[NewsaHackO]

Is there anything that can be done with the weaponization of the payment system? Cryptocurrency as obviously failed, but is there really no possible recourse when every traditional payment method seemingly colludes to not take the business for whatever reason?

[some_random]

I tend to be extremely critical of government regulation, but I think it really could be a tool here. It's important to preserve the ability of payment processors to block fraudulent purchases and they are legally required to block illegal purchases, but surely there is some way to write "you can't block purchases based on perceived reputational risks" into law, right?

[terminalshort]

It would be very easy to write a law that banned payment processors from refusing service without showing financial justification (e.g. high chargeback rate). But why would the government do that? They like to have power to lean on companies to hurt people where they can't do it directly due to the constitution.

[gs17]

> e.g. high chargeback rate

Even this is sort of bullshit. Chargeback fees are paid by merchants and there are already high-risk merchant accounts with higher fees and cash reserve requirements as a solution.

[some_random]

It goes beyond this though, at some point you need to go from "this account is high-risk" to "this account is probably running stolen credit cards".

[gs17]

But in Steam's case, it feels more likely fraud would be attached to CS weapons or something than random porn games.

[some_random]

In principle they absolutely could, but are they though? I don't know of any examples of this actually happening.

[hackingonempty]

Utilities and common carriers are examples. Porn and Cannabis businesses have no trouble getting electric, water, and telephone services.

In the USA at least, you can even steal electricity and be convicted of the crime and they still have to provide you with service, they just put your meter up on the pole.

[jazzyjackson]

I think a 'purchase' ie a bank transfer like Zelle or even a paypal non-refundable 'gift' isn't likely to be blocked, it's just Visa and Mastercard that don't want to deal with offering fraud protection for vendors that see an extremely high number of chargebacks. So if you want to pay, pay by some method that doesn't offer money back in case of fraud.

I've also been prevented from sending money by e-check because my bank was concerned the form of payment was too suspicious, so I ETF'd money from another account instead. I don't think the law can force a 3rd party to facilitate a purchase.

[miyuru]

> Cryptocurrency as obviously failed

I don't think cryptocurrency has failed. Yesterday I successfully payed with crypto when the payment with multiple credit cards failed.

[NewsaHackO]

The problem more so is capturing customers on the other end. Every time a site that relies on online payment tries to switch to crypto they say that the majority of potential customers are not willing to use it.

[Lerc]

I think it's worse than that. I think they face a backlash for even deigning to support it. Usually the backlash comes from the same people who use the lack of utility of crypto as part of their argument to justify their behaviour.

It's like salting the earth of your garden because nothing will grow in it.

[qingcharles]

The biggest issue, for me, is that it is really annoying and hard work to use. The easiest way to use it is through something like MetaMask, but imagine trying to get grandma to buy something that way. It's tiring, and she'll probably get her wallet drained at some point.

[johnisgood]

You can blame the Government for that.

[p_j_w]

The government isn't responsibly for a Bitcoin transaction taking a long ass time to complete.

[johnisgood]

It is responsible for the difficulty of buying and selling to make use of it, however, which I assumed is what he meant. As for BTC transaction time, well, there are many different, widely used cryptocoins (e.g. Ethereum) out there. Anyways, it can be pretty much instant, it depends on the fee you are willing to spend. The costs and the satoshis required are also not static. Today you may need only 1 sat / vB to have your transaction confirmed in 5-10 minutes, and 10 sat / vB a week from now. If you have issues with taking a long ass time to get it confirmed, increase the fee. You may have it confirmed instantly just for 0.5 EUR. Judging by the stats, BTC seems chill these days, so it shouldn't cost too much, and it should get confirmed relatively quickly.

[p_j_w]

>it can be pretty much instant, it depends on the fee you are willing to spend.

1. Not a problem with any other currency I've used. 2. I've never even been offered to have my transaction clear more quickly by paying a higher fee. 3. If I'm sitting at a store and they tell me I can either wait around for 5-10 minutes (and possibly more) for my transaction to clear or pay 50 cents for it to be instant, I'm just gonna pull out my credit card and use that. I don't suspect I'm in the minority.

[zeld4]

Cryptocurrency is on the way being managed by govt. So it's correct to say cryptocurrency did not fail, but certainly the original libertarian vision behind it is dead.

[Lerc]

The libertarian vision was not behind it. It was projected onto it by adopters who thought it was something that it never could be.

Any currency that has any political ideology would require some form coercion to be used by those who do not share that ideology. Fiat currencies carry that coercion implicitly, people who don't like the government generally still use their money because they have little choice.

The underlying principle of Bitcoin was consensus. Agreeing to operate on whatever principles the majority of miners are using. Forks are an integral part of that, people choosing a different path and those who agree with them going that way. The perceived value coming from those who accept whichever fork they chose and what they think it should be worth.

The only real "Stick it to the man" kind of philosophy that came with it was as a rejection of unilateral monetary control. That is the antithesis of consensus.

In an ideal crypto world governments would be the majority of the miners. They would negotiate amongst each other to decide on monetary policy by consensus. That's a long way from happening, with no clear path towards that end in sight.

In a sense that too, is an ideology, the distinction is that the ideology doesn't want to do the thing that it can't. It presents an option, instead of forcing people to use it.

[Cantinflas]

Is the govt going to manage your private keys any time soon? How would that work?

[freedomben]

Yes. There are tons of different proposals, but generally speaking the common thread is that the banks (possibly The Central Bank) will keep the keys for you. They will still be middlemen in all transactions so they can harvest data and make sure you aren't buying anything the government doesn't like. They can also do tax enforcement a lot better that way

[lrvick]

A key is just a 256 bit number. You can literally create one with paper and dice rolls. They will no sooner figure out who is holding most of these than they will figure out who is holding cash, or the identities of the 25m+ people downloading pirated media right now.

At best they can ask the public to please turn over their private keys, which will go about as well as efforts to stop piracy.

[bitwize]

They can prosecute transactions with unregistered keys as money laundering. They may not have the resources to get everybody but they can collect a few scalps pour encourager les autres.

[Y_Y]

> key is just a 256 bit number. You can literally create one with paper and dice rolls

Well sure, but if you want to actually use it you need the whole keypair. Unless you're really good with you elliptic curve abacus you're going to need a computer for that l.

[andrepd]

How does the state prohibit illegal drugs? They will never be able to eradicate it, obviously, but the state can make it incredibly hard to acquire and use cryptocurrency.

[rs186]

Need some hard evidence of "cryptocurrency failed". Two counterexamples that I can think of, as someone who doesn't even pay close attention to it:

* PornHub has been only taking cryptocurrency for payment for a while, and they seem to be doing ok

* The US just passed GENIUS Act with somewhat bipartisan support -- probably not even imaginable one year ago

[WhyNotHugo]

Removing the middlemen is the most obvious solution, but they’re also amongst the most powerful players in the world, so it’s going to be challenging (to put it mildly).

See: https://www.taler.net/en/index.html

[masklinn]

In some places it’s already more than viable. In Europe it’s baked into the banking system, SCT (SEPA Credit Transfer) lets you move money between any two European accounts with only as much hassle as your bank wants in your way. And EPC QR lets you initiate transfers from QR codes.

The biggest annoyance with it is that uptake is quite variable from country to country.

[WhyNotHugo]

In the Netherlands we have bank cards and IDeal for offline and online payments respectively. Those answer to local legislation, and do direct bank-to-bank transfers.

But if I want to buy online from Germany or some other EU country, I need to use American payment method. Also if I want to buy from China, I need to use an American payment method.

[gs17]

Part of the problem is that you have to make a clean break from these middlemen. Steam can't say "for these games, we only take this form of payment", it's either only sell games Visa and MasterCard say you can, or no one can pay with their credit cards.

[tonyhart7]

-removing middleman

-also introduce new middleman

I don't think that works honestly, its just move a new money into new player everyone want to take a cut

[xandrius]

In what way failed? Because it's like saying P2P failed because the big corps don't like it and try their best to stop it, while still existing for quite a while.

[dkersten]

In the sense that people don’t really use it to buy things with.

[xandrius]

Some people definitely do :D

[theshackleford]

Some extreme minority may. The vast, vast majority do not.

[lrvick]

I use it to donate or pay for legal things online I wish to keep anonymous like I would use cash for in person. Most people in the US do not value privacy, but for those few of us that want to purchase online with privacy, or those in heavily censored countries, cryptocurrency is the only option.

Just because few people make use of their rights is not a valid argument for their removal.

[Tadpole9181]

Using a currency with a permanent, irrevocable public ledger of every transaction for anonymous payments?

(I assume you mean BTC here, since very few places actually take privacy coins like Monero.)

[oguz-ismail]

>Some people

*a negligible minority

[Y_Y]

Neglect that minority at your peril! I don't have any money in cryptocoins, I think the market is almost entirely scams and crime, but it's a big market and I see its influence everywhere nowadays.

[serf]

>*a negligible minority

which is about the same amount of people that would be interested in buying rape/people-farming games. seems like a match made in (some twisted version) of heaven.

[Y_Y]

You mean like The Sims?

[lrvick]

You can say cryptocurrency is failed, but adult entertainers heavily rely on it because they have been censored by payment processors basically forever.

Censorship has a way of pushing people to learn inconvenient technology, just like how most Chinese citizens know how to use VPNs.

[ijk]

In the USA, some things that come to mind:

* Legal changes. Web platforms have section 230 protection to host user content. For payment processing this might be something like the proposed Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) that requires banks to offer additional (non-Visa/Mastercard) payment providers. Or a more explicit payment neutrality law the requires credit card companies to be more even-handed in non-financial issues. Or anti-debanking laws that ensure everyone has some minimal access to sending and receiving payments.

* Lawsuit results. Part of the issue with Visa was that they got dragged into lawsuits against sites that were using them to process payments; the lawsuits and appeals around that are still unresolved but if Visa's lack of legal liability goes away then it will be harder for random outside groups to harass them, for good or ill.

* Introducing an independent payment processor. While JCB in Japan has had some similar pressure applied to them, when there were national sovereignty concerns over Visa being able to dictate that American laws and norms should apply to their country Japan had many other payment processors to fall back on. Similarly, PIX in Brazil makes it much harder for non-government private actors to dictate what people can and cannot buy.

[polski-g]

Yes its a very easy problem to solve, would take about 3 states to pass a law mandating "must-process" payments rather than the current framework of "may-process" (under threat of revocation of money transfer authority). Then the only method for them to not process a payment is those prohibited under existing law (ie: terrorist financing).

I could see CA and FL easily passing such a law given the right push from constituents.

[Aerroon]

Why can't governments do it? Have a digital cash. Something that works like cash that the government runs. They already handle physical currency, so why not digital?

Add in some really heavy handed rules that government can't use it to spy and maybe it will work.

Also, these people really should be shamed for their censorship.

[lrvick]

Because governments always follow rules and never change them?

Private spending and communication are the beating heart of a healthy democracy and must be run directly by the public and decentralized or aspiring tyrants will co-opt them.

The people will never actually be in charge until we stop letting currency be controlled by governments and corporations.

[bhaskara2]

congrats you just invented CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency)

[cryptonector]

Not really. You can insist on retail vendors accepting legal tender by law, but these things are online, and online it means every payment can and _will_ be tracked. As with everything you do in public, online payments can and _will_ be used against you (in the labor marketplace, in court, in... everything, to control you and your habits). More people will accept or insist on policing of your and their habits than people who will resist it.

[Peroni]

>You can insist on retail vendors accepting legal tender by law

That's a common misconception. In most jurisdictions retailers can set their own payment policies.

[cryptonector]

The point is to demand that they be legally required to accept legal tender.

It's a tremendous pain for retailers to accept cash, which is why they're willing to accept high transaction fees from online points of sale.

[thaumasiotes]

There is an interesting parallel to the code of Hammurabi, which specifies that certain vendors must accept payment in grain as well as silver.

[SoftTalker]

"Legal tender" only applies to debt payments, not to retail transactions. A retailer can refuse cash.