Then they will ask why nobody wants to use their payment cards
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But is it really worth all of the junk that you have to accept? I like the credit scoring, the monthly subscription, and, if you miss the date for paying back, the absurdly high fees. Well, yes, with the debit card you have, technically speaking, the risk of someone being able to make about 100€ worth of RFID payments, and then the code is needed again for the next 100€ RFID payments. For everything else that doesn't involve RFID, the code is needed always.
What junk? Works same as a debt card but just not directly tied to a checking account, so less a big deal if it is lost or false charges made on it with companies reversing it. Get cashback on purchases, additional warranty on items, and able to do charge backs if company isn't giving you a refund for whatever reason.
Most people who run into trouble are because they don't realize credit cards aren't free money so go beyond their budget. If you spend what you can afford and pay back each month question becomes more why should a debit card be used over a credit card?
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Yep. Just because one side is bad, it doesn't mean the other is any good.
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling. Credit card companies are still a private owned government branch with no concern for human rights and criminals-enabling.
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling.
As we all know, Visa and MasterCard have never been used by criminals. As soon as a criminal touches a card, the card turns into ash.
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Let's not ask how much power Visa and MasterCard use for their global monopoly.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Literally orders of magnitude less? Are you not familiar with how proof of work crypto operates? Being energy inefficient is the whole point.
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I learned recently FedNow is a payment processor ran by the Federal Reserve, with a fee of $0.043 per transaction. Making it much, much cheaper than every other payment processor out there.
It just launched two years ago; I'm wondering if this might become more of a thing moving forward for digital payments.
It's also a heck of a lot quicker to process, (effectively instant) and works even on holidays.
And of course, banks like Bank of America, Capital One, and tons of other financial institutions simply refuse to use it, because that would mean spending money on changing their infrastructure, and making it more convenient for people to also use accounts outside of theirs.
Seriously, it's been ages, and they've refused to use it at all, even though it's purely a financial and technical upside for every user once it's implemented.
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The transaction fee is not paid by the consumer (directly), and lord knows sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method.
sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method
Mullvad actually does this for their VPN service, which I think is great. For a VPN company that doesn't want to store identifiers about you, taking crypto makes sense because that also doesn't necessarily have identifiers about you attached that they could read or be required to store, unlike a card that requires your name, address, and card number.
Other than that though, no larger companies are going to do anything of the sort, let alone be likely to even implement it as a payment method to begin with. Tons of additional technical complexity for little to no benefit.
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"Insane fluctuations in currency value": Someone who makes most of their payments in crypto is likely doing it with a stablecoin, which is a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to a fiat currency, like the US dollar. So, no more wild fluctuations than the 10% decrease in value the USD has experienced over the past year. Speaking of which, the 100% increase in BTC value this past year certainly is wild, but I don't think any of it's holders would consider that a problem.
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"Immense inefficiency of the whole system": If you consider the US military to be the value security for the world's dominant fiat currency [which you would be foolish not to] Proof of Work security is a large improvement on energy use. Proof of Stake security, which most stablecoins use these days, doesn't really use any energy worth noting.
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"All the fraud": Credit cards suffer far more fraud than crypto. Perhaps that's a product of their wider adoption, but that's where 99% of the fraud is happening.
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"The lack of regulation": One of the hottest topics in US congress over the past several years, for both Biden and Trump regimes, has been crypto regulation. It's a moving space right now but it seems myopic to call lack of regulation when it's certainly going to be a moot point by 2028.
Sorry I don't really consider myself to be some crypto warrior but I do really dislike these decade+ old off the cuff relatively low-information talking points. This is not how you argue against crypto, if you want a strong argument against crypto come at it from an explicitly anti-capitalist lens and accuse it of accelerating global financialization, which it is, like a gas can poured on a campfire. Go big or go home. If you don't oppose capitalism and you're just looking for a better money, crypto is not your boogeyman.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Stronger argument is that deflationary currency is not something someone with an investment mind wants to spend. Which is why there is the same price fixation and attempts to hype up crypto like stocks because most people got into it not to spend it, but hold onto it like an asset. Its why people encourage rebuying crypto if you use it to buy something to replenish their balance to not regret having wasted what could be a house to get a slice of pizza.
Now sure there are stable coins but that is more used by investors to move assets around exchanges to then go and buy other crypto that they believe will return a profit or move into when they believe a dip is occuring so they can reenter later to expand their assests by buying low. Pretty much most crypto communities are highly fixated on price as opposed to treating it like currency that should be spent. It's always this is the next big thing, it is going to moon, hodl, etc.
So I guess point is as much as people like to act like they are anticapitalist the culture of crypto once prices started going up is pursuit of capitalism and wealth hording. The values people claim to have was most present when crypto was new and people were giving it away, having fun spending it, and transacting it. But, then greed took over as people saw people becoming millionaires and billionaires for holding what they got early.
It's ironic looking at it now given the state of dogecoin but that maintained the original spirit of crypto for a really long time before it too skyrocketed in price and got pulled into the same asset category.
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Benefits of centralization: Someone can counteract harmful interactions.
Drawbacks of centralization: Someone can decide legitimate interactions are harmful.
It does suck when the “harmful interaction management system” goes haywire. But I’m not sure it sucks enough that I’d rather simply not have one.
I used to be one of the people firmly on the "someone can decide legitimate interactions are harmful, thus they should not ever exist" side of the argument, and I think this is certainly a good way of putting it.
For a lot of people heavily into crypto, they see the drawbacks of the existing system, but instead of pushing for reform and legal changes, they try technological abolition of the entire mechanism altogether, without then realizing the tradeoffs that brings (e.g. how a lot of people will go "it's instant! Sellers don't have to worry about chargebacks! Nobody can take away your money from you!" yet don't think about how that also means a scammer taking your money is a permanent loss you can never reverse. (or if they do think about it, will argue that risk can be reduced to a point it is less harmful than the alternative, centralized companies)
I don't deny crypto can be useful sometimes, or even be more beneficial when the centralized companies do eventually do something bad and people need an alternative payment mechanism, but I think a lot of people into crypto overestimate how beneficial it truly is compared to the tradeoffs.
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yes, however the regulations will always have some corruption
Same for unregulated systems, only without transparency, limits or recourse
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sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method
Mullvad actually does this for their VPN service, which I think is great. For a VPN company that doesn't want to store identifiers about you, taking crypto makes sense because that also doesn't necessarily have identifiers about you attached that they could read or be required to store, unlike a card that requires your name, address, and card number.
Other than that though, no larger companies are going to do anything of the sort, let alone be likely to even implement it as a payment method to begin with. Tons of additional technical complexity for little to no benefit.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I hope the EU to come up with their own payment process to compete against and be a mainstream alternative to the US based ones.
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Yep. Just because one side is bad, it doesn't mean the other is any good.
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling. Credit card companies are still a private owned government branch with no concern for human rights and criminals-enabling.
Criminals-enabling is what they call VPNs, E2EE encrypted communication etc.
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Honestly, what's the point of a credit card? Why don't people mostly use debit cards? It gets just directly wire transferred from your account. No sort of junk fees or monthly subscription needed. Genuine Question.
Because many people don’t actually have the money on hand. Some do but me and many others are spending money we don’t have yet. It’s a negative feedback loop of debt because capitalism sucks
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I mean either you care enough about payment processor censorship to go around them or you don't. If the extra dollar isn't worth it to you then that is what it is.
Nobody is going to rush to implement a payment system where the fees can change 5x hour to hour because that's just customer dissatisfaction waiting to happen.
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Honestly, what's the point of a credit card? Why don't people mostly use debit cards? It gets just directly wire transferred from your account. No sort of junk fees or monthly subscription needed. Genuine Question.
Because I have to. A lot of platforms literally don't support debit cards.
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Because I have to. A lot of platforms literally don't support debit cards.
A lot of platforms literally don’t support debit cards.
You can get a Visa debit card from your bank; everyone takes Visa.
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Honestly, what's the point of a credit card? Why don't people mostly use debit cards? It gets just directly wire transferred from your account. No sort of junk fees or monthly subscription needed. Genuine Question.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Fiscally responsible people do it because of the cash back/perks and 0% interest.
Fiscally irresponsible people do it because 'free money' (ignoring the 28% annual interest).
Credit cards also offer better consumer protections than debit cards. Ex: chargebacks.
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"Insane fluctuations in currency value": Someone who makes most of their payments in crypto is likely doing it with a stablecoin, which is a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to a fiat currency, like the US dollar. So, no more wild fluctuations than the 10% decrease in value the USD has experienced over the past year. Speaking of which, the 100% increase in BTC value this past year certainly is wild, but I don't think any of it's holders would consider that a problem.
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"Immense inefficiency of the whole system": If you consider the US military to be the value security for the world's dominant fiat currency [which you would be foolish not to] Proof of Work security is a large improvement on energy use. Proof of Stake security, which most stablecoins use these days, doesn't really use any energy worth noting.
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"All the fraud": Credit cards suffer far more fraud than crypto. Perhaps that's a product of their wider adoption, but that's where 99% of the fraud is happening.
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"The lack of regulation": One of the hottest topics in US congress over the past several years, for both Biden and Trump regimes, has been crypto regulation. It's a moving space right now but it seems myopic to call lack of regulation when it's certainly going to be a moot point by 2028.
Sorry I don't really consider myself to be some crypto warrior but I do really dislike these decade+ old off the cuff relatively low-information talking points. This is not how you argue against crypto, if you want a strong argument against crypto come at it from an explicitly anti-capitalist lens and accuse it of accelerating global financialization, which it is, like a gas can poured on a campfire. Go big or go home. If you don't oppose capitalism and you're just looking for a better money, crypto is not your boogeyman.
As someone who used to be (but no longer is) into crypto: These statements are all technically accurate to some degree, but are missing extremely important nuance.
The stablecoins part is accurate. Most purchases made in crypto are with stablecoins.
What's missing here is the fact that these stablecoins are issued and controlled by private companies, or would be influenced by them otherwise. For example, Circle issues USDC, one of the most popular dollar stablecoins. (as well as EURC for Euros)
Circle holds real dollars in real bank accounts to back USDC. Circle can also freeze your balance and blacklist addresses, because they don't want their banks to stop working with them. That's it. They can unilaterally stop you from using your USDC.
Other mechanisms for keeping a stablecoin at $1, such as algorithmic pegs, failed spectacularly many times, the most famous of which being the Terra disaster.
Some other stablecoins use centralized coins as backing to then issue new coins. (e.g. 1 STABLECOIN is backed by 1 USDC, and can be exchanged freely) These coins could then be in trouble if they're used enough for fraud, and Circle just blocks the coin itself from exchanging between itself and USDC to maintain the peg, making it worthless. This is an inherent risk. You either use a centralized platform less accountable than card companies, or you use a third party backed by that centralized asset that could face peg issues.
As for the inefficiency, it's actually true that PoW is being phased out by most chains other than Bitcoin for PoS, which is incredibly energy efficient by comparison. Truly, it's actually just pretty energy efficient. This isn't missing much nuance, though you could argue that the financial mechanisms used by the systems running on top of a PoS consensus mechanisms are still complex in their own right.
For the fraud part, this is only half accurate. Fraud in crypto has been on the rise, and while it's maintained itself at a level lower than credit card fraud, this is also because of the limited scope in which crypto operates. If crypto were to be used in more situations like credit cards are, then there would be more opportunities to be defrauded in the first place.
The majority of activity in crypto operates within speculative markets, protocols offering yield farming and staking, liquidity pooling, vote bribing, and an untold number of other mechanisms that exist. As such, scammers are mostly limited to tricking people in the field of investments.
If crypto was also used to pay your bills, for your purchases at the store, for every rideshare and food delivery app, and to pay friends back for dinner, then the scope of fraud becomes much larger.
Crypto does not have less fraud because it is fundamentally better at preventing it, crypto has less fraud because it's used in less circumstances.
(There is also an argument to be made that many investments in crypto that don't work out because of rugpulls, failed promises, unaccountable DAO leaders, etc, aren't counted in fraud statistics, and that the number should be much higher)
Now, finally, as for regulation, it's true that crypto has seen much more regulation than it used to have, but it's only getting a bit stronger, and is nowhere near the sheer quantity of regulations that financial corporations have to follow, though some are technically not necessary for crypto as most crypto is already transparent via the blockchain's very structure, and thus doesn't require some of the transparency regulations corporations often follow.
Crypto still lags far behind, and there's a degree to which it physically can't be regulated in the first place. For example, you can't regulate how the Uniswap exchange handles user funds, because the code for Uniswap has already been immutably deployed to its respective chains.
If a system is built on rejecting authority, there will always be a degree to which justifiable authority that could protect people becomes impossible by its very nature.
I'm not wholly against any possible use of crypto. If someone being, say, censored by payment processors is able to use crypto to send money home to their family, or pay for a thing the corporations currently deem to not be nice for their brand image, that's all well and fine.
But as a whole, crypto is nowhere near being more beneficial than harmful.
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A lot of platforms literally don’t support debit cards.
You can get a Visa debit card from your bank; everyone takes Visa.
I'm EU based. We don't have visa debit cards
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I'm EU based. We don't have visa debit cards
I am in EU, but likely a different country. I dont think we do Visa credit cards here, the only credit card around is Mastercard, all Visas are debit. Weird how that’s different
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I'm EU based. We don't have visa debit cards
The EU has Visa debit cards.
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I've almost never seen irl stores charge more for paying by card, definitely not anything that wasn't a small family business. The only place I see it is sometimes on webshops
I’ve almost never seen irl stores charge more for paying by card
It's a violation of visa/mastercard's TOS, but also smaller stores get much higher transaction fees so they have further incentive to do so.
