Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

tempo.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 1001 posts

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#471

Post by root_axis »

jimkleiber wrote: post #303
root_axis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be assured that future administrations will not be turning off anyone's money spigot, now that the door is open it's impossible to close.

Hmm, I think plenty of administrations (or rather, legislative bodies, if we actually want to get back to the Constitution) have acted in a way that made it less profitable for businesses to operate, so I think it's very possible to close.

Cryptocurrency regulation isn't a cause that most people are passionate about in either direction, so reeling it back in won't afford politicians any popular support. All it can do is create rich enemies who spend lots of money to attack political threats. There's simply no incentive to crack down on it.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#472

Post by spookie »

dperfect wrote: post #348
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…

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…

> So what are stablecoins really trying to do? Circumvent regulation? Implement something the banks just aren't willing to do themselves?

Circumventing sanctions.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#473

Post by flumpcakes »

logicchains wrote: post #407
rebolek wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU, regulations are heavy and the result is I can send money instantly for free. That’s actually what the regulations are for. To protect free trade from bad actors.

Try sending money to a supplier in Iran or Russia and tell me how helpful those EU regulations are.

"I want to avoid sanctions illegally"

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#475

Post by Bjartr »

all2 wrote: post #423
raincole wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Stablecoin is not a technology. It's an excuse. An excuse to do what banks do while not being regulated like a bank or using the infrastructure banks use. Similar to how Airbnb is not a technology but an excuse to do what hotels do without hotel's license. So it makes no sense to compare it to database,…

Government granted licenses are the root of many, many ills.

They're also the solution to many. Like any tool, they can be used well or used poorly. It's not really sufficient to call out that they can be problematic, it needs to be down that they are problematic in this case and that an unregulated system wouldn't simply trade present downsides with larger ones that the regular holds at bay.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#476

Post by consp »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #445
rebolek wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU, regulations are heavy and the result is I can send money instantly for free. That’s actually what the regulations are for. To protect free trade from bad actors.

Protection and control are indistinguishable. And secondly what if the State is a bad actor? "Protecting" free trade from "bad actors" is just an extension of the state to control what "free trade" is from what it considers "bad actors". Bad behavior does exist, but current technology far exceeds the capacity of bureaucracy to implement free trade, protection from bad actors, and most importantly Trust. The state its…

> And secondly what if the State is a bad actor?

That's ad hominem. You can make that argument for any player (stripe, any intermediary, the customer etc).

Personally I trust the state (at least mine) more than any corporation. But that's just me.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#477

Post by lifeisstillgood »

So the way I’m understanding the conversation is that

1. We all desperately need a sane digital instant means of transferring money between “institutions” that just works

2. No-one believes that a third party solution would not end up with that third party holding everyone over a barrel (Visa but on steroids). So any simple “use Postgres” is out

3. So it’s either a trustless, open blockchain (bitcoins blockchain or possibly this Tempo). But there are huge drawbacks to The Blockchain - apart from the ratty reputation it has so far, there are problems with making a reversal of payment of both parties don’t agree, and other issues as nauseum.

I don’t get how well tempo solves any of this.

4. We end up with what I think is likely to be the solution(s). Islands of “trust groups” that replace SWIFT and its like with blockchain in a piecemeal fashion, but the cost benefit ratio is totally subsumed by the massively high costs of replacing the towers of process, regulation and software balanced on top of SWIFT etc

4.a. Or the central banks introduce their own “stablecoins ” - and people punt all the complicated bits of law and regulation and reversals over to the existing legal regulatory frameworks.

In short the ultimate problem is that sending a signal moving 1 million dollars from Kenya to Kansas is simple (wooden sticks did this a millennia ago).

The problem is a legal, cultural, social framework that all parties can trust and believe will fix their grievances. That’s basically … the global Legal framework we have now, with the solutions we have now including following court orders.

If the electronic system cannot follow the current frameworks requirements (ie the old lady did not mean to send her life savings to that wallet, get it back) then the electronic system still needs overlays that can - and there is not just a lot of complexity - there is an incredible amount of complexity

I get the feeling I’m yet again talking myself out of thinking we can have a sane digital currency for similar reasons to why we can’t vote electronically.

I’m paying for my round at the bar in cash.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#478

Post by gamblor956 »

jchw wrote: post #148
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…

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…

It's left unsaid because the truth is that businesses are not finding crypto easier, faster, or better. In most cases, it's the exact opposite. But crypto excels at one thing: obfuscation.

A regular log or ledger file could accomplish the same thing as a blockchain for significantly less technical debt or ongoing expense.

And note that the best use cases Stripe could find for "real world" use cases were a company trying to complicate its FX cash management, and a cash transfer app with fees higher than most of their competitors.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#479

Post by allknowingfrog »

raincole wrote: post #403
dperfect wrote: post #348

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…

> a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Stablecoin is not a technology. It's an excuse. An excuse to do what banks do while not being regulated like a bank or using the infrastructure banks use. Similar to how Airbnb is not a technology but an excuse to do what hotels do without hotel's license. So it makes no sense to compare it to database,…

Do we have a term for this phenomenon yet? Airbnb is a great example. Uber is another. Regulatory loopholes are the way that these companies actually make money, but they call it "technology" and everyone kind of shrugs.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#480

Post by spookie »

logicchains wrote: post #407
rebolek wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU, regulations are heavy and the result is I can send money instantly for free. That’s actually what the regulations are for. To protect free trade from bad actors.

Try sending money to a supplier in Iran or Russia and tell me how helpful those EU regulations are.

I wonder why...
Post reply on HN