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by sami36 4738 days ago
What kind of society we live in where corporations, whatever their political leaning or agenda is, decide how we can spend our money.. or not.

A few years ago, I've gone completely "plastic" & banished cash from my wallet. In light of developments such as this, I'm starting to reconsider my decision. Today Visa, tomorrow Square..
3 comments
anologwintermut 4738 days ago
God forbid square starts blocking payments ... how will we ever get asian fusion tacos from our favorit food trucks?

Square uses Visa, Mastercard, etc. If Visa blocked something, you'd have a hard time buying it with square and if Mastercard + the rest did, Square wouldn't save you.

Visa doesn't get to decide how you spend your money, they get to decide how you use their system. Since no government provides electronic payments, there is no other convenient way to donate to wikileaks (mailing them cash seems risky).

Why do governments not provide electronic currency? I'm not sure, but if they did I suspect we'd be using faxes to send DES encrypted coins places.

Yes, there are problems with the system and there ought to be regulations on it, but in general it makes sense how we got here.

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kolinko 4738 days ago
Fortunately there is always Bitcoin:

http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate#dbitcoin

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mh- 4738 days ago
Good luck getting money onto Bitcoin (for Americans) without using¹ a payment network controlled by Visa (Visanet) or the Fed (Fedline, Fedwire).

and no, sketchy in-person meetups to trade for cash don't count.

¹ directly or via an intermediary

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trevelyan 4738 days ago
Bitstamp is pretty good. The only problem is that the cost of an international wire is a significant part of the purchase price unless you are converting at least 1000 USD.
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obtino 4738 days ago
As far as I'm aware, companies don't offer direct convertibility of funds from a credit card to bit-coins.
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orblivion 4737 days ago
> Since no government provides electronic payments, there is no other convenient way to donate to wikileaks

Do you think the government would allow you to donate to Wikileaks?

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minimaxir 4738 days ago
About that...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/visa-invests-in-squ...

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coolhandluke 4738 days ago
Up until a few weeks ago, I used plastic almost exclusively. Since that time, I've began keeping cash on me and using it whenever possible.
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