PayPal couldn't act as an on-ramp for anything crypto because PayPal is run on soft money (reversible credit card transactions or potentially hacked bank accounts).
Allowing conversion of soft money to hard money (a btc with 6 onchain confirmations) means every criminal will use you as an on-ramp to convert their hack cc details and bank accounts into immutable hard money.
Why not? They're not a party to the transaction; it is the vendor selling cryptocurrency that is taking on the risk. Paypal can reverse the transaction and the vendor has to eat the risk, same as for any PayPal transaction.
If I buy a sweater from some company through PayPal, and the company sends me the sweater, they're out the sweater if they get a chargeback. They can fight it, but PayPal is just the middleman.
Cryptocurrency vendors would have to figure out a policy to deal with it, so it might be that nobody would be willing to sell crypto for PayPal, but there's no reason for PayPal to block it.
I'm guessing that because sweaters are not money, and furthermore are actual physical objects that have to be sent to a physical address, criminals aren't attempting to convert stolen identities into sweaters at any rate the federal government cares about. That may not be true for BTC.
Right but because this conversion is possible, it's very attractive to fraudsters, which means it will attract high chargeback rates, which is a big problem for PayPal, as it affects everything else they do
I mean, it's a big problem in a sense, if vendors don't expect it. But by necessity the bitcoin vendors will have to deal with it as a prime scenario, which means they'll either have to offer a meaningful user identification story (i.e. KYC or similar protocols) or offer a settlement period before the bitcoin is available -- credit the customer's account, but don't let them withdraw for 30 days / 90 days / whatever.
This requires that the vendor take on some risk (because if they make the trade and the price moves but the trade is cancelled due to chargeback the price may have moved) and they have to price this in to the deal; maybe charging a premium for using PayPal, etc. This is all fairly standard and Coinbase, for example, had to deal with a ton of this when they accepted credit card purchases.
The risk to PayPal is that Visa/MC no longer allow PayPal to transact on their network if aggregate chargebacks exceed some percentage.
I don’t know how the exact details iron out but this was a concern when I worked on a payments platform. PayPal enables transactions for merchants who don’t have a relationship directly with Visa/MC and thus are themselves responsible at some level.
> The risk to PayPal is that Visa/MC no longer allow PayPal to transact on their network if aggregate chargebacks exceed some percentage.
PayPal processed 711.92B USD of transactions during 2019. [1] It's feasible that they'll hit a trillion dollars in PV this year. While it's true that Visa/MC could lock them out if they so chose, it's incredibly unlikely.
You misunderstand, it is indeed an issue of their chargeback rate as a platform - not isolated to particular merchants.
Having high rates has significant consequences - leading to fines from card schemes, lower authorisation rates from issuers, higher interchange costs as it harms negotiations for custom deals with issuers.
Even quite small numbers in the enormous pond of PayPal can have serious impacts when it's well optimised.
Also keep in mind, where it is possible to do this kind of thing, it can very rapidly grow to a huge problem when fraudulent end users learn they can do it.
This was my feeling, too. It wasn't a Big Conspiracy to suppress Bitcoin. It was an effort to stop transactions that had a high percentage of fraud issues.
Same thing with Facebook and crypto ads. There were just too many pyramid schemes and get-rich-schemes with a cryptocurrency angle that were being advertised.
Back in the day, it wasn't that PayPal didn't let people buy crypto, it was that you were mad to sell for PayPal credits. The system favoured the buyer so much it was just too risky. So I'm not really sure this policy matters - if nothing else has changed, selling crypto for PayPal creds is just asking to be scammed.
Indeed don't attribute to corporate malice what is in reality government regulation. The cherry on top is that the regulations are often pushed by corporate industry players to push out other possible players.
The easy solution is:
1) double-verify the identity of the credit card holder using MFA or another way
2) don't allow refunds or chargebacks on cryptocurrency transactions.
> don't allow refunds or chargebacks on cryptocurrency transactions
In practice this just means: when a hacker gets into your elderly family member's PayPal account, they need to buy as much crypto as they can since then there's no chargebacks for fraud.
Remember when MIT media Lab gave a civil disobedience award to bethann mclaughlin for some nebulous #metoo bs who since disgraced herself by LARPing as a fake Native American academic who died of covid?
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-emba...
Remember when they chased Aaron Swartz to commit suicide and never gave him a civil disobedience award?
Remember their extremely close links to Jeffrey Epstein?
Sorry but MIT media Lab is absolute trash and an embarrassment to the MIT name.
You realize the author of the linked article resigned over Epstein and frequently fought to improve things? Why try to link him to some trash that he vehemently opposed?
And Swartz’s death was caused by JSTOR not the Media Lab FYI
Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured "appropriate" out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the "criminal" who we who loved him knew as Aaron.
By their own account, “We also reiterated our desire that MIT identify the individual(s) responsible”
They pushed for aggressive chasing down of an individual for stealing some articles that were largely publicly funded as I recall. This escalated to the FBI and led to a laundry list of charges that scared him into suicide. Not great for some research we should have just had available for free after already paying to fund it once
JSTOR has to at least make a show of respecting the licensing agreements that they have with publishers. It can't be seen to wink at an attempt to make its entire archive available for free.
JSTOR actually does a ton of useful work scanning old journal articles. Someone has to pay for this.
some of your points, including regarding Epstein, are valid. However, unless I'm recalling incorrectly, the Aaron Swartz incident wasn't related to the Media lab in particular.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
I think the parent comment is relevant since the blog post (and subsequent comments here) praises the hacker/anti-institutionalist mentality of the Media Lab. Yet when Schwartz practiced altruistic, civil disobedience in line with that sentiment, MIT's response was to sue him until he killed himself. They've done a lot of cool things that I'm into, but let's not whitewash history.
The only link between Aaron Swartz and the Media Lab is that they hosted his memorial service.
Step one of not whitewashing history is to be accurate about it. You can't say that the Media Lab is an embarrassment to the MIT name when one of your pieces of evidence is that the rest of MIT - not the Media Lab - did something unconscionable. You can't hold organizations to account if your account is wrong.
And that's the danger with unrelated controversies and tangents - all of a sudden we need to have a discussion about the substance of that controversy and tangent. The angrier you are about something, the more important - and harder - it is to target your anger appropriately. Anger is a great tool. Make sure it is hitting what you intend for it to hit.
(In the interest of disclosure: I am an MIT alum who has never been particularly proud of my alma mater in general; I have no tie to the Media Lab.)
I could be wrong and am glad to be corrected if I am. It's not like I'm following MIT Media news all day. But did the Media Lab acknowledge and critique MIT for its actions? If so you're right, I shouldn't criticize the MIT Media Lab. But if not I consider them complicit.
I'm glad they recognized his principled and disobedient activism, but there's no acknowledgement about MIT's role in his death, and ultimately they chose not to give him the award.
> Yet when Schwartz practiced altruistic, civil disobedience in line with that sentiment, MIT's response was to sue him until he killed himself.
MIT arrested him for breaking into a closet to access the network. I've never heard anything about them suing him. JSTOR did some kind of settlement agreement. It was the feds prosecuting him for wire fraud etc that undoubtedly led to the suicide.
I think "cancel culture" has gone too far in all respects but that Stallman email was beyond the pale and he deserved to get kicked out of MIT for writing that on an MIT mailing list.
The sensitivities people have with the those mentioning rot and rampant prestige laundering in these institutions to the point its frowned on talking about it in association with the topic… banality of evil… lol
Talking to a Chinese friend who is quite pro-CCP, they are pissed that UK is offering this and say that mass emigration of HKers would be a major loss of face for the CCP.
Talking to a Chinese friend who is quite pro-CCP, they are pissed that UK is offering this and say that mass emigration of HKers would be a major loss of face for the CCP.
With gambling the winners is very, very small minority. With bitcoin/crypto practically all people who got in before 2017 have been doing very, very well.
It is misleading because basically every virus ever has produced some degree of immunity to reinfection.
And because saying "there is no evidence that.." is often a weazelish way that doctors with unproven prior beliefs push their personal theories.
WHO should say "there is no strong evidence either way, however based on our understanding of similar viruses there is likely to be at least some residual immunity post infection."
The Lyme disease vaccine:
"By 2001, 1.4 million doses of the vaccine had been distributed, but the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System only picked up on 59 reports of arthritis."
Rates of arthritis roughly at population baseline level.
People who talk about going through the motions of 2 years of animal trials have zero perspective. In wartime, this pedantry needs to be chucked our the window. Do the high yield human tests asap using heroic volunteers, and do it fast.
Yep, I subscribe to a couple of podcast patreons.. for $5 a month for 5-10 hours of good content it's a no-brainer... Patreon.com/redscare It's basically just 2 women mouthing off, it's funny though. They do well out of it.
Allowing conversion of soft money to hard money (a btc with 6 onchain confirmations) means every criminal will use you as an on-ramp to convert their hack cc details and bank accounts into immutable hard money.