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MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

reuters.com

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Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#841

Post by enriquec »

arcticbull wrote: post #715
reedjosh wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 2% number depends upon whether you trust the people inflating the USD to tell you what the inflation rate is. Feel free to call shadowstats crazy, but nothing in it is false. It's just another perspective. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

“Shadow government statistics” is indeed nutters and not all perspectives deserve equal footing.

asks for evidence, gets link with evidence, dismisses as "nutters" without addressing the evidence at all. He is showed you the CPI as calculated pre-1980 with a page explaining the changes in methodology and why they're flawed. How is that "nutters"? You aren't having a discussion in good faith.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#842

Post by simiones »

wonderwonder wrote: post #720
halukakin wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say everyone in an unstable economy were paid in usd. If that country has foreign deficit, if that country has high government debt. What happens? How can the government keep paying its own employees? How does it pay retiree checks? How does it subsidize farming when needed? As long as a country cannot print usd itself, this is a fast shortcut to unemployment, hunger, etc... Strong currencies are not the solution to…

This is an accurate statement when approached from a top down nation / state level. Approached from the level of an average person living in countries with highly volatile currencies, they just want a currency that is not reliably going to be less than it was the day before. It allows those people the opportunity to detach from the issue of "poor governance" over which they have no control and gives them some indepen…

If the economy is not working, people won't get the value they are used to. This can essentially be handled in 2 ways:

1. Inflation, which means that everyone is getting the money they are owed, but can't do as much with them

2. Defaults/bankruptcy/breach of contract - people and businesses just run out of money and stop paying their debts

If your country can print money, you will be in situation 1. If your country can't print money (e.g. because it is using BTC or USD or Euros or whatever currency they can't control), then you'll be in situation 2.

I for one prefer situation 1, because there is a chance of recovery from there, and normal life can go on somewhat naturally.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#843

Post by argvargc »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #661
koonsolo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastercard just tries to be relevant in an environment where they will not be relevant anymore. Just look at the Nano cryptocurrency for example: 0 fees and Crypto is going to disrupt a lot of things. If it's not clear by now, you will be in for a surprise.

> Just look at the Nano cryptocurrency for example: 0 fees and Sounds great! But why can't we just use that technology to move our existing money around? Why do I have to trade my USD for NANO, transfer the NANO, and then trade the NANO back to USD at the other end? Why wouldn't I simply engage with a bank that lets me use the same open-source technology to simply move the USD from one place to another? I don't want…

We can and do, they're called stablecoins. It's not possible to send fiat around unless you digitise it first, and this needs to be done in such a way that it's impossible to mint more in the process and such that this is verifiable by everyone - hence (most) stablecoins.

Edited to add: Also XRP is used as a bridge-currency to automagically do what you described, but with XRP in place of NANO. This is a product that due to regulatory uncertainty is not widely used yet, but it is still offered to, and used by various banking and payment firms who have signed up for it with Ripple. It's been hampered by the SEC in the US, but is still used elsewhere.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#844

Post by hakanito »

nexthash wrote: post #591
tboyd47 wrote: post #547

It's important for people to read the actual press release: https://mstr.cd/3tLaPZM There's good info here which will be new info to many. Why did they do this? It turns out that about a third of Nigerians report using or holding cryptocurrency (!). https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoptio... Second place are Vietnam and the Phillipines. For all, the #1 reason was for remittances. Haven't we all h…

Set this chart to "all" and tell me that this price movement is not a bubble. There is no earthly reason for why a "BitCoin" is worth $47,459.66 as of this post. https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin Cryptocurrency adoption in 3rd world countries like Nigeria, Vietnam, and the Philippines is not a good thing. It's actually really sad, because it means they cannot rely on or trust their country's currency. Therefore,…

Demand grows, but the bitcoin supply is limited. Price increases. Also, after each halving the bitcoin miner payout gets cut in half, so price has to increase for the network to stay alive.

BTC follows the stock-to-flow model pretty accurately https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/stock-to-flow-model/

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#845

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

dmitriid wrote: post #802
leppr wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely the main innovation of Bitcoin. Without the aid of a central authority, people are able to decide on a set of rules that must be respected to play in the market. People can switch to different "markets" with different rules at will. The value of these markets is itself decided through a free market. Given a sufficient level of digitization, it's not hard to imagine how many kind of real world markets…

> Without the aid of a central authority, people are able to decide on a set of rules that must be respected to play in the market. What you mean to say: people will reinvent laws and governance.

That's right, but what's new about this time is that the "how bad things have to get before we rethink laws and governance"-threshold had changed, as has the "how efficient of a government we'll accept before we stop iterating"-threshold.

Governments run themselves but until recently, economies didn't. Now that there are two memes (besides violence) that are each independently capable of mediating coersion on a global scale, we can play them against each other and select for the one we like best.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#846

Post by tboyd47 »

splintercell wrote: post #827
nexthash wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set this chart to "all" and tell me that this price movement is not a bubble. There is no earthly reason for why a "BitCoin" is worth $47,459.66 as of this post. https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin Cryptocurrency adoption in 3rd world countries like Nigeria, Vietnam, and the Philippines is not a good thing. It's actually really sad, because it means they cannot rely on or trust their country's currency. Therefore,…

They can, and are, holding stablecoins [1] 1. https://businessday.ng/sponsored/article/how-nigerians-are-u...

> Stablecoins enjoy a one-to-one ratio. For Nigerians, this means stablecoin prices are pegged to a certain ratio with the U.S. dollar.

I'm new to stablecoins and trying to understand the situation. Is this not the same thing Brazil did with the URV [0] -- that is, replacing their ruined state currency with a temporary one pegged to the USD -- only coming from the private sector instead of the government?

> Other benefits of buying into stablecoins include: (snip) ...has no central authority which could breach payment... (snip)

How is it possible to "peg" one currency to another without a centralized issuing body? Bitcoins can be mined by anyone with enough computing power, and stability is only achieved via an engineered stalemate between miners, node operators, and exchanges. How do these "stablecoins" achieve their stability without controlling issuance of coins at the top level?

My understanding is that altcoins derive their value from their fungibility with Bitcoin; that's why when Bitcoin tanks, it brings the entire ecosystem down with it. How are these stablecoins any different? If Bitcoin's value fell by 80% tomorrow, bringing down Ethereum, LTC, and Doge, what keeps these stablecoins' value from falling down with it?

---

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidade_real_de_valor

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#847

Post by heidar »

hanniabu wrote: post #772
heidar wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what you're commenting all over this post, it's pretty clear you don't follow developments in the cryptocurrency space much. Bitcoin is stale, there's no development or innovation happening. It has become a store of value only. The only possible solution that could change that is the Lightning network or other Layer 2 protocols. There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innovation. B…

> There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innovation. Bitcoin Cash and Nano are some examples. You really had me where you mentioned exciting innovation. I thought you were going to go into Ethereum, the EVM, smart contracts, DeFi, etc. But then you mention BCH and Nano lol. While I guess you can say there's advancements there over Bitcoin, in the grand scheme of the ecosystem Ethereum i…

Sorry for not mentioning your favourite coin, please don't be offended. The Ethereum roadmap is exciting, so is the BCH one, I just wanted to list some examples to make it clear that Bitcoin itself does not have much interesting going on.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#848

Post by heidar »

ausbah wrote: post #721
heidar wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what you're commenting all over this post, it's pretty clear you don't follow developments in the cryptocurrency space much. Bitcoin is stale, there's no development or innovation happening. It has become a store of value only. The only possible solution that could change that is the Lightning network or other Layer 2 protocols. There are plenty of other coins however that are doing super exciting innovation. B…

all that innovation is cool and all, but it seems a bit egotistical to be upset that people haven't heard of your awesome cool thing when a vast vast majority of people haven't heard about or use your thing

This is a HN post where people are sharing their (mostly negative) opinions on cryptocurrencies, not the comment section on a YouTube video about knitting.

Also, I have nothing to do with these awesome cool things, but thanks for giving me credit for them.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#849

Post by gbear605 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #845
dmitriid wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without the aid of a central authority, people are able to decide on a set of rules that must be respected to play in the market. What you mean to say: people will reinvent laws and governance.

That's right, but what's new about this time is that the "how bad things have to get before we rethink laws and governance"-threshold had changed, as has the "how efficient of a government we'll accept before we stop iterating"-threshold. Governments run themselves but until recently, economies didn't. Now that there are two memes (besides violence) that are each independently capable of mediating coersion on a globa…

Governments have always (always) been involved in economies. Rome imported hundreds of tons of grain a year and gave them out free to its citizens. Hammurabi’s code mandated fixed medical payments and regulated professions. Don’t get me started on China. And taxation has been around as long as there has been agriculture, although it’s much better nowadays since the taxman won’t come in and tax all the food you own just before winter, leaving you to starve.

Re: MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

#850

Post by loceng »

drcode wrote: post #33
loceng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it - you're trying to avoid paying tax into the society that you're using, benefitting from? Edit to add: Many replies are acting as if it's difficult to automatically, digitally track conversions and taxes, to then pay your taxes? It's a digital "currency" we're talking about here.

It's not about paying taxes, it's about not wanting to have to declare the cheeseburger you bought for lunch as a line item on your year-end taxes.

So how do you protect against the actions of bad actors - who otherwise then have free reign to do whatever the fuck they want in your "country"/area that you seem to not think you'll need to defend from bad actors?

Or you want a wild west, free-for-all environment? In your own house, do you want to have control of who gets to come in or not? It's that same type of control that is inherently tied to security and safety.

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