They'll censor transactions for things considered icky by your average suit corpo drone won't they?
Yeah, no point in using it except bridging probably
Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
541–550 of 1001 posts
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#542There 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…
You are missing what many are missing, which is that a centralized stablecoin like USDC on a public blockchain is already much more useful and powerful than a dollar in a bank account, and that will only 100x from here.
The reasons why are left as an exercise to the reader :)
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're currently adding stablecoin functionality to the Stripe dashboard, and the first user is an Argentinian bike importer that finds transacting with their suppliers to be challenging. Using crypto to dodge currency controls? Of course I agree that currency controls are bad. But, if the use case for crypto keeps being fostering illegal transactions then it doesn’t solve anything a functioning economy needs.
Dude the USA runs the whole Euro Dollar system. The idea the USA really really "controls" it's own currency is a bit of a pipe-dream at this point. We might as well go for full global control.
Ah. I think currency controls might have been a new term for you. Or I should have said ”capital controls” to be aligned with wiki. [1]
Currency controls is what for example Argentine has been doing with set exchange rates and limits on conversion while mandating that all local businesses must be done in their currency.
It is not about controlling the currency, it is about creating hinders for capital movements in and out of countries.
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Instant on-chain transfers avoiding trapped liquidity. If you're transferring money from financial institution A to institution B, and the transfer takes a day, you're either slowed a day in taking the next step or you have to somehow cover that float. These are slow by design - abuse/fraud. How does blockchain solve that issue? > * Fees that are lower than cards. Card payments are instant, which is often valuable…
In these matters, I always try to keep in mind that technologies aren't themselves disruptive; customer choices are. It'll be interesting to see what customers choose in the years to come.
> technologies aren't themselves disruptive; customer choices are
Technologies are themselves disruptive, as their introduction can shape human behavior. Choice doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#545Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#546Blockchain people have always hated chargebacks, but any successful payment rail needs a system for dispute resolution. I run e-commerce business and I’ve received bullshit chargebacks before. But I’m also a consumer and I’ve filed legitimate chargebacks before. Related: I’ve also had my bank send money to the wrong place before. There must be some means of reversing transactions in some cases. Some arbitration mecha…
You can easily build escrow on chain but obviously it can’t decide on chargebacks. So you need a real world entity that is responsible for that.
You already have binance b2b and similar stuff that do escrow and it works ok
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#547There 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…
Makes sense. Stablecoins in the new regulatory landscape offer significant efficiency gains in the provisioning of lots of innovative financial services (and also typical ones).
Does Stripe have a perspective on the unique systemic risks that stablecoin exposure might end up having in the new regulatory landscape?
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#548Earlier 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,…
Can you do fractional reserve banking with stablecoins where you lend out the underlying dollars to people and don't have full reserves? That's what makes banking tricky. When there are a surge of loan defaults across the banking system the money supply shrinks rapidly unless the government bails them out. Thus, the need for regulation. One reason the U.S government has to like stablecoins is because Tether is one of…
In FIAT money lending is the act of money creation, rather than lending existing money held in account. I’m guessing that wouldn’t have a parallel with stablecoins because the technology won’t let you just make new money at will?
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#549There 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…
That Stripe is involved is probably the best endorsement of Stripe being involved in crypto. Banking in South America is something crypto skeptics have heard for many years now. I was involved in a project that combined crypto with mesh networking. The launch was going to take place in South America. Why? Because university students in Brazil are desperate for a little bit of side hustle money, and incentives could cross borders easily using crypto. This was backed by first tier VC that had a number of crypto investments, including fundamental crypto technologies, alongside other more mundane things. Nobody involved in the project had any intention of creating a bunch of poor student bag holders. Nevertheless, the combination of mesh networking and crypto based incentivization wasn't enough to even turn it into the next Helium (they still around?)
SpaceX using crypto? Are any of their customers seriously going to pay using crypto? Are they gonna pay any of their bills using crypto? I'm not trying to piss in your Cheerios. But making real world use cases not die of uselessness is going to be a challenge.
Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
#550Ah the layers. Okay, so one: Obviously pointless from a tech POV. There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. But then, why? Sadly, as someone who does like the ideals of true cryptocurrency, yet another way to make sure "real" crypto doesn't happen, much like what is happening to BTC. Here's hoping (yeah, it's a long shot) people see through all of this and maybe, MAYB…
> There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. One way of thinking about a blockchain is to think of it as a shared datastructure to keep databases in sync. Any time you want to distribute your database over more than just a single central place, in a cryptographically secure way, you're probably going to re-invent a blockchain to do it.
this is such a bizarre position, what you're describing has been not only possible but actually implemented in real-world systems for decades before even the idea of a blockchain was thought up
blockchains solve a self-invented problem