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Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

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Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#211

Post by siddthesquid »

baby wrote: post #182
jchw wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of us are not really deep into the finance space. Maybe there's a good reason it's left unsaid, but the question I came away with after reading that page and this comment is, why are businesses finding crypto easier/faster/better? To me, it's not 100% clear exactly who Tempo is for and not for, and why blockchain is more suitable than traditional centralized database technology here. And it sounds like this sys…

I'll attempt an answer: Today, if you want to transact between businesses or retail (folks like you and I), you need to find a route between the two entities' banks. This route might take several hops, passing through some central banks, and some of these hops might be instant or might take days to actually settle. On top of that, you need to pay the service that helped you find a route (SWIFT) and potentially the no…

I think the technology of blockchain is irrelevant.

If something can be accomplished on the blockchain, which requires N nodes, a business can probably replicate that same objective with less than N nodes because they don't have to pay the cost of verifying that nodes are acting honestly. This business is incentivized to be honest because otherwise they lose their business. Someone has to pay those costs for the N nodes on the blockchain - who will it be? Transactions seem cheap now because funding for these blockchains is often used to subsidize costs.

You mentioned ease of use, like the use of SDKs, but blockchain technology does not enable that. All blockchain can do is that if you ask it "hey i was told the state of the world was this. is it true?" and the blockchain will tell you yes or no. If you want to provide those kinds of guarantees to customers in a reliable way, all you need is cryptography, not blockchain.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#212

Post by serial_dev »

udev4096 wrote: post #207
baby wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cryptocurrency is basically a distributed database, except that you are getting different actors who don't necessarily trust one to run it cooperatively.

It's a LOT more than that. You are still stuck in satoshi-era. Things have evolved quite a bit that it's no longer just a db sync

Care to elaborate?

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#213

Post by CamelCaseName »

dmbche wrote: post #204
apinstein wrote: post #151

Here's the play. It's very simple, and it's quite good. Stripe processes a LOT of money. The customers that get that money need to move it around. Often to banks. Stripe makes no money on that. Over the last few years, stablecoins have become a preferred means to hold and move money (for convenience, etc). Stablecoin providers make money on their float -- selling stablecoins means you get free deposits, and risk-free…

Beautiful - clean and clear. Thank you. I'm not in that space, but how stable is that 4%? What is it correlated to?

Interest rates. Their returns are dependent on what they invest in, which is usually US treasuries (since the token is pegged to USD)

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#214

Post by jameslk »

pc wrote: post #46

There are lots of crypto skeptics on HN (and we ourselves were disappointed with crypto's payments utility for much of the past decade), so it might be interesting to share what changed our mind over the past couple of years: we started to notice a lot of real-world businesses finding utility in stablecoins. For example, Bridge (a stablecoin orchestration platform that Stripe acquired) is used by SpaceX for managing…

> so it might be interesting to share what changed our mind over the past couple of years

I'm guessing the GENIUS Act had something to do with it too? Now that bank depositors have an incentive to hold bank-issued USD stablecoins given their priority in cases of bankruptcy[0], it seems likely there will be a lot more transactions with them as well

0. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/158...

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#215

Post by hvb2 »

stevoski wrote: post #208
pc wrote: post #46

There are lots of crypto skeptics on HN (and we ourselves were disappointed with crypto's payments utility for much of the past decade), so it might be interesting to share what changed our mind over the past couple of years: we started to notice a lot of real-world businesses finding utility in stablecoins. For example, Bridge (a stablecoin orchestration platform that Stripe acquired) is used by SpaceX for managing…

“Argentinian bike importer”? A little bit of trouble coming up with enough examples of anyone who wants or needs this, I think?

It's a good example though, a country whose currency is unreliable and where access to another more reliable currency is hard. That IS a use case

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#216

Post by procaryote »

stale2002 wrote: post #169
jrm4 wrote: post #125

Ah the layers. Okay, so one: Obviously pointless from a tech POV. There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. But then, why? Sadly, as someone who does like the ideals of true cryptocurrency, yet another way to make sure "real" crypto doesn't happen, much like what is happening to BTC. Here's hoping (yeah, it's a long shot) people see through all of this and maybe, MAYB…

> There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. There absolutely is. Its called having access to the ecosystem. The money features that exist in the current blockchain landscape are simply a better developer ecosystem, with many more features, than the non existent "Database driven", uhh money tools. Blockchains are no longer about the singular feature of having a trustle…

Could you give an example of such a "money related feature"?

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#218

Post by omarish »

pc wrote: post #46

There are lots of crypto skeptics on HN (and we ourselves were disappointed with crypto's payments utility for much of the past decade), so it might be interesting to share what changed our mind over the past couple of years: we started to notice a lot of real-world businesses finding utility in stablecoins. For example, Bridge (a stablecoin orchestration platform that Stripe acquired) is used by SpaceX for managing…

> Importantly, none of these businesses are using crypto because it's crypto or for any speculative benefit. They're performing real-world financial activity, and they've found that crypto (via stablecoins) is easier/faster/better than the status quo ante.

One sign of a technology becoming mature is when it stops needing to be the main character. It starts to make room for what it does, not what it is.

When thefacebook launched, it wasn't a PHP-based social network; it was a social network for college students.

Blockchain has been the main character for a very long time and it's really encouraging to see a product launch like this. Congrats to everyone involved in making this product a reality.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#219

Post by udev4096 »

apinstein wrote: post #151

Here's the play. It's very simple, and it's quite good. Stripe processes a LOT of money. The customers that get that money need to move it around. Often to banks. Stripe makes no money on that. Over the last few years, stablecoins have become a preferred means to hold and move money (for convenience, etc). Stablecoin providers make money on their float -- selling stablecoins means you get free deposits, and risk-free…

Bullshit. The biggest stable coin, Tether, is pure scam. They are essentially creating money out of nowhere. They were found guilty of massive fraud and were fined $18M [1]. They refuse to get audited by a third-party [2]. The ones that do audit them are just as sketchy as them [3]. I would recommend watching this video to grasp the scope of their fraud [4]

[1] - https://coingeek.com/tether-bitfinex-prohibited-from-operati...

[2] - https://ecoinimist.com/2024/09/20/concern-over-tether-audits...

[3] - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-fines-tether-former-audit...

[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-whuXHSL1Pg

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#220

Post by sublimefire »

asdev wrote: post #17

I'm trying to figure out how this is decentralized? "A diverse group of entities" will run validator nodes. This sounds like it's just a Solana clone then.

Validators imply that somebody needs to look at the ledger to make sure there are no split views and the log is consistent. Similar to the way cert transparency ledgers are monitored.

I did not see the mention of decentralised BTW, why would it matter here? You trust business entity at the end of the day.

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