I was hoping to read about the video game (man, I loved that game)
Braid is dead, long live Braid
51–60 of 99 posts
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only there were some good and fast internet payment mechanism without middlemen or gatekeepers, where the person getting paid could be immediately 100% sure that they were in possession of the money. Maybe someone will invent it one day.
The problem is that would have the opposite problem, that purchases made with stolen cards were 100% unrecoverable. While im sure we can improve things, the fact that the current system favors individual people, rather than businesses, is intentional, not an accident.
How are people using stolen cards?
Do your banks not have 2 factor enabled?
Using the card not present should require a second factor, Visa Secure type of thing and in person should require your pin for non-frivolous amounts.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#53I wanna know who the critical third party was, and also why the regulators said "Yeah but nah"
Did the regulators say no to Braid specifically? Felt more like the regulators were putting pressure on the sponsor bank to get out of risky businesses in general.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#54> Every dollar a startup can raise is a gift. For a time I lost sight of this, and I won’t make that mistake again. This seems like too general of advice. If you are profitable without raising, that in itself is a gift. Why take on debt if you don't need to? This might apply to fast-growth ventures that need to outpace competition to have a chance at existing, but not every company is structured like this or is in a…
That strategy works fine till hard times come. Look up Beyond The Summit sometime. Sad story how it ended. Raising money insulates against death by starvation of funds. Of course, the game becomes different; you need to keep growing. But those are the two alternatives, and of the two, sustained growth over 8 years seems like a better general strategy.
Selling your soul to the Devil is great strategy for the Devil. It may be for you too, at least initially. But it isn't good for the rest of the world.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#55Oh no, I was hoping this was about a Braid remake, like Time Travel Understander! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fABGyVzVwI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game)
I also hoped for some news about the game, maybe an update on the Anniversary Edition announced in 2020 [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf9A1QPG_yc
Yeah, whatever happened there?
http://braid-game.com has similar "coming soon, in early 2021" message from 2020.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say that the huge fees are unavoidable, but they're the norm. And okay, tell me about how I get some cryptocurrency in a practical way without big middlemen.
The lightning network works great, as does Ethereum. The incumbents successfully lobbied to get easy on-ramps to this competing system regulated basically out of existence. It’s a tragic story.
You can't really use lightning/Ethereum without using an exchange (a big middleman) to convert your fiat to BTC/ETH, because doing it without KYC etc. is money laundering. I don't really think this is incumbents lobbying, I think it's law enforcement saying, "the way we track organized crime is through money, so you can't do this". Crypto advocates know this, because a big selling point they always bring up is "spend money freely without regulation", which phrased another way is "buy/sell things your government doesn't want you to" which is the definition of organized crime--the only difference here is scale.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#57> Our product was not in any sort of legal gray area (e.g. crypto) and fit within the bounds of existing law. From the day we started until the day we shut down, we’d spend millions of dollars to build a best-in-class compliance program to sit alongside our offering.
I worked in AML for a short time, and this:
> There were myriad buckets of n users who loved having a financial account designed just for them. A few examples from our own data: coparents, houses, art collectives, extended families who get along, teams, people who share livestock, churches, punk bands, weekend hustles, extended families who don’t get along, wiccans, and our team’s personal favorite, firehouses.
sounds like a compliance nightmare. Who is the beneficial owner of the wiccans collective bank account? What happens when one of the punk band member turns out to be an Iranian national? If three art collective members all deposit 5000 in one day, is that "smurfing" (splitting transactions so that they are under reportable thresholds)?
I think there is a good argument to be made that our current regulatory regime is bad, I'm not defending it. In this current regulatory environment though, "business style accounts but for informal small groups of individuals" cannot possibly make sense as a product. Their sponsor bank obviously didn't care when they were pulling minuscule numbers (10mm in monthly volume on a business account is really not very much to most banks.) Once Compliance finally decides to look at that Braid account, I'm sure it makes perfect business sense to offboard it for risk reasons. I'm shocked they didn't realize this.
ETA: If you are going to build a Fintech, please go listen to The Dark Money Files podcast first,
https://www.thedarkmoneyfiles.com/
Maybe hire them to tell you if your product makes sense. You can't "move fast, break things" with FINRA, it's NOT easier to ask for forgiveness from OFAC, etc.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#58One of the critical observations here for me is: whatever your primary product / value proposition is, make sure to build that out internally yourself, and not buy it from a 3rd party. According to the author, Braid repeatedly bought third party fintech products as core pieces of their platform rather than building it. This simply makes you a hostage to those companies.
I also echo some other top comments here - payments and banking is very highly regulated, and for good reason. The base concept seems extremely ripe for fraud.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stripe is who I'm playing with now, but I just do not like having to include their JS library on every page just to use their fraud detection.
The signals they get from you including that library are a big part of what makes the fraud detection effective
It doesn't mean I have to like it. There's a lot of things in the "include our JS file, and get X benefit" in the world that I don't like. I don't have the time nor the desire to attempt to reverse all of the data that is being sent back to the mothership for some "benefit". I take pride in knowing that I'm not collecting data about my users to be stored for later use. I can't say that when I include 3rd party libraries.
Re: Braid is dead, long live Braid
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that would have the opposite problem, that purchases made with stolen cards were 100% unrecoverable. While im sure we can improve things, the fact that the current system favors individual people, rather than businesses, is intentional, not an accident.
How are people using stolen cards? Do your banks not have 2 factor enabled? Using the card not present should require a second factor, Visa Secure type of thing and in person should require your pin for non-frivolous amounts.
In the late '90s when it happened to me, this wasn't even invented yet. In the US today, 2nd-factor is not widely used at all. Not once I have I been challenged by a 2nd-factor, and if I were to be, I'd have no idea what to do with it.