But if the blockchain is truly append-only, what stops me from paying the first payment and then disappearing? Even if I pay it all upfront, what if I charge back?
It seems you can't pay with cryptocurrencies; in order to use the pay later thing you need to be paying with a credit card. The pay later service is provided by a 3rd party, and usually they just give the full amount (minus whatever % they charge for the service) to the merchant right after the purchase.
If their attempts to charge your credit card fail then the pay later company can use the usual tactics to get you to pay loans, since they require some of your personal information when setting up the payment: sending threatening messages, adding a bad mark to your credit report, etc.
Maybe it's like most other NFTs and is just a pointer to the server where the actual data is stored? If you don't pay, they can just change the prayer to "Jesus, please ignore this prayer" or something.
That depends on how much they've donated to their Megachurch pastor recently. If you get a monthly subscription of $29.99, your prayers go to the top of the queue. For gold tier $79.99 subscription, you get to submit a list of people whose prayers you want ignored.
Yea there’s gullible religious people, just like there’s gullible non-religious people. If you’ve actually read scripture these types of churches are called out. No where in the bible does it say you must pay to be heard.
Isn’t that exactly what some Christian sects do when they proclaim their way is the only way (i.e. “god, don’t listen to them listen to us!” ). Perhaps Islam does this to, but I’m no expert on Islam.
I think you got that twisted. Everybody has the idea that their religion is the only correct one, but not all religions have the same god. So if they’re not praying to the same god, how can they tell that god to listen to them but not the others?
If their attempts to charge your credit card fail then the pay later company can use the usual tactics to get you to pay loans, since they require some of your personal information when setting up the payment: sending threatening messages, adding a bad mark to your credit report, etc.