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Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

economist.com

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Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#51

Post by tonyedgecombe »

oleganza wrote: post #43

Since HN generally does not like mentions of Bitcoin, here are some stats. Bitcoin was launched 12 years ago, reached $1'000'000'000'000 monetization this year (>1.5x larger than IMF), exploded interest and funding for cryptography and p2p networking over the past 6-8 years, and is marching towards reaching monetization of gold ($11T). Lightning network runs over 3 years already and growing its capacity exponentially…

>and every person has as much bitcoin as they want to carry

People never have enough, they can never be satisfied if there is someone else who might have more than them.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#53

Post by vmception »

pjc50 wrote: post #42
vmception wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its an option. Basically a litmus test will be when a gigantic brothel in Europe or a European country’s Caribbean district does a very public but permissionless capital raise, gets filled by retail, and pays dividends while shares being actively traded permissionlessly. Thats when you’ll know the floodgates are open. Just given how much unwanted attention and publicity that will generate. To me, its surprising it ha…

You don't generally need to raise capital for sex work, and the problem there is having a physical location that will be raided if it's illegal. To me, the important litmus test is when bitcoin gets definitively linked to a specific terrorist incident. Now, terrorism in the West is mostly out of fashion, except US rightwing extremists, because it's hard to have a death toll that anyone would notice over COVID, but th…

So the interesting thing about the chosen example is that the brothels already operate compliantly enough in a regulated environment but those environments typically are marginalizing them in a variety of ways such as with zoning and exchange listings.

There is definitely room for price discovery in that industry from an environment with free floating shares. It only takes an enterpriser getting a little greedy or an existing shareholder bundling up their stake in a fund.

Capital formation in the crypto markets rivals VC’s fiat activity, but it is mostly crypto native purchasers for crypto native infrastructure. The systems do work for trusted centralized physical establishments, and the regulatory environments typically just require notice in the state's register. Those societies are comfortable with private sector exchanges being the gatekeepers in how people raise capital and plan exits, and have not factored in the reality where they are completely circumvented and marginalized industries grow, compliantly, and very quickly.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#54

Post by Semaphor »

RL_Quine wrote: post #38
Semaphor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so you can leave the channel open without being online?

Yes. You only need to be “online” periodically to check for fraud, which is a task which can be relatively trustlessly delegated if need be.

Well, that’s a big part of the puzzle that most introductions seem to omit :D

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#55

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #47
sverhagen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a false choice, that's only phrased to cater to the "that makes it easy for the bank"? They are now categorically refusing certain businesses. If those businesses could at least appeal and demonstrate that they are within the law, why wouldn't banks be mandated to process the transactions? This could go with some sort of safe haven for the banks, that if they did this review process that they won't be liab…

Challenging it in court is an impossible burden for most people, so the most important thing is the default. Do we want the bank to assume you're a criminal, or do we want to assume you're innocent and make the police be the ones to prove if you're not?

[deleted]

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#56

Post by exporectomy »

sverhagen wrote: post #33
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with this is that we already have regulations than punish banks for processing illegal transactions. If you don't want that, and you want the banks not to refuse any legal transactions, that's easy. They then don't refuse to process any transactions at all. If you do want them to refuse illegal transactions, and they're allowed to refuse legal transactions, that makes it easy for the bank because…

Isn't that a false choice, that's only phrased to cater to the "that makes it easy for the bank"? They are now categorically refusing certain businesses. If those businesses could at least appeal and demonstrate that they are within the law, why wouldn't banks be mandated to process the transactions? This could go with some sort of safe haven for the banks, that if they did this review process that they won't be liab…

Parent's point seems like what they're doing here. Trading underage porn is illegal, as well as revenge porn in some places, etc. so they forbid that and allow legal porn. Seems like they really are doing "all legal things and no illegal things" more accurately, and it really is burdensome to everyone.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#57

Post by ews »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #40
kmfrk wrote: post #31

More than ten years ago since Visa, Mastercard etc blocked access to WikiLeaks: https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html . I guess they started blocking things The Economist care about.

Yeah, and didn't seem reluctant at all at the time.

they just shrugged back then

"But calibrating that response raises questions of principle, practice and priority. Businesses will go their own way. Some, such as PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, which handled donations to WikiLeaks, and Amazon, which provided web-hosting services, have dumped it as a customer in response to American outrage. More may follow. They risk attacks from its fans, just as those that refuse face hostility from their customers in America. Too bad: business is full of hard choices."

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2010/12/09/the-right-react...

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#58

Post by rich_sasha »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #28
Isinlor wrote: post #8

I would want to see regulations where banks are explicitly forbidden from blocking legal transactions. If it's legal then banks should have no choice but to handle it.

The biggest problem with this is that we already have regulations than punish banks for processing illegal transactions. If you don't want that, and you want the banks not to refuse any legal transactions, that's easy. They then don't refuse to process any transactions at all. If you do want them to refuse illegal transactions, and they're allowed to refuse legal transactions, that makes it easy for the bank because…

There is a third way. Financial institutions cannot facilitate money laundering (well...). But they can’t just let that hang. You do due diligence, you’re either happy that the business looks legit enough, or you have doubts . In the latter case you inform authorities, and they sort the question. Either you get the go ahead or you’re dealing with a criminal, and the state takes it out of your hands.

You can imagine a similar model for payments. The bank can’t just indefinitely say “umm not sure”, it has to go one way or the other.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#59

Post by ulzeraj »

Semaphor wrote: post #9
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which third parties do you mean?

My understanding of lightning is, that unless you run your own node (which requires a lot of funds and needs to be online 24/7), you are using a third-party node for these payments. The positive would be, that there are (I presume, don’t know) far more nodes/services available to choose from than there are credit-card firms. This is just what I remember from reading into lightning a few months ago.

I'm curious about what made you reach that understanding. My guess is that you either tried or heard from someone who tried to open channels with some LN giant like Bitrefill. You shouldn't do that. Big channel operators don't want to dilute their liquidity with unreliable small channels. You should instead establish a channel to a smaller node that may be directly or indirectly connected to that merchant. LN is all about routing.

Also in the thread's context we are talking about Visa and Mastercard banning merchants right? In a scenario where the LN is widely adopted that merchant can setup and run BTCPayServer (https://btcpayserver.org) to maintain his own independent LN or on chain payment process system.

As for users, there has been work to facilitate nodeless operation on software wallets. Probably based on https://github.com/lightninglabs/neutrino. I know Blue Wallet is building something based on a lightweight LN node so people can establish channels from their personal wallets (https://github.com/BlueWallet/rn-ldk). There is an Android exclusive wallet that (https://lightning-wallet.com) can do that and Muun (https://muun.com) is doing some smart tricks to provide nodeless and custodial LN experience.

Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web

#60

Post by rich_sasha »

exporectomy wrote: post #56
sverhagen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a false choice, that's only phrased to cater to the "that makes it easy for the bank"? They are now categorically refusing certain businesses. If those businesses could at least appeal and demonstrate that they are within the law, why wouldn't banks be mandated to process the transactions? This could go with some sort of safe haven for the banks, that if they did this review process that they won't be liab…

Parent's point seems like what they're doing here. Trading underage porn is illegal, as well as revenge porn in some places, etc. so they forbid that and allow legal porn. Seems like they really are doing "all legal things and no illegal things" more accurately, and it really is burdensome to everyone.

I guess the question is whether the business they serve is legal. YouTube has some pirated content for sure. The business has rules in place to deal with it, for better or worse, and if someone pays with a credit card to watch something illegal in YT, that doesn’t count as the bank facilitating a crime.

I’m not defending porn as a grand corner of free speech but I don’t like banks deciding who can and cannot be paid.

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