hold up, why did you mention the rothchilds in that huge post
I think your dollars have been used to fund more criminal activity than crypto.
Why do you use the Internet if you donât want to support technology that enables such horrible things?
Crypto can actually be more traceable than fiat currency.
âAll Bitcoin transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the Bitcoin network.â
âThe paradox of cryptocurrency is that its associated data create a forensic trail that can suddenly make your entire financial history public information.â
It could be possible, as an example, to have an ethical crypto currency that specifically havenât been used for for child pornography. The only thing thatâs anonymous is the user, not what is done with it.
There are several cases where the police have arrested criminals solely by the fact of them using crypto which left their traces open on the blockchain.
I mentioned the Rothschilds because you mentioned dollars. Thatâs the currency and banking model they propose and youâre supporting. The crypto movement want to upgrade our dated banking system. Move power to everyone and no-one. A new level of unbreakable trust through smart contracts.
The current banking model has been broken for a 100 years. We now finally have the technology to move away from it.
I mentioned the Rothschilds because you mentioned dollars. Thatâs the currency and banking model they propose and youâre supporting.
buddy, thereâs exactly one kind of person who cares about the rothchilds enough to bring them up as antagonists in conversation appropo of nothing so im good ending this conversation here forever. also im not readin all that lol.
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I think youâre the only one who will ever read this thread that canât see the connection between banks and dollars.
Then again, you didnât read it.
Love the mansplaining here on the pros and cons of crytpo⌠I guess my 2 cents is that if you donât like it, then donât turn it on⌠with that being said, I think this is a solid suggestion to allow creators to accept Crypto through Patreon. I already see other creators doing this outside of Patreon and it seems to be working quite well for them.
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Patreon has enough trouble dealing with regular money, thanks. Ask anyone who has been on the platform more than 5 minutes how itâs going.
Also, how do all these âpoorâ get access to and make use of all this digital currency if theyâre so poor that the usual methods of financial transaction are unavailable to them? (Consider this question rhetorical and without need of further explanation.)
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Your ârethorical questionâ may lead uneducated people reading it to believe that you have a point.
So, let me phrase another rethorical one, since you are not interested in explanations:
What is easier to send globally; an email or dollars?
Cool! I live in Upper Outer Lower Slabovia and I just got an email telling me I own .000075 of a Goobercoin.
Now, how do I collect it? What do I spend it on if I manage to collect it? And who else in Upper Outer Lower Slabovia is going to let me exchange it for food or clothes or housing or whatever? Or do magic goober coins automatically come with the infrastructure and necessary technology to support it?
Mail me a dollar and I can at least attempt to exchange it for local currency at whatever passes for a financial institution in UOLS.
The chief attraction of crypto is not itâs benefit to âthe poorâ. It is that it is new, unregulated by âthe manâ, and has a highly upwardly mobile volatility that can mean significant financial gains. But it also means that is has highly downwardly mobile volatility that can mean significant financial losses from day to day. Iâd hate to have to tell the UOLS poor that while their .000075 Goobercoin could buy them a loaf of bread yesterday, today theyâll be lucky to get a sniff of the inside of a bread bag with it. So lets stop pretending itâs for the poor.
And, as a creator on this platform, itâs that financial uncertainty and the huge swings in value that make Crypto unattractive as a means of payment to me. I donât need to find myself at the end of the month wondering if Goobercoins are going to have enough value in them to make rent or put food on the table this time around. The whole point of Patreon is to introduce some stability into a creators life. Some regular form of income that can be relied on to take care of whatever it is we need to take care of rather than having to guess.
And yes, regular currency fluctuates in value too. But, because things are regulated in at least a semi-orderly manner, that fluctuation is not as extreme as Cryptocurrency can be. Iâm not likely to suddenly find myself unable to pay a bill because dollars are suddenly worth 20 cents today when they were worth 100 yesterday. (Yes yes, inflation, the great depression, the dot com bubble, etc. Thank you. The point still stands.)
Meanwhile, very many of the intermediaries who touch Crypto, whether to move it from place to place or to exchange it for hard currency, or to do whatever else it is people do with crypto, would like their little chunk of it as well. If Patreon starts handling Crypto, theyâll want a cut, itâs not free magic money, there is a cost to dealing with it. And, as weâve seen in the last few years, with all the goodwill in the world, Patreon is a hungry beast that needs feeding. And theyâre none too careful about what they feed on. If you think they are just going to flip cryptocurrency around the place without taking a serious chunk of it, think again.
Until Crypto has a sustained track record of stable value and a solid across the board implementation of exchanging that value for goods and services, it doesnât need to be on Patreon.
Also, maybe donât pretend that people reading these forums arenât sufficiently educated to understand the point.
And thatâs the last youâll hear from me on this thread.
(Note: I do own some crypto, so I have a position and interest in it. Why do I own crypto after all that? Because it amuses me.)
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Well, if you send someone a mockery-coin that you have made up, I would agree with you that it is not sustainable nor respectful.
There are plenty of services in development that aim to solve the issues of everyday use. It will not be done automatically, instead, it is done already by the hard work of a global community of developers and investors who believe in its potential. Itâs currently a $2.43T industry thatâs growing exponentially. Thatâs not money sitting idly, itâs put to good use in most cases.
If you want to run society with snail mail, thatâs your right. I believe that technology enables us to do more and gives us tools to make sense of our complex global society in a way that we canât with pen and paper.
You are right, the chief beneficiaries of blockchain technology are not the poor, itâs our global economy and finance in general. It will likely revolutionise that field to a similar degree that smartphones have changed our lives over the past 10 years. The benefit for the poor is just a rarely mentioned topic, albeit an important one.
There are plenty of so-called stablecoins that maintain a stable value. Cryptocurrencies in general can be seen more like stocks or assets. So, paying with a Bitcoin is more like paying with a Google stock than a dollar. Or, as itâs often referred to, digital gold. One might argue that gold is worth more than money.
I expect to âfeedâ Patreon as long as I use their site.
Anyone actually interested in understanding how blockchain technology can transform our society should spend their day listening to this podcast:
Have a great day!
I totally agree with you Michel! I think this would be such an interesting option.
Iâm not sure if the world is ready quite yet though, but soonâŚ
Eventually people will understand 
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It would still tie up developer time to create and Patreon creators might rather want that time spend for other things. Or they might have ethical reason why they donât want it on a platform they use. And so on. âJust donât use it thenâ is no defeater for such reasons. If people can speak for it, others speak against it. And the company can weigh their options based on ALL the feedback, not just what âone sideâ had to say in favour of a feature. So itâs perfectly valid the way it is.
And Michelâs argumentation is more like âpreachingâ anyway. To provide some answers to those:
Defending crypo currency as âsomething for the poorâ canât really be taken seriously. Pointing to one Unicef project involving crypo currency is cherry-picking and doesnât make crypo currency good. I mean seriously, does this even need explaining? From 100 people who use cryto currency today, how many are in it âfor the poorâ or using it âbecause they are poorâ? How many? And how many are in it for their own reasons, e.g. making profits (through trading, mining,âŚ) illegal activities and so on? How many? And how does that compare to traditional currencies. One would need to proof the net-benefit to make the case that is supposed to be made here.
The âbad things happened beforeâ argument is also rather shocking and needs to be called out immediately. Again, things can have positive and negative effects and a net-positive or net-negative effect.The details matters. The âthen you should ban video camerasâ example dismisses all that with flawed reasoning, since it creates a false dichotomy of just allowing or banning something. That isnât the point. The question is: do crypto currencies increase the number of illegal or harmful online activities or not? If they do, it would be a valid concern, completely independent from whether those illegal or harmful activities existed before. Itâs the EFFECT that is being judged here, not the existence of something.
(And that linked Coinbase article rather cleverly tries to cover that up by only debunking the extreme claim that the majority(!) of transactions would be for illegal activities, when I just pointed out, that this isnât the point at all. And then it focuses on a comparison with cash, not other online payment forms. Again, clever, but not good enough.)
Itâs also rather arrogant and condescending to just assert, that someone âjust doesnât get the futureâ, just because they donât think the same way you do. As Fiddleback already said: Donât just assert someoneâs criticism is based on a lack of understanding. What if others do know what you know and still come to different conclusions? What if other know even more than you? What if others have better reasoning than you? What if you are wrong about the future or specific points? You just dismiss all these possibilities upfront when you assert, others just donât get what you supposedly accept as true.
Also, saying people who donât support crypo, automatically side with banks is also a false dichotomy. Again, itâs either flawed reasoning or dishonest. There isnât just banks or crypto. And not supporting X, doesnât mean one accepts and loves everything about Y. Itâs like saying âyou donât like Microsoft products? I canât believe you side with Apple!â. Sounds rather silly, doesnât it. If there is a problem with Y, maybe we should fix Y or come up with solution Z. It doesnât logically follow that X automatically is the answer which should be accepted by everyone. But thatâs exactly what you are trying to say. Banks are broken, therefore crypto âŚ
And so on and so forth. So much wrong with these arguments âŚ
In general: If you want to âvote for crypo on Patreonâ, go ahead. But please leave it at that and donât try to talk us or Patreon into believing crypo is good for the world with all these flawed and biased reasons.We arenât gullible enough.
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You should take into account that I am here with my full name, staking my reputation for what I believe in. Have that in mind when you reply, please. Iâm not a troll trying to provoke people with bullshit claims. Iâm sharing my current understandings and Iâm totally fine with you having yours.
From 100 people who use cryto currency today, how many are in it âfor the poorâ or using it âbecause they are poorâ?
The fact that many are getting rich from the speculative aspect of cryptocurrencies today does not mean it doesnât have vital benefits for developing countries in the future. It only makes it harder for the mainstream to realise those aspects of the technology, as theyâre more inclined to read dramatic media headlines about fraud and crime.
Even if most funds in the projects today were to come from speculators who want to get rich, that does not mean that the technology wonât have revolutionary applications. The value of the different cryptocurrencies is relying heavily on their prospects of future application.
The technology is already being used in multiple thousands of promising technological applications. I think youâll have a hard time finding an experienced developer that denies the unprecedented potential of blockchain technology.
do crypto currencies increase the number of illegal or harmful online activities or not?
I would say that it doesnât. Quite the opposite.
Less than 1% of crypto transitions are from illicit activity, according to this study. A large part of that are scams within the community.
Further read: Using Bitcoin for Illicit Purposes Is Harder Than Using U.S. Dollar
It actually makes little sense to use cryptocurrency for illegal activity since every transaction is logged publicly forever. There are explicitly untraceable cryptocurrencies, such as Monero, that make up a very small part of the $2,4T market cap, and even those transactions are being increasingly traced by the authorities already.
On the blockchain, everyone can see exactly what X did and that he did it with Y. Only, we donât know who X or Y is. Criminals donât usually want their activity so carefully traced and publicly available, even if they are anonymous. Cash is king.
More than 99% legal activities. Thatâs a lot of legal activity.
Donât just assert someoneâs criticism is based on a lack of understanding.
I didnât. I wrote that so that others who felt they had a lack of understanding could get another perspective.
saying people who donât support crypo, automatically side with banks is also a false dichotomy.
Iâm not saying that. I use bank money every day.
Fiddleback was explicitly making claims that dollars are better for this and that reason. I just pointed to the fact that fiat currency, such as dollars, also are dirty and used for crime and has a lot of negative impact on a lot of things.
Iâm also a big supporter of changing our traditional banking systems. Thatâd be great.
Even if they did improve, there would still be a lot of wonderful applications of blockhain technology that has nothing to do with currency as:
Blockchain technology is more than currency.
Itâs not even mostly about currency.
Thatâs just what has gotten the most media attention, so far.
âMoney is trust.â
-Yuval Noah Harari
Our cooperative skill is the primary strength of our species.
The more trust we have, the better weâre able to work together.
Blockchain technology is a new way of establishing trust and it will revolutionize aspects of finance, logistics and other fields of our global society where trust is needed.
It will allow unprecedented forms of effective and fair collaborations. We no longer need to trust an institution, hoping that they will be honest and do their jobs, instead we can trust the code which no one can change or tamper with.
Blockchain technology and smart contracts can enable open-source education to the entire planet. A new level of free press and a lot more. Civilians in oppressed countries can make their voice heard through the blockchain without any censorship being possible, ever.
By supporting the various blockchain projects, by letâs say accepting payments in their asset, one supports the development of these future possibilities.
Call it preaching, but I donât really care if anyone reads this or agree with me. Iâm excited about this technology and am a faithful Patreon supporter, so I find it worth taking some time from my day to write these replies.
Donât take my word for it, everyone. Be curious!
Hereâs another nice interview with the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin:
I can also recommend reading What is Ethereum?, which I can summarize as:
Ethereum is for more than payments. Itâs a marketplace of financial services, games and apps that canât steal your data or censor you.
With care,
Michel
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The amount energy goes into mining these currencies already had an impact on global warming. Not even talking about totally robbing down the video card market, which is a problem, even for the sellers, as their original target audience is very likely to part away from them. This whole thing bothers me personally, as I take many steps to make the planet a better place and I canât upgrade my pc as there are no cards, because the miners mindlessly bought them all.
So I hope patreon will never support such a thing.
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Hi all -
Any time thereâs a new or growing theme in the independent, user-generated content space, we do our due diligence to explore its ins and outs. No decisions on cryptocurrencies are imminent, weâre just looking at what everyone in the space is talking about and assessing its potential impact (be it negative or positive) for creators. Thanks for sharing your feedback - weâre taking this input into account.
Iâm also dropping in a reminder to check out our community guidelines â in particular, please remember to criticize ideas, not people. I know this is a hot - and heated - topic. Thank you!
I think Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of the most important thinkers of modern society.
His concept of antifragility is, in my opinion, a 1:1 explanation why we need a decentralised system as opposed to our current model.
The value of any cryptocurrency is exactly as high as the communityâs current belief in and benefit from it. If itâs bad or broken, it will crash and make way for something better.
That is a good thing.
Failure strengthens the system.
Banks: Drugs, Terrorism and Corruption (17 min)
