I find the sheer volume of anger and hatred surrounding this and other related announcements completely unhinged. Why are so many people threatened by services that give their users options?
I feel like I am engaging with a bad faith critique for the purposes of good faith discussion, which is a mistake, but OK, here goes:
Some businesses in the UK have banks that say they will close their accounts if they accept cryptocurrency payments. Mine does! I would without hesitation lose my business bank account if I did, because I am a trifling small customer.
Stripe was safe and reputable, but now it is a place where you can accept cryptocurrencies.
Edit: see note below.
I'm not currently clearing payments via Stripe for my own business, but the way I understand it, it's now likely to mean increased scrutiny from my bank about those payments when I do.
I'm not sure if it has rolled out in the UK yet. But if it has, will my bank be clearly informed when a payout was *not* the result of a cryptocurrency transaction? I've not read that far yet.
Either way it's reputational damage hassle people do not need.
And before you ask: I am of course comfortable with that bank policy. Because cryptocurrency is consistently crime-adjacent and fraud-adjacent. And it's not like banks are that well-equipped at dealing with old-fashioned frauds that have been around a century, let alone new frauds that have been around mere days.
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Edit to add: apparently this document is not meant to communicate that cryptocurrency payments can be accepted. Which is not what the screenshots in the page do, IMO.
Though the fact that Stripe will allow NFT exchanges is more than enough to create reputational risk.
I still expect to have more difficulty when I add Stripe payments.
Just want to say that I had the POV of the grandparent comment, but your answer was a very useful and real description of a particular problem of accepting crypto-currency. So thanks for sharing!
Because if Bitcoin specifically takes off it will force governments to balanced budgets, exposing a lot of hidden corruption. Detractors cherry-pick concerns about energy usage, but never show the energy usage of the existing system for comparison.
Crypto right now, while being used by under 1% of population use, uses 40% of the energy of the global banking system[1].
In other words, if it were to increase to even 10% of the population using it, it would use over 4x the energy of the global banking system. If that increased to 50%, it would be 20x.
This would be somewhat mitigated in the case of Proof of Stake, but would simultaneously give major players in the market complete control of said market. Y'know, like a government.
Some businesses in the UK have banks that say they will close their accounts if they accept cryptocurrency payments. Mine does! I would without hesitation lose my business bank account if I did, because I am a trifling small customer.
Stripe was safe and reputable, but now it is a place where you can accept cryptocurrencies.
Edit: see note below.
I'm not currently clearing payments via Stripe for my own business, but the way I understand it, it's now likely to mean increased scrutiny from my bank about those payments when I do.
I'm not sure if it has rolled out in the UK yet. But if it has, will my bank be clearly informed when a payout was *not* the result of a cryptocurrency transaction? I've not read that far yet.
Either way it's reputational damage hassle people do not need.
And before you ask: I am of course comfortable with that bank policy. Because cryptocurrency is consistently crime-adjacent and fraud-adjacent. And it's not like banks are that well-equipped at dealing with old-fashioned frauds that have been around a century, let alone new frauds that have been around mere days.
--
Edit to add: apparently this document is not meant to communicate that cryptocurrency payments can be accepted. Which is not what the screenshots in the page do, IMO.
Though the fact that Stripe will allow NFT exchanges is more than enough to create reputational risk.
I still expect to have more difficulty when I add Stripe payments.