[chatmasta]

This is so ironic it's laughable. The entire point of Bitcoin is that its inherent decentralization inhibits regulatory activities like determining which businesses are and are not allowed. Yet the VC-funded ecosystem sprouting up around Bitcoin is so antithetical to its thesis of decentralization that the best tooling available is increasingly more centralized. Put another way, the decentralization of Bitcoin is actively against the interest of many of the companies starting to serve its market. BitPay, Coinbase, etc. are all predicated on the assumption that customers will transact almost entirely through their centralized platforms, foregoing the many benefits of decentralization, in exchange for the convenience of a nice GUI around Bitcoin. At the end of the day, what really is the difference between Bitcoin and credit cards, if the merchants enabling websites to seamlessly accept Bitcoin are just as regulatory as the credit card companies they are seeking to displace?

It just seems so backwards to me. I could write a longer post on this but it's way off topic.