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Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

tempo.xyz

361–370 of 1001 posts

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#361

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-o…

Counterpoint. Tether has grown into one of the most profitable, well funded companies on the planet. Their past growing pains are irrelevant to where they are now. They make $30-50 million per day with just 200 employees. They are the 18th largest holder of US debt, ahead of UAE and Germany. Last year, Tether achieved $14 billion in profit, surpassing Pfizer, Tesla, and BlackRock. https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560604740855

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm still unclear what the crypto really adds to this play. stripe customers need to move their money around, and they need a trusted source to hold money. stripe could just do that. why add crypto into the mix?

There's over 75 billion in daily tether turnover... do the math. Not everyone is a boomer..

wash trades go in, wash trades go out, you can't explain that!

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm still unclear what the crypto really adds to this play. stripe customers need to move their money around, and they need a trusted source to hold money. stripe could just do that. why add crypto into the mix?

There's over 75 billion in daily tether turnover... do the math. Not everyone is a boomer..

There’s an estimated 7,500 billion dollar turnover of fiat currency in forex markets daily.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#364
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…

It sounds great, but every time I see this argument, I end up going down the rabbit hole of actually studying how stablecoins operate. And every time, I come to the same conclusion: they always rely on trust in an off-chain oracle or custodian. At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Bitcoin (and possibly a few others) is one of…

Bitcoin makes the least sense of any of these schemes. Proof of work is just proof of sota ASIC ownership, which is just proof of stake by another name. Why not just use POS like everyone else and avoid dumping the carbon? Bitcoin is going to be one of those things in the history books that will seem utterly incomprehensibly irresponsible to future generations.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#365
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…

Patrick, congratulations on launching Tempo. If there was a company where it actually made sense to build and use a blockchain it would be Stripe.

The website is a bit painful to read but I thought it provided good general information for potential partners.

As as a dev, my questions are why did your team decide to build a new L1 chain instead of an Ethereum L2 and why did you all stick with the EVM architecture instead of looking at something like the MoveVM?

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#366
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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

It may be good for the individual, but is it good for Argentina or LATAM as a whole?

I'm no economist, but wouldn't shifting transactions from their currency to another (USD/stablecoin) inherently destabilize their economy even more?

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#367

It doesn't look like there's any information about the consensus mechanism, until that's described in detail, it's unclear what the advantages are, or if it really is suited to payments. There are existing algorithms (like Avalanche L1, or some of the Ethereum L2s), which have fast finality particularly suited to the point-of-sale use case. They cut out a lot of work for themselves expecting stable coins to materiali…

They cut out a lot of work for themselves expecting stable coins to materialize on their own chain.

I assume there will be bridges to other chains so even if, say, USDT is not natively issued on Tempo you can bridge it.

It's Stripe, so maybe they are allowed to mint their own USD stable coin

Stripe has USDB. https://www.bridge.xyz/news/usdb

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#368
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…

It sounds great, but every time I see this argument, I end up going down the rabbit hole of actually studying how stablecoins operate. And every time, I come to the same conclusion: they always rely on trust in an off-chain oracle or custodian. At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Bitcoin (and possibly a few others) is one of…

> At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent.

Except they are frequently _not_. I dislike crypto on principle, but you can't look at the exorbitant transfer fees and latency that a lot of banks charge for common transactions (Visa/MasterCard are especially bad) and say that crypto has no potential.

Yes, it would be easier if we could just trust our banks to offer instant settlement and very low fees, but they don't.

The problem with banks pointing to banking regulation is that they helped shape the regulation - and they did so to protect their business, not to help consumers.

We know that central banks are great at monetary policy. We know that decentralized protocols remove a lot of the more parasitic traits of banks. Why not have a central bank currency that can be traded on the blockchain, especially since converting it to real money will still entail KYC?

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds great, but every time I see this argument, I end up going down the rabbit hole of actually studying how stablecoins operate. And every time, I come to the same conclusion: they always rely on trust in an off-chain oracle or custodian. At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Bitcoin (and possibly a few others) is one of…

Bitcoin makes the least sense of any of these schemes. Proof of work is just proof of sota ASIC ownership, which is just proof of stake by another name. Why not just use POS like everyone else and avoid dumping the carbon? Bitcoin is going to be one of those things in the history books that will seem utterly incomprehensibly irresponsible to future generations.

Bitcoin makes a lot of sense, if you don't want central banks to print your monies and devalue it. If you don't care about that, then it doesn't make sense for you. But really, the 21M cap is about only point that matters about BTC, the other features have to be there but are secondary.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many of the crypto skeptic comments on this story are massively out of touch with the products and sophistication of the crypto industry. For those of us who aren’t, the question has basically been flipped to “what does a bank add to this situation?” . I’m typing this shortly after buying my groceries with a visa debit card that was funded 30 seconds before the transaction over Lightning Network with Bitcoin that…

Unless I read this wrong there were likely two "traditional" banks in this process you just described? At the very least it sounds at least twice as complicated as how I pay for groceries with no obvious benefit.

What banks are those?

The debit card issuer is a non-bank issuer on the Visa payment network.

LN coins are self custody origin coins.

No banks I see, except the grocery store’s on the other side of me. But soon they will accept LN directly in a few years or less.

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