, Kickstarter has also done a lot of work to educate the public about the risk of this type of funding (certainly to their own legal benefit or otherwise), and thus the public can better understand that they are dontating money toward a dream, versus buying the next generation video game console a few weeks before it comes out.

Coin is taking your money to bring a product to market, while acting like that product already exists. Answers in the FAQ like "we don't take your shipping address because you might move" are a willfully ignorant slap in the face, because they are far more likely the ones at risk of going out of business than me moving houses.

If they said very clearly that you were funding a new product with all the inherent risks, like Lockitron did, this would be a different story. But not educating the consumer about what's actually going on is exactly what the FTC is trying to protect against.

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