@deadsuperhero

I told @benpate that I agree with pretty much everything in his talk.

(With a minor exception.)

.

It was the crypto thing, wasn't it?

Man, if I'd believed in crypto even a little bit when I first heard of it, stashed away a few thousand Bitcoins, I could have funded the whole Fediverse by now.

@reiver @deadsuperhero

@benpate

The short answer is: yes.

Although I was thinking about a sub-set of it, rather than all of it.

...

The longer answer is:

I tend to adhere to the idea of:

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good (enough).

Our lives out finite. A 'perfect' "solution" may not come in our life-times, or may even be impossible.

If you have a chance to make things less worse, and even a bit better (I argue that) you should do it (if you can).

(I try to.)

cc: @deadsuperhero

@benpate

I've dealt with the banks, visa, etc directly. (I created a neo-bank before.)

The banks, visa, etc, have A LOT of problems of their own.

I think things like stable-coins (from trusted organizations) on the modern L2s are good enough (for many things).

And, could help us make things less-worse.

cc: @deadsuperhero

Yep.

As a crypto outsider, "from trusted organizations" is the first big hurdle for me. I'm not sure who's trustworthy, and who's the next big billion dollar implosion. I'm sure there are some out there, but I don't really know where to start.

@reiver @deadsuperhero

@benpate

Compare that to getting a partnership with a traditional bank, to have them hold funds (on your behalf) for people.

These banks will, for example, charge you (and thus those people) $50 per month per person for that service.

That means, each of those people will have their accounts slowly drained.

...

If you are lucky, you might get a banking partnership that might give you lower fee.

But I haven't yet see anyone give no fee yet.

cc: @deadsuperhero

@benpate

With the neo-bank I created, we got really lucky, and we got a very good price on the fee.

But, I think that was because we were the first neo-bank that (traditional) bank partnered with.

Years later, I went and talked to them again. And, the deal was bad in a lot of ways.

Fees on deposits (as a percentage of the deposit)!!!

Fees on transferring funds between people (as a percentage)!!!

Etc.

cc: @deadsuperhero

From what I've been told by Interledger, those fees might not be so big anymore. IDK, the whole thing is a moving target.

For an open source project, we can't try to partner with every bank, or even a specific few. We need *something* like a gateway or API to connect to -- like Stripe, et al.

If either of our projects could find a way to hook into a "direct payments API/Gateway/thing" for banks, we'd be absolutely set.

@reiver @deadsuperhero

@benpate

I am talking to the Interledger people. Well, one of them, so far.

(As someone who is familiar with banking, payments, compliance, etc) I think Interledger, openpayments.dev, payment-pointers, etc, are interesting.

I am working on implementing their technologies.

But, I want to do something much larger with them, too.

cc: @deadsuperhero

When you do that "something much larger" I'd love to know about it.

I swore an oath to never again touch other people's revenues. But I'm happy to write software that lets them do it themselves.

And if someone is putting together something that makes this easier, I'm in.

@reiver @deadsuperhero