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Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

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Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#581

Post by stevage »

wazdra wrote: post #519
forgotTheLast wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That term has a very specific meaning and I wish people stopped using it to mean "big tech doing something bad"

Well, doesn't that specific meaning apply here? I mean, the lack of protection for end-users is at first compensated by investment money (low prices and huge effort on support). Once network effect is reached, the unregulated nature of the platform shows, end-users are wronged, only providers profit from the lack of regulation ... Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of enshittification?

It means something very different from your definition.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#582

Post by thehappypm »

kccqzy wrote: post #458
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,…

Large banks like JPMorgan Chase are also looking into launching their own stablecoins, just because it has less regulation than normal banking. In fact Jamie Dimon himself says so. The idea is really simple: creating stablecoin deposit accounts for customers allows banks to skip existing customer protections that are normally afforded to traditional deposit accounts.

Venmo is essentially a stable coin

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#583

Post by mbesto »

dcposch wrote: post #513
mbesto wrote: post #425

Earlier 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…

> Once again - this is a feature not a bug Are you really "once again"ing Patrick Collison on the issue of how payments work ?

I'm fully cognizant that pc understands how payments work, hence why I'm asking the question. What you can infer is this - there is either some I'm missing, or there is some ulterior motive here.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#584

Post by Izikiel43 »

hvb2 wrote: post #209
baby wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll attempt an answer: Today, if you want to transact between businesses or retail (folks like you and I), you need to find a route between the two entities' banks. This route might take several hops, passing through some central banks, and some of these hops might be instant or might take days to actually settle. On top of that, you need to pay the service that helped you find a route (SWIFT) and potentially the no…

So why can a traditional bank not solve this? In Europe you can wire money across borders for free, you just need to know the account number. Arrives in seconds at 0 cost. I feel like a lot of the fintech in the US is purely a result of a lack of regulation. For the example of Argentina, the real reason that business is using crypto is because their currency is unreliable. It might be a good fit there but trading in…

> It might be a good fit there but trading in dollars would've fixed that too.

You are underestimating how toxic the Argentinian government was.

We did do that with capital controls, the problem is that it was illegal, and the Argentinian IRS is very active trying to tear you a new one. Argentina has long become a bimonetary economy, dealing with ARS for everyday transactions, but saving in USD and pricing assets in USD (real state for example).

To give an example where this would have helped, my parents in Argentina needed to send money to my brother in Europe. The government had made that illegal with capital controls, so I had to transfer him money through wise from a 3rd country and when at some point later I visited they gave me the cash.

People underestimate how annoying and distopic governments can be if given the chance.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#585

Post by Izikiel43 »

is_true wrote: post #330
hvb2 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why can a traditional bank not solve this? In Europe you can wire money across borders for free, you just need to know the account number. Arrives in seconds at 0 cost. I feel like a lot of the fintech in the US is purely a result of a lack of regulation. For the example of Argentina, the real reason that business is using crypto is because their currency is unreliable. It might be a good fit there but trading in…

I think the argentinian case was mentioned for marketing purposes. You can trade using the USD dollar which at the end of the day is probably what your client/provider is using anyway.

Since April, yes, before that you had very hard capital controls since 2019, and also during the 2011-2014 period. For people there, it's not marketing, it's an actual solution to government interference.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#586

Post by risyachka »

j2kun wrote: post #268
jchw wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All of the other comments are missing the point: using blockchain technology is a means to bypass regulation. That's it. That's always been the point of cryptocurrency.

yeah bad regulations must be bypassed.

There is a case for banks that hold your hand as if you are 90yo and there must be a case for banking where I know what I do and I take responsibility for my actions.

If i send my coins to the wrong address its on me. But if I want to send 10k to someone - no one should ask me to wait 3 days, to do 100 verifications if I am not being forced or scammed.

I'd want that protection for my mom, sure.

But I want to remove all that crap for me. I don't have time and energy for it

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#587

Post by sunshine-o »

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…

> why are businesses finding crypto easier/faster/better?

One way to see it is today the EVM ended up being the solution to a lot of other problems.

The banks are dying, their core banking is dying after 50+ years of service. There hasn't been any real investment since 2008, only minimal maintenance and cost cutting. Also generations of incompetent people at every levels created a situation with no escape.

Also things like SWIFT became very irrelevant in practice. I can assure banks did not really used it for a while.

When Ethereum and its EVM appeared 10 years ago a lot of people saw an opportunity to build a better "programmable money" platform but nobody really succeeded. At the same time Ethereum did not fail, improve and still secure the assets and run the smart contracts deployed in 2015. More than enough to convince the people on a sinking ship to jump on that boat.

My guess is the the EVM is becoming something similar to UNIX: a loose standard almost everybody will build on. Maybe not the best but something good and flexible to jump and we need to move forward.

Also the dollar urgently needed a new outlet so its on.

So it is not really about "crypto" it is more about the EVM as a platform.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#588

Post by Izikiel43 »

bloggie wrote: post #278
nisegami wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Argentina, and similarly for my country, access to USD is fraught and often involves off-market transactions.

So transactions are difficult because they are illegal, and blockchain helps to facilitate crime? Are there other uses? Surely a large and legitimate operation like Stripe and the companies they mention in the blog post would have found additional use cases?

> So transactions are difficult because they are illegal, and blockchain helps to facilitate crime?

Let's say I make drinking water illegal, would you still do it? Sure you would, you need it to live, laws be damned.

In Argentina it was a similar situation, financially speaking, but with USD, as Argentina had like 1000% accumulated inflation since 2019, so basically the ARS melted in your hands, and the USD/Euros/crypto where your only safe havens.

So yes, the government made the transactions illegal, but the alternative was becoming poor (we ended up the previous government with around 55% poverty).

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#589

Post by DanielVZ »

jrm4 wrote: post #223
petertodd wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I understand all of this and I stand by my claim of pointlessness. Stripe, nor any other bank or bank-esque thing needs this because they have already well solved their problem of "trust." "Blockchain" is pointless overhead here.

My guess is that their solution to the problem of “trust” has enough overhead that it makes people lose money because of time or middleman fees.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#590

Post by DennisP »

CalChris wrote: post #225
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…

Compare and contrast L1 to FedNow. 1.5% vs $0.045 per credit transfer $0.01 per request for payment message $1.00 per liquidity management transfer Nice work if you can get it. BTW, it is crypto. So the promise that none of these businesses are using crypto because it's crypto or for any speculative benefit is a provisional promise at best. Hyrum's Law argues an opposite future.

Which L1 do you mean? I don't see any fee amounts on Tempo's page. Most stablecoin transactions are on Ethereum and the fees are neither percentages nor fixed dollar amounts. They just have congestion pricing, so it depends on how expensive your transaction is to run and how much traffic there is.
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