I think many overestimate their ability to create legislative change that will outlast the lifespan of an executive order. This is a party that couldn't repeal the ACA when they had control of all three branches. The ACA, flawed as it is, took hard work, discipline, nuance. What we have now are leaders who spend their days venting culture war fumes on Twitter.
The timing of retiring supreme court justices may fall in their lap, which is lasting, but again that's not due to anything they've achieved.
For example, pulling in to buy petrol because they're displayed price is good. You don't know how much you have available in the transaction account, but you have cash.
...yeah but it is a pain in the ass. i end up with a percentage of unspent money every week that i have to coalesce into new bills of useful denominations. that leftover screws up my accounting system and takes extra work to put to use. i'd rather have every transaction i make tracked by visa to make my accounting cleaner and not need to futz with the whole process. the downsides you list i've never really encountered since 1992, you need better evidence of failures (unless you live in some underdeveloped nation?).
As a European, seeing 1.5 USD for a donut, having the cash ready, and then learning that I have to pay 1.78 because there is a hidden tax different everywhere is ridiculous.
Gone the advantage of having 1.5 ready, I need to look for the ... euuhhh ... 28 cents, or give a 2 and wait for the .... euuuhhhh ... 22 cents back.
At least here when I see 18 € for a meal, I know that this is 18 €. Not 18 + some tax + some tip = holly molly, this is an expensive meal!
"I bought a donut and they gave me a receipt for the donut; I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut."
As a former resident of Maryland, it's sort of funny seeing Carlson's Donuts & Thai Kitchen mentioned in the Financial Times and thereby Hacker News. A little disappointing it was not really about their donuts though...
Are they the same owners of Carlson's Donuts in Severn? They are also cash only.
Crypto is a psycho solution to payment complexities.
It'd be like putting an Indian scammer call center in charge of the telephone network because there are some dropped calls. Or electing a guy who spent a career committing fraud at every turn President because the price of eggs went up a bit. Or solving the problems of the American healthcare system by putting a guy in charge who...
Oh, wait. We're definitely going to do the crypto thing. Dammit.
>For its doughnuts, the shop takes only green cotton notes from the Federal Reserve.
>The proximate reason is obvious. If it were to accept credit cards, Carlson’s would have to pay an interchange fee to a network, for the privilege of selling doughnuts. These fees run roughly between one and two per cent, sometimes higher, particularly for smaller retailers like Carlson’s.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. We all know this is to avoid tax, right? Why are we pretending otherwise?
They take card for everything else. This is just some tax-free pocket money for the owner.
These hot takes always ignore the actual reason for fees on credit card transactions. It’s not because of the complexity or avarice of the payment system providers, it’s because the card networks offer insurance and repudiation of false payments. Each layer of the payment network carries loss liability for different types of fraud in the system.
Stablecoins like cash or other cash transfer schemes don’t offer any form of reputation of transactions for any reason. If you lose your money to theft, to a fraudulent merchant, whatever, the money is gone.
This being said, the interchange structure -is- inefficient as there’s been a lot of middle men accumulated over the years. A simpler interchange could be achieved with much lower fees for the merchant and higher rewards for the consumer. Only a major processor like stripe to accomplish this but they are too absorbed with stable coin malarkey
This boarders on self-promotion but I'd like to say, "Bitcoin fixes this".
We're launching Bitcoin payments available to every Square point of sale with 0% transaction fees for next year. 1% after that. Available Nov 10th. [https://squareup.com/us/en/releases#bitcoin]
My sincere hope is it catches on and helps out small business. The difference in fees can really add up, and with near instant settlement to dollars on the backend, the merchant doesn't even need to hold or think about Bitcoin unless they want to.
The fine article talks about stablecoins, but in my biased opinion those are much more complicated than Bitcoin to deal with right now.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 40.3 ms ] threadKind of ironic this particular article is behind a paywall.
The timing of retiring supreme court justices may fall in their lap, which is lasting, but again that's not due to anything they've achieved.
It's that cash is the simplest thing that might work.
No declined cards.
No network delays.
No broken electronics.
No waiting on transactions to clear.
...And even better, it segments the market against people who want demand more than doughnuts for dollars.
For example, pulling in to buy petrol because they're displayed price is good. You don't know how much you have available in the transaction account, but you have cash.
Gone the advantage of having 1.5 ready, I need to look for the ... euuhhh ... 28 cents, or give a 2 and wait for the .... euuuhhhh ... 22 cents back.
At least here when I see 18 € for a meal, I know that this is 18 €. Not 18 + some tax + some tip = holly molly, this is an expensive meal!
"I bought a donut and they gave me a receipt for the donut; I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut."
Are they the same owners of Carlson's Donuts in Severn? They are also cash only.
It'd be like putting an Indian scammer call center in charge of the telephone network because there are some dropped calls. Or electing a guy who spent a career committing fraud at every turn President because the price of eggs went up a bit. Or solving the problems of the American healthcare system by putting a guy in charge who...
Oh, wait. We're definitely going to do the crypto thing. Dammit.
>The proximate reason is obvious. If it were to accept credit cards, Carlson’s would have to pay an interchange fee to a network, for the privilege of selling doughnuts. These fees run roughly between one and two per cent, sometimes higher, particularly for smaller retailers like Carlson’s.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. We all know this is to avoid tax, right? Why are we pretending otherwise?
They take card for everything else. This is just some tax-free pocket money for the owner.
Stablecoins like cash or other cash transfer schemes don’t offer any form of reputation of transactions for any reason. If you lose your money to theft, to a fraudulent merchant, whatever, the money is gone.
This being said, the interchange structure -is- inefficient as there’s been a lot of middle men accumulated over the years. A simpler interchange could be achieved with much lower fees for the merchant and higher rewards for the consumer. Only a major processor like stripe to accomplish this but they are too absorbed with stable coin malarkey
We're launching Bitcoin payments available to every Square point of sale with 0% transaction fees for next year. 1% after that. Available Nov 10th. [https://squareup.com/us/en/releases#bitcoin]
My sincere hope is it catches on and helps out small business. The difference in fees can really add up, and with near instant settlement to dollars on the backend, the merchant doesn't even need to hold or think about Bitcoin unless they want to.
The fine article talks about stablecoins, but in my biased opinion those are much more complicated than Bitcoin to deal with right now.