381–390 of 409 posts
Is this a legitimate alternative domain name for PayPal, or is it a parody or phishing site? It's not paypal.com. Apparently it's legit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45250319
It’s so dumb because they are training everyone to be phished by scammers.
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You probably need to update your sources. It’s super cheap to send ETH https://www.gasfees.io/
Huh, I was basing this on NFT gas prices since that's the part of blockchain I've always been most curious about, I didn't realize that simple ETH transfers required far less gas than things like minting and selling NFTs.
A lot of activity moved to L2s, making L1 gas cheaper, and so simple ETH and token sends are cheaper. L2s will continue to get cheaper, with the next hard fork around November and L1 gas should be even cheaper with the hard fork after the next.
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> cold email marketing earlier this year, and it's all about learning to be a spammer You sound surprised. What's the difference between "cold email marketing" and "spamming"?
Cold email marketing can be highly targeted. Like, reaching out to your 5 potential customers and telling them about your service in terms of their specific context. Spamming is not that.
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The foreign individual is likely better off in game theory terms, but their country is collectively likely worse off due to a reduction in their central bank's independence and ability to perform seigniorage/print money. Difficult to ban for the foreign nation, and probably results in a greater need for dollars for their government also.
Probably not. You would be right if we were talking about honest, competent central bankers. But most people live in poor countries. Why are those countries poor? Every country is different, but poor countries are mostly poor because they are governed by kleptocrats, generally including their central bankers, and hyperinflation in particular is a constant menace. When the central bankers aren't directly kleptocratic…
For example China, India and Malaysia have grown quite substantially are not particularly transparent, but they are alike in their resistance to dollarization. On the other hand Ecuador and El Salvador are examples of countries that have fully embraced dollarization with less than great outcomes. There are examples in the middle as well, but there is not a clear trend that it's necessarily a change for the better of the country and it's citizens.
To me it seems like a continuation of the IMF's dollarization as described by Joseph Stiglitz in 'Globalization and its discontents', in terms of mechanisms and effects on recipient countries. From this perspective it's less like transferring power from kleptocrats to the people, and more like choosing kleptocrats that are offering a better deal.
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They're not as openly shitty at least. Crypto was supposed to be an alternative to all this but, well, look how that worked out.
Crypto was supposed to be an alternative to all this but, well, look how that worked out. Bitcoin hasn't really changed in over a decade and is trading at all time highs. What "didn't work out" in your mind?
Maybe you live somewhere that your landlord takes bitcoin, that's nice for you, my landlord wants USD. If you would like to fund me finding out if my landlord will actually take bitcoin if I ask nicely enough then please feel free to send a couple bitcoins to 3CzUW828J2u5wCB2xD4iE9kH8dPTokjxow.
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Only when it's the literal only option at checkout. Then it's the merchant's choice, not my problem. When possible, I'll always opt to use a different instantaneous method (e.g. iDeal or direct debit), or give the merchant my money directly and wait 3 days for the IBAN transfer to go through. Using paypal just risks the money being indefinitely frozen on either side and them taking a cut for the privilege, if it work…
If the merchant screws you on a transaction paid via IBAN transfer, how do you get your money back?
If I really don't trust the seller, I can always still get some sort of insurance thing, but an X% insurance fee needn't be the default for every transaction. (Even if the % is invisible to you, then the seller updates their product's prices. The seller won't choose to eat less just to finance your transaction fees... the only way to not pay those is operate a deficit, which eventually leads to bankruptcy and loss of your warranty, which isn't a desirable situation either)
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And they make it as difficult and hidden as possible. At the same time they advertise to "support sepa now" as if it's something new while by law they have to process such transactions within two hours for over 10 years now.
At ING it's just a button click. It's directly next to the transaction on their app.
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Do you think that the rich dipshits that Zelle enables are significantly better? They're just responsible for an older slower form of the same abuse. We desperately need a ethical alternative, buy I think were going to have to build it ourselves.
They're not as openly shitty at least. Crypto was supposed to be an alternative to all this but, well, look how that worked out.
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Probably not. You would be right if we were talking about honest, competent central bankers. But most people live in poor countries. Why are those countries poor? Every country is different, but poor countries are mostly poor because they are governed by kleptocrats, generally including their central bankers, and hyperinflation in particular is a constant menace. When the central bankers aren't directly kleptocratic…
I agree that kleptocracy and incompetence are a important factor, but I'm not sure it's the only one. There's a correlation between corruption indices and low GDP but I'm not sure it's causal. For example the US scores only moderately in corruption index terms, but does quite well in GDP terms. Arguably GDP growth rates are a better measure, in which case there's possibly a inverse correlation. For example China, Ind…
I do agree that dollarization hasn't been resoundingly successful, and that does undermine my thesis somewhat. I agree that cryptocurrencies are like super-dollarization: not only do they remove domestic government control of monetary policy, they remove or weaken domestic government control of and visibility into capital flows, banking services such as savings and lending, and payments. If that would be great, you'd expect dollarization to at least be good. And it isn't clear that it has been. It hasn't been obviously disastrous either—you can make credible arguments that Ecuador or El Salvador would be either better off or worse off without it—but it hasn't been obviously beneficial.
I think "choosing kleptocrats that are offering a better deal" is a good description of dollarization and, for example, Tether, USDC, or CBDCs. But, as a description of Bitcoin and Ethereal, it's comprehensively incorrect; there haven't ever been any credible allegations of corruption in their blockchains, unless you count Ethereal's DAO rollback. They've so far been completely immune to the kind of politically-motivated currency manipulation that is the actual official job of central banks behind fiat currencies like the dollar.