Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rvz 1522 days ago
Unsurprising and totally expected. [0][1]

But yet again, we'll see the same old screaming and shouting 'scam' comments everywhere even when Stripe isn't the one scamming and only was waiting for regulations before entering back in.

It's also interesting to see no praise or any critical critique yet on this announcement here with what Stripe is offering and where the exact so-called scam is.

Perhaps the typical screaming and shouting 'scam' comments will only happen in the next crypto / DeFi hack / scam post on HN, but not when Stripe releases something in its product offering about crypto.

Maybe when they say 'crypto has no use case' they cannot deny Stripe's involvement and them using it which also explains that it ruins the skeptics 'crypto scam' narrative and why they hesitate to immediately scream and comment here.

Either way, we'll see but in the meantime USDC looks like a sensible choice for crypto payouts.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070288

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30629116

2 comments

You’ve posted when the thread is brand new, so I’m sure if you wait a little longer you’ll get the anti-crypto sentiment you seek. That said, paying out USDC is probably the least offensive way to work in crypto and has little room for concern — USDC is mostly dumb rather than problematic.
This is mostly off-topic, but one thing I’ve taken to when evaluating these announcements is to give the coin a stupid-sounding name and see if the idea still sounds impressive.

“Stripe piloting payouts to Twitter creators in Circle Bucks”

Do with that what you will.

And gmail would have less users if it was called ClownFartMail. Not sure what you’re getting at.
No that's not true at all.

"Instead of sending a letter via USPS, send an instant electronic message via Clownfartmail"

Still seems better to me.

EDIT: Just to answer your implied question. I'm saying that in practice paying out an end user in USDC is the equivalent of paying out a user in any USD-denominated currency (crypto or not). Changing the name of the tech removes the 'gee-whiz' aspect of it and makes you focus on the use cases, which is ultimately what matters and ultimately what crypto struggles to actually deliver on.

I vehemently hate crypto and still I don't get your point here.

But on USDC, it isn't regulated or properly audited by anyone reputable, the fact that sits on Ethereum/Polygon (which also isn't regulated and is riddled with high fees) doesn't give me confidence that anyone will use this token.

Stripe isn't doing anyone any favours offering this service.

My point, and I don't know how to make this any more clear is 'what is the actually fudging advantage of paying people out in USDC instead of USD, other than it sounding cool?' It's actually wild that people don't ask that question about this kind of thing.

1) USDC still needs to be turned into fiat in order to buy anything with it, so any regulatory/tax advantage is out the window there.

2) The fact that USDC is 'on blockchain' offers no meaningful advantage to the end-user vs. twitter (or any other centralized authority) just deciding to pay people in 'points' that are pegged to 1 USD (that also need to be converted to fiat to buy things)

USDC is very credible. It receives regular attestations from Grant Thornton:

https://www.centre.io/usdc-transparency

And Polygon is an Ethereum sidechain, so it charges very low fees.

So given these objections are without merit, this feature is doing people living in countries which cannot otherwise receive Stripe payouts a favor.

>this feature is doing people living in countries which cannot otherwise receive Stripe payouts a favor.

And then what do they do with their USDC? Sell it for USD?