Governments are centralized control. Just take a look at the current US administration, and the economic sanctions they pushed left and right. You trust them to keep their hands off transactions happening within their own country?
As I see it, the development of anti-capture systems aren’t about actually preventing capture. Rather, they are to delay the inevitable and to make it so that when a “reset” happens, the good parts of a civilization aren’t too damaged when replacement happens.
Ideally, the next civilization(s) to arise from the ashes should inherit the best bits of whatever came before.
In the meantime, I haven’t seen any way to prevent companies from unethically exerting their will over the public that works any better than involving multiple parties in it that are not necessarily aligned and do your best to prevent collusion
This is just decentralization. This is literally what I alluded to in my root comment. Crypto solves these problems
manipulated by whales? are you talking about 51% attacks? censorship? Can you link some concrete examples of major crypto coins getting manipulated? I think there was a potential 51% attack on Monero but IIRC nothing actually happened.
I would argue that your examples are about manipulation of people, not of the currency. Similar to the craziness of the GME (Gamestop) era, where it felt like everybody and their dog started buying GME stock. Or, say, a news outlet causing panic and a bank run. Though you’re right that since crypto still doesn’t have broad adoption, it’s easier to manipulate the smaller userbase.
Manipulation of the currency would be more like the government printing more money. This is not possible in crypto, where power is decentralized.
The instability is definitely unfortunate though. It’s a chicken and egg problem. If crypto had wider adoption, and was accepted in many stores, then it would become more stable. Just look at how much more stable the big crypto coins (bitcoin, eth) are compared to smaller altcoins. However, due to low adoption it’s still quite unstable, and that instability hurts adoption 🙃
Yeah, because crypto is not that. The problems with it as a payment system are numerous and make it unusable. It’s barely better than lugging suitcases full of twenties as a payment system for doing crimes, but only barely. The only thing it’s really good for is scamming people and gambling
There are enough crypto currencies made specifically with payment processing as their primary goal. But sure let’s just ignore good tech cus “crypto bros bad”
What problems? And crypto gets associated with crime because the currency is harder to control, which is precisely the point. Governments love being able to control their payments systems, just like they love to define what a “crime” is.
BS, Monero is the best currency for making untraceable payments full stop. People buy drugs with it but buying drugs shouldn’t be a crime. We need private currency’s that governments don’t control like that. It may not be great in every way but it’s the beat that exists and is certainly used for more than gambling and scamming people.
I was gonna say, you can tell who’s just a cryptobro vs who actually cares about fiscal freedom based on that. If anyone suggests you use bitcoin, they probablyyyyy aren’t someone to listen to. Zcash and Monero are the only two I’d ever trust as of now.
Honestly, its a massive shame that a technology as good as crypto was completely usurped by groups just looking to profit. They chant “This is true freedom of finance!” while only caring how much USD it’s worth. Like dawg, that’s why nobody takes crypto seriously.
to add why that is bad: it makes those who enable privacy to stand out. those users who do thatbwill face arbitrary restrictions, but also it is easier to doxx the person behind a transaction if there are not a lot of other transactions with privacy enabled
As someone who has lives in the Netherlands, were iDeal (the less international predecessor of wero) has been available for years - yes it replaces it, so much.
And it feels easier and safer at the same time, when my banking app on the phone can just scan the QR code on the website and deal with that.
Every time I DO use paypal now, usually a foreign webshop, I get a little nervous if my account still works, because it’s been a year or so again.
it will not replace visa and mastercard if they won’t give a card, but only an app that refuses to work on your phone but also has access to way too many things on it
GNU Taler is built on top of existing payment systems. It’s just a token you exchange money for, like those arcades you go to where you exchange money for arcade tokens. So it’s only as decentralized as the system it’s built on top of.
It does provide some privacy, but only for buyers, so this doesn’t prevent censorship. If the banks want to ban porn sites from accepting money, or block Steam from accepting transactions for porn games, they can. Censoring sales is the same as censoring purchases.
On top of that, if GNU Taler is built on top of centralized banking like it’s currently pushing for, then it inherits the same problems. The government can say “Poor people can’t be trusted, so we won’t let poor people get tokens, they’ll just have to use trackable methods like Paypal.” Or they can have a social credit system and say “Only people with 5000 credit or above can use Taler.”
And the government and banks still control the value and supply of the currency. They can print money however they want.
GNU Taler also doesn’t try to solve the distributed consensus problem. Afaik, it offloads the problem to the implementation. I have no idea how current implementations deal with multiple servers disagreeing on the ledger of transactions (say, due to network issues or server crashes), but it sounds like it trusts that servers will cooperate, and uses government audits to verify compliance. Again, centralized, and vulnerable to corruption, coercion, and collusion. GNU Taler could technically be built on top of bitcoin and blockchain, it even says so in the official FAQ, but that’s not their current vision
how do we create a system for digital payments without introducing centralized control (and therefore censorship)?
watches as lemmy tries their best to say anything except crypto
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Governments are centralized control. Just take a look at the current US administration, and the economic sanctions they pushed left and right. You trust them to keep their hands off transactions happening within their own country?
This is so naive it hurts, though. As if there weren’t literally thousands of years’ worth of tales of corruption and failed regulation to learn from.
I, too, desperately want to believe that democracy can still work despite capitalists having captured it. But I dunno…
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So it’s all Political Entropy, huh?
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As I see it, the development of anti-capture systems aren’t about actually preventing capture. Rather, they are to delay the inevitable and to make it so that when a “reset” happens, the good parts of a civilization aren’t too damaged when replacement happens.
Ideally, the next civilization(s) to arise from the ashes should inherit the best bits of whatever came before.
This is just decentralization. This is literally what I alluded to in my root comment. Crypto solves these problems
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manipulated by whales? are you talking about 51% attacks? censorship? Can you link some concrete examples of major crypto coins getting manipulated? I think there was a potential 51% attack on Monero but IIRC nothing actually happened.
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I would argue that your examples are about manipulation of people, not of the currency. Similar to the craziness of the GME (Gamestop) era, where it felt like everybody and their dog started buying GME stock. Or, say, a news outlet causing panic and a bank run. Though you’re right that since crypto still doesn’t have broad adoption, it’s easier to manipulate the smaller userbase.
Manipulation of the currency would be more like the government printing more money. This is not possible in crypto, where power is decentralized.
The instability is definitely unfortunate though. It’s a chicken and egg problem. If crypto had wider adoption, and was accepted in many stores, then it would become more stable. Just look at how much more stable the big crypto coins (bitcoin, eth) are compared to smaller altcoins. However, due to low adoption it’s still quite unstable, and that instability hurts adoption 🙃
Yeah, because crypto is not that. The problems with it as a payment system are numerous and make it unusable. It’s barely better than lugging suitcases full of twenties as a payment system for doing crimes, but only barely. The only thing it’s really good for is scamming people and gambling
There are enough crypto currencies made specifically with payment processing as their primary goal. But sure let’s just ignore good tech cus “crypto bros bad”
What problems? And crypto gets associated with crime because the currency is harder to control, which is precisely the point. Governments love being able to control their payments systems, just like they love to define what a “crime” is.
BS, Monero is the best currency for making untraceable payments full stop. People buy drugs with it but buying drugs shouldn’t be a crime. We need private currency’s that governments don’t control like that. It may not be great in every way but it’s the beat that exists and is certainly used for more than gambling and scamming people.
I was gonna say, you can tell who’s just a cryptobro vs who actually cares about fiscal freedom based on that. If anyone suggests you use bitcoin, they probablyyyyy aren’t someone to listen to. Zcash and Monero are the only two I’d ever trust as of now.
Honestly, its a massive shame that a technology as good as crypto was completely usurped by groups just looking to profit. They chant “This is true freedom of finance!” while only caring how much USD it’s worth. Like dawg, that’s why nobody takes crypto seriously.
Dunno why zcash has taken off so much, I believe it’s not private by default, but you have to manually enable that feature.
Monero is 100% opaque always
to add why that is bad: it makes those who enable privacy to stand out. those users who do thatbwill face arbitrary restrictions, but also it is easier to doxx the person behind a transaction if there are not a lot of other transactions with privacy enabled
In Europe we now slowly get wero.
This will replace hopefully PayPal, visa and mastercard
As someone who has lives in the Netherlands, were iDeal (the less international predecessor of wero) has been available for years - yes it replaces it, so much.
And it feels easier and safer at the same time, when my banking app on the phone can just scan the QR code on the website and deal with that.
Every time I DO use paypal now, usually a foreign webshop, I get a little nervous if my account still works, because it’s been a year or so again.
it will not replace visa and mastercard if they won’t give a card, but only an app that refuses to work on your phone but also has access to way too many things on it
I admit currently WERO has issues and it should not be baked into each banking app.
But still it will be better than to rely on the grace of American companies
but that’s still the end result if they are forcing apple or googlified android phones
EU has already stated that it will force companies to use their ID verification system for 18+ content or they will be debanked.
GNU Taler?
Nope, I considered this as well.
GNU Taler is built on top of existing payment systems. It’s just a token you exchange money for, like those arcades you go to where you exchange money for arcade tokens. So it’s only as decentralized as the system it’s built on top of.
It does provide some privacy, but only for buyers, so this doesn’t prevent censorship. If the banks want to ban porn sites from accepting money, or block Steam from accepting transactions for porn games, they can. Censoring sales is the same as censoring purchases.
On top of that, if GNU Taler is built on top of centralized banking like it’s currently pushing for, then it inherits the same problems. The government can say “Poor people can’t be trusted, so we won’t let poor people get tokens, they’ll just have to use trackable methods like Paypal.” Or they can have a social credit system and say “Only people with 5000 credit or above can use Taler.”
And the government and banks still control the value and supply of the currency. They can print money however they want.
GNU Taler also doesn’t try to solve the distributed consensus problem. Afaik, it offloads the problem to the implementation. I have no idea how current implementations deal with multiple servers disagreeing on the ledger of transactions (say, due to network issues or server crashes), but it sounds like it trusts that servers will cooperate, and uses government audits to verify compliance. Again, centralized, and vulnerable to corruption, coercion, and collusion. GNU Taler could technically be built on top of bitcoin and blockchain, it even says so in the official FAQ, but that’s not their current vision