That doesn’t address the criticism. If I pay for a good or service via crypto and it is not delivered satisfactorily, what is my remedy? Who even decides what “satisfaction” is?
Yes, the dispute/chargeback process for cards is cumbersome today, but it is a solution - albeit inefficient. What is the crypto answer?
I don’t mean to put you on the spot for this question, but I would love to understand how decentralized solutions might address this issue.
What if you pay via cash or debit card or don't want to cut off a company (like Apple or Google or Amazon) completely? What is your remedy..chargebacks are a last resort. How many can you do before you get cutoff?
Normally chargebacks are for scams or fraud not because something came broken from Amazon.
> If I pay for a good or service via crypto and it is not delivered satisfactorily
If you paid with cash, what is your remedy?
And if the reason you need a third-party is just to resolve disputes, then what's stopping to have other companies that do nothing but the scrow-holding and dispute resolution?
If I pay in cash then I’m physically present. Usually I’m at a store with a reputation to uphold and a set return policy that’s reliable. If I’m transacting with an unknown entity (eg craigslist) then I can at least physically inspect the item. Very different than ordering online.
So for these cases you consider a high chance of the counterparty being dishonest, you use the alternative that can give you safeguards. If it makes more sense to use a credit card, you can still use it.
Since it is the customer who chooses the payment method (or just won't buy from the seller if they aren't happy with the options offered), what is the benefit for the customer?
The lack of fraud (by which you really just mean lack of charge back) is only a benefit for the seller, and not the buyer. You are just moving risk to the buyer, and it is just like the old days of the Web when some sellers would try to get you to use western union to pay.
I've not seen you describe this yet in the thread, which tells me there is no benefit or you haven't thought this through.
> If I pay for a good or service via crypto and it is not delivered satisfactorily
In this vague hypothetical situation, what a lot of crypto folk would tell you is that you should use a smart contract, and not a regular transaction, to pay. Hypothetically the contract/network will act as an escrow agent, and would only complete the transaction when all input parameters are true AKA all parties are "satisfied". The successful input parameters and their truth sources would be agreed upon before hand.
I could argue more specific scenarios around fraud (buyer receives a good/service and pretends it was not satisfactory), but that can go on forever and I would encourage readers to go search for answers to specific edge cases because they are out there.
That only works if all "input parameters" involved in the transaction are verifyably on chain. If I'm buying a physical good with crypto there's no way you can write a smart contract that verifies I did indeed get the good I paid for. Oracles don't count because that's just kicking the can to a different level (how do I dispute the oracle saying something happened that didn't).
Exactly. On top of that and the high transaction fees, it's more complicated to do a Patreon like service with Crypto than just work with the imperfect financial systems we have now....
It’s really not that hard to build a Patreon style service on crypto and web3. It’s also far easier to build a new payment processing platform on crypto than it is to build an alternative to PayPal or Stripe.
Many Patreon payments are simple donations, or gated access to digital media. These can be achieved with smart contract functionality to mitigate the need for costly payment processing.
Yes, a theoretical crypto-Patreon would have to be coded in Solidity and frontend interfaces built around it for the web. This might be OSS or just a private enterprise.
But the users of this platform do not need to know how to code.
In a hypothetical crypto Patreon, if you send $1 to an artist, your only recourse to get that back if you are displeased with their art is to ask them politely, or ask the platform or protocol creator. Most likely you will not get your funds back, but this is assumed to be the case.
I mean, we haven't had a depression quite as world-shatteringly gigantic at the Great Depression since. Although I guess it isn't obvious if that's because the system we have now is somehow better, or if it is just the case that we've been more prosperous as a baseline since then, and so our various downturns haven't launched people into such a level of destitution.
Central banks and macroeconomists have learned a lot since the Great Depression, mostly of the “don’t do that again” variety. For example the Fed caused the Great Depression by contracting the money supply by a third in the middle of a recession, killing US economic growth for decades. They are unlikely to repeat that mistake.
Yes. This is why they no longer operate on a gold standard, which de facto contracts the money supply (people want to hold "safe" gold rather than circulate money) in the middle of a recession
They were literally on a gold standard at the time. You absolutely can blame the gold standard for the Fed decision to raise interest rates to protect gold reserves.
The only decision the Fed could (and eventually did) take to allow the money supply to expand was removing the US from the gold standard.
I think the evidence is circumstantial but sufficient to warrant further investigation. CA harvested illegal data, used it in the Cruz campaign, lied about removing it and were then very involved in the presidential election, all within the span of a couple of years.
Parscape's denial is not in itself evidence, but I do agree with rsynnott that it's neither here nor there.
I do believe that all competitive advantage is temporary and that better offerings are to come from a variety of players...
However, there is simply nothing close to Tesla on the planet today. It will be some time before others can catch up. They will. It is inevitable. Right now, Tesla has something others are unable to produce.
Success is not a binary. It is relatively easy to build a small team that functions well. When you try to scale, it gets exponentially harder. This is why there are few successful startups, fewer successful scale ups, and even fewer unicorn success stories. This shit is hard and requires more investment from more people over time, not less.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14070189