Oh sure, now Lemmy wants to embrace crypto instead of calling it a scam, all because your porn was threatened.
I had to put up with so much abuse here just because I always say positive things about crypto. You people suck.
Crypto AI porn sounds kinda hot
It’s not porn availability that’s threatened, but freedom. I don’t want to use bitcoin and I still think it’s a scam and a sort of gamble, but if Visa or Mastercard can deprive us of freedom, we may have to consider using bitcoin.
The don’t use Bitcoin.
I like Etherium cause it doesn’t waste electricity and you don’t need to buy expensive proprietary hardware to mine it. All you gotta do is press the “stake” button and enjoy that 4% APR. I made $500 in two years simply by sitting on my ETH and letting it grow. Just like how banks used to work back in the day. It’s nice; you’re missing out.
You can’t earn more than you worked.
The $500 isn’t real. You earned that by gambling, by taking the unnecessary risk.
Bro. I feel you. But you have to embrace the fact that Crypto is both a blessing and a curse. People certainly use it in scammy ways - but they do the same with dollars and physical currency.
So people hyperfixate on how crypto can hurt them instead of how they can be helped.
Crypto 100% can replace banks, savings accounts, the stock market, and pretty much every centralized financial institution that has already been captured by billionaire interests.
But you aren’t going to get people to hear that if you just complain about them fixating on the bad stuff.
Talk about what’s good about Crypto enough, and people will definitley come around.
What’s so frustrating about it is that every argument against crypto can also apply to fiat currency. The only one that holds water is the waste of electricity argument, which is why it’s important to invest in Proof of Stake coins like Etherium. So even that argument is a weak one at best. I just don’t understand the hate.
Well said! And same! The hate is entirely manufactured imo. Anyone with eyes can see that Bitcoin increased in value from .001 cents to $120,000 between 2009 and 2025. In that same 26 years what did the stock market do? Ride a rollercoaster of bullshit. The value of crypto is literally better than anything else in the last 2 decades, and that scares the people who control the fiat system outside it.
are you advocating for crypto as a payment system that’s supplementary or as a full replacement for fiat currency?
Full replacement, otherwise there’s no point and Visa still controls everything.
Part of me wonders if this is all a play to boost crypto values by the execs in these industries.
Devil’s advocate, it’s a play to get crypto banned cause it’s only used for illegal/disapproved activities.
Feasible but it’s a long con. Although big corporations can play these games i guess
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Crypto is still a scam.
Bitcoin is not crypto
it’s literally called a “cryptocurrency”.
Yes but they are still very different things.
only if you change the definition of “crypto”.
Many would argue that there needs some distinction between them. The ongoing joke is “Shitcoin” as many have abandoned the benefits of bitcoin.
Wtf are you talking about??? Bitcoin is THE cryptocurrency.
And specifically bad for this.
Only way out is communism. Pick yoir flavor.
What…
The only way out of crypto is full blow communism? Those are the two options?
Crypto has all the same vices as government and corporate currencies, just arranged a little differently. It’s not the revolution.
You can do various flavors of anarchism or centralism or the weird shit in between, but the only way for someone to not be able to say what you can spend your money on is to abolish money or get rid of all the people who could tell you what to do.
Credit card companies should be nonprofits under democratic control.
Euro has PSD2 which seems to be a step in the right direction
Could’ve would’ve should’ve
So many things could be so much better.
Poverty could end tomorrow if we wanted to.
War could end tomorrow if we wanted to
Healthcare could be free if we wanted to
Same for schools and education in general
“If we wanted to”
Let me rephrase that: if either the top 1% would let us, or if the 99% would just stand up and take what’s theirs, we could…
Isn’t that kind of what a credit union issued card is?
Yes let’s definitely side with the scam that’s been around for two decades and its only practical use is to rug pull chumps yes this is good advice
Bitcoin is a lot of things, it’s not a scam. Some cryptocoins aren’t scams either or didn’t start as one.
A lot of crypto coins are scams
Bitcoin and any blockchain based payment system is not a viable alternative to payment processors at world scale. Unless power requirements per transaction go down literally exponentially, it will never be.
Having said all that: Bitcoin does work on the current limited scale, it works better and easier and faster han all payment processors, and most importantly: Bitcoin isn’t a giant dick wanting to insert itself into every orifice of your body
Fuck Visa, fuck MasterCard, fuck American Express, fuck all of them you fucking psychopathic narcissistic assholes
Bitcoin may not be a scam per se, but its main usage is to facilitate scams. The biggest of which is being a market that speculators can manipulate to make the currency they actually want.
It’s not a scam requires a huge Wikipedia <citation needed>
I’m not saying it’s great, it’s shit, but at least it’s not as evil as visa or MasterCard
Even if bitcoin isn’t a scam, people still use it to fuck people over. When bitcoin gained popularity, the forum entries were insane. It was all people telling other people to hold. Please hold guys, bitcoin is the future. Use your bitcoin like you would money, guys we’re all in this together. At the same time, they made fun of people who used their bitcoin to pay something and go: haha that loser bought a 20k pizza. And they would all fuck eachother and sell all their bicoins when they were high enough. And when it dropped, they started again. Guyyyys, remember to hold.
Crypto is to peacocking men what MLMs is to american housemoms.
A lot of crypto relies on greater fools, but not all of it.
You’re right. Those who scam everybody else get to really benefit from crypto. Much like MLMs.
This is a heated topic it seems, to crypto or not to crypto.
The cartoon is misleading. There are more alternatives to Mastercard/Visa than crypto.
Yeah I know, that’s just mostly the debate I’m seeing.
I think the most viable good solution is EU regulation, maybe through citizen initiative, seeing as payment processors are one of the biggest Gatekeeper around.
Bitcoin bros are acting like little pushed around victims now?
Needlessly antagonistic interpretation presented not for good faith discussion but for your own fragile emotional needs. Reap what you sow.
Trying so hard to sound smart, just like a bitcoin bro
I can dumb it down if you want.
I think this is bit what the post is trying to say.
A few days ago, visa and MasterCard forced steam to stop selling some games they didn’t like, and is not the first time. For many of us (I’m not a bitcoiner nor a crypto bro, my entire crypto wallet is 1usd) the first thought was “this is ridiculous. They have a duopoly so they get to decide the rules of the internet. This can be solved with crypto to remove all the unnecessary middlemen”. I felt the push. It reignited my interest in the tech and am once again seeing what’s out there, fees, and transaction times looking for a good balance
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.
If someone steals your debit card, they can directly take money out of your account. With credit cards, there’s a buffer between the product and the bank account, and it makes it easier to stop fraud
Well not to stop it before it happens, surely, but an easier time reclaiming your money due to the buffer.
Debit cards typically have PIN numbers.
I know these can be defeated in various ways, but its not usually as simple as, just steal someone’s card.
Also, you can just go to your bank or credit union, call them, report online or w/e: Hey, my card got stolen, these txns are fraud.
Might not be as streamlined or as fast as a payment challenge with a credit card, but its not that much worse.
It’s not fraud, it’s interest.
If you use a debit card and can’t cover a transaction, it just doesn’t go through. If you have a credit card then the bank pays and now you owe them, and they’ll charge you extra for that privilege.
You could just pay off your balance by the due date and you won’t be charged any interest.
This problem could be solved.
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?
The US implementation of chip and PIN left off the PIN. The reason given was “no one wants to put in a PIN every time” so for the vast majority of transactions you just hold up your card to the sensor or put it in the chip reader. PIN is only required for cash withdrawals in my experience.
Jesus Christ, that is absolutely moronic. No wonder people are so obsessed with losing their card.
I’ve had my debit card information stolen before. My bank knew before I did, cancelled the fraudulent charges, and refunded my money without any action on my part. Doesn’t seem like a credit card would have been any advantage in my [admittedly anecdotal] case.
In the US if someone takes your debit card and enters the correct PIN, the transactions are permanent, and the bank has no obligation to give your money back (and if they choose to do so it would be out of their own pocket).
Banks can, but they’re not legally obligated to. With a credit card they are. (US)
You get points. I pay a fee on only one of my cards, the one that gives me 6% back on groceries. I make decent money using that card.
Because people are reliant on debt because wages haven’t kept pace with expected standards of living.
Of for more ago well off people some cards offer perks like cash back or air miles and it’s free if you pay it off in full each month.
Also, in my country at least, you get more protection if you have an issue with the goods you’ve bought. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/section75-protect-your-purchases/
I’ve just got rid of my credit card after 10 years in NA. Yes it can come in handy if you need a couple grand all of a sudden but damn, what a ball and chain, I hated it
My debit card is a master card.
They still need to go through a payment processor, using a debit instead of credit card isn’t really the solution to the current problems.
I live off a credit card, my money sits inside an offset account against my home loan the interest charged on that is calculated every 30 days at the end of the month so the more cash I have in there the less interest I pay on my mortgage.
The credit card is free with no fees or interest provided I pay it off on time with that date being every 30 days from the 15th of the month.
Thus at the end of the month when interest is calculated on my home loan I have more cash in my account then I would if I had of spent 2k that month on bills etc.
The other benefit is I earn points that the bank will exchange for cash with me so it’s kinda like free money.
For context I’m Australian with an Australian bank.
This set up is great if you’re disciplined for anyone due to the points etc however if you screw up spend beyond your means etc you will incur interest and that’s not good.
I make sure to never spend more then I actually have and it has worked wonders for me.
In the past 10 years I’ve probably been made about 7k back in points value.
Cash flights etc all for spending exactly as I do.
I should note the card is provided to me as part of my home loan package hence it has no fees attached as I pay an upfront cost for the “home loan wealth package”
i’ll add an extra to this on the cashback etc
credit card companies charge stores processing fees, and then give consumers cash backs to encourage them to spend using their cards
stores add credit card processing into their cost of doing business… you’re charged that in the cost of things you purchase
if you pay with a credit card, you get some of that back. if you don’t pay with a credit card, you’re still charged the fees - you just don’t get any of the benefits
The latest that drives me mad is the 1.5 surcharge they’re putting on pay wave transactions now.
They pushed it free convenient etc etc and now charge extra for it regardless of debit or credit card
whaaaat? where is doing this? i haven’t seen it, and would ABSOLUTELY boycott the shit out of it
Small to medium shops all around my town in Australia.
It’s started to make me think about returning to cash, but it’s $3.20 to get cash out unless you go to the bank during their office hours
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
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.
“Debit” in the United States refers to chip-and-PIN transactions only (though tap-and-PIN is also now a thing). The US debit card networks process only in-person transactions because their fees are limited by law and the risk of fraud is lower for chip-and-PIN compared to the “trust me bro” of online card transactions.
All other transactions processed through the Visa or Mastercard network are treated as credit card transactions for the purposes of processing the transaction on the network, even if the underlying card is a debit card.
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
The EU has Visa debit cards.
I buy stuff for work with my personal card and I’ve made probably thousands of dollars from the cash back. Even on my regular cards I get a couple hundred back off of stuff I normally buy.
There’s other benefits too like using points to buy plane tickets, fancy lobbies in the airport with free food, etc.
Tons of cards have zero fees. Some offer rewards and benefits at no real cost. I have for nearly a decade used a card with 1% back on purchases and 1% back on payments. Running all my usual spending through that and then just paying it off has net me a lot of money in that time that I just use for statement credit.
It’s easy to dispute charges should I ever need to. Rare since I’m cautious anyways, but the extra layer before my actual bank account is nice.
It has also built up a hell of a credit rating for me as well.
I am usually cautious with claims of free money. There is no free money for working class people. So, who’s paying it in that case and for what reason? I reckon the company who is running the platform does it, such that they can get market share to coerce sellers into using their product.
Or am I seeing this wrong?
I will agree that a credit card only really made any sense as I began to finally gain more financial independence. Before then, it was pointless.
The claim is that they are giving you a portion of the merchant fee for utilizing said credit cards.
I’m sure they also make money by selling all your info.
You can get 2% cards with no fees now as well. 2% on everything.
Paid cards go up to 6%, or possibly higher.
You can game this system if you don’t have debt on them.
That’s what I do. 2% card with zero fees and no debt on it. Run every possible expense through it monthly and just pay it off.
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.
This is not true for many countries. Debit cards in my country have equal or even better consumer protections than credit cards and are also cheaper.
It’s true in the United States. In the US, a debit card transaction is an EFTPOS (electronic funds transfer at point of sale) and once you enter your PIN, there are no take-backs and if you want a refund and the merchant refuses, you have to resort to the legal system for recourse. Credit cards, on the other hand, have consumer protection rules and dispute procedures.
Fiscally irresponsible
I mean, there are people who just don’t have the money for a needed “purchase” (like medical care, transportation, or food), and hope they’ll be able to get a better job or make more money in the future to pay it off later. Been there.
also gnu taler should be next to bitcoin (ik not as widespread)
It’s not quite the same as a traditional cryptocurrency but I look forward to seeing the results of the EU trial
It’s not quite the same as a traditional cryptocurrency but I look forward to seeing the results of the EU trial
yeah its more like “Open source visa/mastercard”
Mostly yeah, but AFAIK it did have additional privacy advantages
The main reason I don’t care for bitcoin is I have to count a bunch zeros after the decimal point, before reaching a useful number. $1 = 0.000006128921 btc? Really? Screw those zeroes. Bitcoin is inefficient in so many ways.
If you’re paying for small good (25-50$) you usually pay in “Satoshis” 0.00000001 BTC. If you convert it to dollars, 10 satoshis is 1 cent.
And twenty bucks to the Chinese miners as a “transaction free”.
Lightning network, taproot, all that shit, just paper over the fact that Bitcoin cannot, by design, handle enough transaction volume to become a general purpose currency without reinventing a lot of mostly centralized payment infrastructure.
Lightning is generally pretty stupid
It’s a catch 22 solution. It only allows bitcoin to scale if hardly anyone settles back on the bitcoin network.
You can commit money to a payment channel with a third party to create a private ledger so the third party can perform payments in your name to someone in using their shared channel on their private ledger.
Motherfucker, that’s just a bank and two bank accounts with extra steps.
Case in point
I still haven’t come across anywhere, or any reason, to buy goods with BTC. I look for things I need, not ways to spend. I have these beautiful apps showing me clearly how to buy bitcoin, but no one is giving me any reason to do it. What am I supposed to do with a satoshi? Groceries? Nope. Furniture? Nope. Housing? Nope. A T-shirt with some BTC logo on it? 🤨
Anything you can buy cocaine with is fiat currency imo
The only reason I’ve ever used crypto is to buy DIY HRT and other drugs off the internet :)
It’s one of the least bad things about it, and if not for approximately twelve thousand bad things about it, would be easily fixable.
Monkey brain no like small numbers. Monkey brain like big numbers.
But for real, Bitcoin was the first decentalized currency to solve the Byzantine Generals Problem. Its worth something because its transparent, unmutable, and the original digital currency. It was birthed via grassroot origins in depths of the housing crash. It calls out the Federal Reserve (and any other human institution that seeks to expand their money supply).
Yeah. Just like how wood fire was the first way to cook fish.
1 dollar is currently worth .0000084 BTC; or, 840 Satoshi if zeros scare you.
How much is it in binary digits oh brave one? And tell me how many milliseconds it takes you to calculate this with your mind.
What if foreign words scare me more?
The person you’re replying to loves republicans, so they should be familiar with the concept.
This person I’m replying to loves eating their own poop.
I’m using the same amount of proof they did for this claim.
It was far less valuable when it first started becoming trendy. 1 BTC for a pizza, or whatever. Now it’s turned into a hyperinflation wheelbarrow kind of situation.
Exact opposite of hyperinflation
If that’s the biggest complaint you have about it, it’s probably not that bad.
I don’t mind Bitcoin itself, but I do hate the ads and NFTs and pump and dump scams, obviously
Bitcoin is its own worst enemy. It’s deflationary, speculative, and largely interacted with by centralized entities. Those things means its unlikely to be successful as an actual currency; even one it hopes to be.
It’s been surpassed by new blockchains in all dimensions except market cap
Such as?
-
Bitcoin for market cap
-
Solana for transactions, throughput and scalability
-
Polkadot or Cosmos for interoperability
-
Ethereum for everything else (developer, activity, economic activity, regulatory, governance, decentralisation etc.)
Cool, ty!
I also hear alot about Monero from the privacy crowd.
Any thoughts?
Monero is opt-in privacy so not ideal, but it’s the most popular privacy preserving coin, so it’s most popular for illicit dark web purchases
-
They should bring in subunits like an MMO. 1 bitcoin (118905USD) = 100 bitsilver 1 bitsilver (1189.05USD) = 100 bitcopper 1 bitcopper = 11.89USD
It doesn’t even make any different to the number of bitcoin used, its just a more user friendly way of displaying it for small purchases.
Transfer failed.
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This already exists. 1 bitcoin = 1,000 mBTC = 100,000,000 satoshi. The exchange rate as of writing is about 846 satoshis = 1 USD or 982 satoshis = 1 EUR. The current usage is thusly:
- Transaction fees on the main network are measured in sats/B (satoshis per [virtual] byte [of transaction size]).
- Transactions on the Lightning Network, a lower-fee instant payment network that runs on top of the ordinary Bitcoin network, are all denominated in respect to satoshis. So a payment on the Lightning Network is traditionally regarded as, for example, 50,000 satoshis rather than 0.5 mBTC or 0.0005 BTC. And the fee on that payment is usually in the range of 50-100 satoshis.
- Goods sold on the Lightning Network are typically priced in satoshis.
They already do that with SI prefixes.
Things are often measured in mBTC or µBTC for this exact reason.
Just as you don’t measure the length of an ant in meters, you measure it in millimeters.
But you never see milliBTC or µBTC. Your post is literally the first time I see µBTC. No normal person knows how to type µ, let alone knowing what it means or how many eggs that buys. My crypto currency converter doesn’t even use µBTC.
The one is used by the mafia, the other is the mafia. Which one are you siding with?
The mafia, they seem to have all the money.
Isn’t this a right wing meme about centrists, but with the text changed?
The Bitcoin side wouldn’t catch you, because that interferes with the user’s choice to hit the ground.
Perhaps the original is right-wing, though this happens a lot (e.g. the “change my mind” guy). This meme seems anti-collective shout, so I’d place it left wing.
Neither side makes good points except about how the ither sucks. There arent any.
what
Yeah I don’t understand the meme
Steam and itch have had to remove porn games because Mastercard and Visa don’t like them
Not even that. It was because a disingenuous psychopath raised a big stink to the payment processors that Steam and itch rely on. As long as they want to process payments they unfortunately need the companies and have to appease them. The best thing we could do is raise a bigger opposite stink.
I think the best thing we can do is create long-term alternatives. But I do think that the most reasonable, effective, productive thing we can do is to just collectively harass the credit card companies harder than some outspoken religious nuts do to prevent them from caving to censorship demands.
Crypto grifters trying to capitalize on the payment processor censorship drama (by portraying it as pushing people towards crypto)
Which is funny because many crypto people don’t spend it like currency because to them it is another asset they hope rises in value like stocks to get rich like the early bitcoin holders. And it’s why many if they spend it go and rebuy the same amount to not get spenders remorse in the future spending what could have been a house on a video game.
Now I know the decentralized value of crypto and the tech is cool. Just more sick of the overall greedy culture around it of people wanting to get rich quick off it, but masquerading around as though they actually care about the tech or are anti-capitalist. When it really is just about trying to get rich.
