New Initiative for Donations

[Joakim]

On Friday, 26 October 2018 at 17:20:08 UTC, Neia Neutuladh wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 06:19:29 +0000, Joakim wrote:
>
>> On Friday, 26 October 2018 at 05:47:05 UTC, Neia Neutuladh 
>> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 02:38:08 +0000, Joakim wrote:
>>>> As with D, sometimes the new _is_ better, so perhaps you 
>>>> shouldn't assume old is better either.
>>>
>>> There's no assuming going on. Cryptocurrencies are worse than 
>>> credit cards for everything that normal people care about,
>> 
>> Such as? I already noted that they're easier and cheaper, you 
>> simply flatly state that "normal people" find them worse.
>
> In most countries where people are going to donate to D, the 
> vast majority of people have access to a credit card.

That's not really true, and that's not actually something "worse" 
about cryptocurrencies. If you really mean have some lying 
around, it is true that more are using credit cards. If you 
actually mean access, crypto-currencies are pretty easy to buy 
these days.

>>> If for some reason cryptocurrencies become popular and 
>>> sufficiently stable to be used as currency, I have no doubt 
>>> that existing credit card companies will start offering 
>>> automatic currency exchange, so you can have an account in 
>>> USD and pay a vendor who accepts only Ethereum, or vice 
>>> versa. As such, accepting credit card payments is good enough.
>> 
>> I don't know what we'd be waiting for, the tokens I mentioned 
>> are all worth billions and widely used, particularly by 
>> techies:
>
> Very few merchants accept any sort of cryptocurrency. I think 
> I've found three. One was through a cryptocurrency forum, and 
> one was Valve announcing that they would stop accepting it.

You must not have looked very hard, there are online retailers 
accepting crypto-tokens and websites that will make payments for 
you on Amazon or other sites through Bitcoin:

https://www.overstock.com/blockchain
https://purse.io/shop

>> Why would I wait for antiquated credit-card companies to 
>> accept these tokens? The whole point of these new tokens is to 
>> obsolete the credit card companies.
>
> You wouldn't wait. You haven't waited. For you, the benefits 
> are large enough and the downsides small enough that it doesn't 
> make sense to wait. But I'm not you.

No, I'm not much of a cryptocurrency user or online shopper even. 
I mostly buy locally with cash.

> I would wait because I've lost access to important credentials 
> before and had to send a copy of my government-issued ID to a 
> company to get them to deactivate two-factor authentication. 
> I've had to use password reset mechanisms frequently. I don't 
> trust myself not to lose access to a cryptocurrency private 
> key. And that would destroy currency and lose me my life 
> savings.

I don't blame you for being careful if you've had these problems, 
most of which I've never had, but you wildly exaggerate with your 
last sentence. Crypto-tokens are a replacement for cash and 
credit cards, which you should never be carrying around more than 
a couple hundred or thousand dollars worth of. If you're carrying 
around your life savings in cash or credit cards and are worried 
about moving them to bitcoin, you have much bigger problems. ;)

> I would wait because I want a mechanism to dispute 
> transactions. Maybe I authorized that transaction, but the 
> merchant didn't deliver.

I don't think the payment provider is the right mechanism for 
that. The seller wants to protect their reputation and your 
payment is publicly verifiable through the blockchain. There are 
much better ways to build trust through those building blocks 
than the currently broken credit card chargeback process:

https://www.shopify.com/retail/what-is-a-chargeback

> I would wait because I want an environmentally-friendly system 
> instead of one that uses as much electricity as Afghanistan to 
> process fifteen transactions per second.

Yes, I noted the Bitcoin "Proof of work" problem in this forum 
almost five years ago, so I'm well aware:

https://forum.dlang.org/post/xzuzvykrqouqlsjmkvug@forum.dlang.org

There are "Proof of stake" crypto-tokens out there that purport 
to avoid that issue:

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake/

Ether, one of the tokens I mentioned originally, is moving to 
this scheme.

> I would wait because cryptocurrencies have extremely volatile 
> exchange rates, which makes it difficult to set prices or store 
> value in them.

If you're buying online, which is what we're talking about, it's 
trivially simple to track the exchange rates and instantaneously 
set store prices accordingly. It may be a bit different for 
consumers, but by the time they're all using some payments tech 
like this, the exchange rates will likely have settled down.

> I would wait because I can't use cryptocurrency to do anything 
> useful, so I would incur a fee to transfer money into it and 
> another to transfer money out of it.

Not necessarily- it depends on who you're buying your tokens 
from- and crypto-tokens usually work out cheaper once you include 
other transaction costs.

> I would wait because I don't trust any cryptocurrency exchanges 
> to stick around like I expect Visa or even a community bank to 
> remain in business, or even not to commit fraud against me.

You trust credit card companies and banks not to commit fraud 
against you, how quaint. ;)

> While I might not trust my local bank much, I do trust my 
> government to regulate them and to bail me out should the worst 
> happen.

I see, so you want other taxpayers to bail you out for your 
mistakes, interesting.

> I think my concerns are rather normal. Judging by adoption, 
> there's some set of concerns that's normal.

Some of them are popularly held, but most are fairly irrational.

In any case, whether crypto-currencies ever go mainstream is 
irrelevant to this thread. They're already fairly popular among 
techies, from whom the D foundation is soliciting donations. As 
such, providing a way to accept such donations is literally a 
no-brainer: the work put into taking them will likely pay for 
itself many times over.

I've made two Bitcoin donations in the last year, and zero 
through cash or credit cards, and I hardly use crypto-tokens. 
That is the tech audience in question here, not your random 
peregrinations about irrelevant issues, such as mainstream 
adoption.

On Saturday, 27 October 2018 at 00:10:37 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
wrote:
> On Friday, 26 October 2018 at 02:38:08 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> On Thursday, 25 October 2018 at 22:35:40 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> And yet it's still by far the most common payment method. So 
>>> what if it isn't trendy. Deal with it.
>>
>> In the US maybe, not in most of the world, where they're still 
>> using cash. ;) I almost never use my cards, and like that 
>> crypto-currencies have more in similar to cash.
>
> I was referring to internet payments, as that was the 
> conversation's context.
>
> And you're right that cash is extremely common outside the net. 
> Note that cash is considerably older than even credit/debit 
> cards.

Which is why cash is being replaced by crypto-tokens that 
maintain its benefits while being online. :)

>> On Thursday, 25 October 2018 at 23:10:50 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>>>
>>> Common fallacy:	new == better.
>>
>> As with D, sometimes the new _is_ better, so perhaps you 
>> shouldn't assume old is better either.
>
> Nobody claimed otherwise.

Nor did anyone claim what Teoh wrote, so I was just showing I can 
put words in his mouth too. ;)