News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by moonchrome on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:17PM (#28238813)
If crypto was actually a viable alternative they wouldn't be doing this.

I'm not against the promises of crypto - but the tech so far has failed to deliver anything but a platform to streamline illegal activity, asset speculation bubbles and a whole bunch of wasted energy/hardware along with reliving the problems people had historically with bank fraud in free banking and the likes (banks printing their own notes without cover till you get a bank run - this is why central banks were invented ...)

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by lynx234 on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:46PM (#28239174)
The tech is there but mainstream adoption and understanding is still coming along. It's incredibly easy and cheap to send USDC or DAI to OnlyFans if they accept tokens on a sidechain (like Polygon or Fantom).

You don't have to sign up for an account or provide any personal info, just use your wallet to send certain tokens to an address, then you can use that wallet as a sign-in.

OnlyFans can then use Coinbase or an off-ramp to go from crypto to fiat.

It's a more seamless user experience and solves the payment processing issue.

In my opinion it's a matter of educating the masses to a very different method of paying for services and using services (both on the business and consumer side).

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by nacs on Thursday August 19, 2021 @10:39PM (#28241870)
> It's incredibly easy and cheap to send USDC or DAI to OnlyFans if they accept tokens on a sidechain (like Polygon or Fantom).

I'm a pretty techy guy but in this one sentence alone you said 5 things that I have no idea about nor even heard of ("USDC", "DAI", "sidechain", "Polygon", "Fantom").

The chance of the general population catching onto this stuff anytime soon is slim.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by webinvest on Thursday August 19, 2021 @11:59PM (#28242419)
I’m a smart contract and altcoin developer. Yes it’s confusing now but there is a path forward.

USDC and Dai are both US-dollar stable coins. They’re always worth 1 dollar each, they’re among the most trustworthy USD stablecoins, and they are perfect for storefronts. The problem is that Ethereum transaction (tx) fees are now around $15-$25 because the network is so popular. Everyone wants to use the highway but the highway is only so big. Ethereum 2.0 is supposed to increase the size of that highway by some order of magnitude to make each transaction cost cents to send but we won’t know until it happens in few years. But we need a solution now! — and not in a few years!

That’s where other less popular but still good enough networks [side chains] like Polygon, Stellar, Binance Smart Chain, Tron, and a few others come into play.

Side chain is a term for a non-Ethereum or non-Bitcoin blockchain. Think of it like getting off a tollroad and getting onto a less trafficked, cheaper, and possibly faster side road, with the risk of coming across some new undocumented potholes.

USDC (and probably Dai too) for example, can already run on the Binance(bsc20), Ethereum(ERC20), Polygon, Tron, Stellar, and a few other networks. This can be super confusing and shocking for users because if you send your BSC20 USDC to an ERC20 USDC address you usually lose it. It’s a good thing that many of these networks have different address formats and that helps considerably to have software preventing that goof but some networks like BSC20 and ERC20 share the same address format because ERC20 is a copy of BSC20. Very user unfriendly. Alright I know I might be loosing you here but the solution is next.

Now, here’s what I think a solution to this all is: Rename one existing Stablecoin on one of those networks and let’s call it something idealistic like Freecoin. For example, DAI on the Polygon network or something else. To make it simple, it’s only one coin on one cheap network that is anything but the Ethereum network and then boom, you’ve dropped your terminology down to just “Freecoin” and “where is an easy on-ramp to buy it?” It’s important that there is only 1 kind of Freecoin. Buy them on this Shopify website, these exchanges, or this DeFi exchange. Obviously you can allow people to pay with other cryptocurrencies but you can either give a 1%-2% discount for using a certain cryptocurrency or make the UI button for your cryptocurrency larger than the buttons for the other cryptocurrencies. Both are effective nudges.

If you have a product worth buying, people will beat a path to your doorstep.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by lynx234 on Friday August 20, 2021 @10:13AM (#28246218)
Yea, it's a lot of foreign concepts. Bit of a learning curve to it. Whether or not the incentives are great enough so that the public goes past the learning curve is going to be interesting to see.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by analyst74 on Thursday August 19, 2021 @09:27PM (#28241373)
Isn't USDC printed out of thin air with no backing? Similar to how private bank money was printed before modern banking regulations.

What are the guardrails to prevent bankrun like the wild west days of banking?

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by lynx234 on Friday August 20, 2021 @10:15AM (#28246248)
USDT is printed out of thin air (which is why I didn't mention it). USDC is a bit better and more transparent. DAI is decentralized and backed by collateral.

There's been a lot of talks of regulating stablecoins to ensure backing, which I don't think is a terrible idea.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by doomroot on Thursday August 19, 2021 @09:39PM (#28241454)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.circle.com/blog/greater-tra...

Do some googling before commenting please.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by tw04 on Thursday August 19, 2021 @10:39PM (#28241868)
Telling him to google, then providing exactly one link to the company that created USDC isn't really much of a refute. Maybe a link to an independent audit (as far as I can tell there are none).

Much like tether, there is no proof that they have anywhere near the currency they claim and folks that operate in that market are the ones shouting the loudest about the apparent fraud occurring. I've yet to see tether or usdc provide proof otherwise, it always seems to be a "we wouldn't be this big if we didn't have what we say we have" - bernie madoff style. And to get in front of it, an attestation != audit.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by mbesto on Thursday August 19, 2021 @11:53PM (#28242372)
> It's incredibly easy and cheap to send USDC or DAI to OnlyFans if they accept tokens on a sidechain (like Polygon or Fantom).

And then you quickly realize how useless USDC/DAI is when you want to pay your rent, for milk, etc.

> OnlyFans can then use Coinbase or an off-ramp to go from crypto to fiat.

They can't because then KYC kicks in. This is exactly the problem with crypto at scale...you can't convert large scale amounts of crypto to fiat without someone noticing. Silkroad "worked" because there was no central authority taking money, just lots of a smaller drug dealers. Pablo Escobar wouldn't have been able to run his whole operation on crypto without getting seen.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by zizee on Friday August 20, 2021 @12:27AM (#28242579)
>> OnlyFans can then use Coinbase or an off-ramp to go from crypto to fiat.

> They can't because then KYC kicks in. This is exactly the problem with crypto at scale.

Isn't KYC only a problem for people trying to hide their income? Onlyfans (and other legit businesses) would not have this problem as they would not be trying to hide their earnings.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by mbesto on Friday August 20, 2021 @12:41AM (#28242672)
KYC/AML isn't just for hiding income, it's about understanding the threshold for which someone wants to do business with an individual or company. For the same reason CC companies don't want to take on potentially illegal activity, no crypto exchange is going to take on the risk of business conducting $B's of dollars worth of crypto as its means to doing business.

This is essentially how Coinbase is allowed to operate - it doesn't have whales on its platform, just millions of KYC'd minnows who are individually low risk.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by manquer on Friday August 20, 2021 @01:08AM (#28242834)
It is more chargeback and fradulent transactions processors are concerned with it. Those cost immediate money to them . Blockchain and altcoins solve that (for payment processing consumer, protection is lesser of course)

Illegal activities are only a problem if law enforcement makes it their problem, I don't think there is a case where law enforcement went after the payment provider for facilitating transactions for illegal activities, it is website/marketplace responsibility usually

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by mbesto on Friday August 20, 2021 @09:36AM (#28245763)
> Blockchain and altcoins solve that (for payment processing consumer, protection is lesser of course)

> Illegal activities are only a problem if law enforcement makes it their problem

And now this is where AML kicks in. Now you're dealing with banks and not credit card processors as the source of the issue. No US bank is going to work with a company who is converting money from crypto to fiat at the level of billions of dollars.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by manquer on Saturday August 21, 2021 @11:48AM (#28257912)
Ren of billions if not lot more has already moved from USD into crypto coins. Banks have had very little say in it, and also no control how money is being used once USD is converted to crypto.

Exchanges are doing pretty well to convert USD to say BitCount, despite Bitcoin's unsavory reputation for illicit/ illegal transaction like ransomware payments that actually happen on the coin. Even single transactions in the millions barely register these days.

I am not sure porn as an industry earns in billions and even if it did the market is today large enough that it won't be sticking out all that much.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by saurik on Thursday August 19, 2021 @06:29PM (#28240175)
So, here is the core problem: if you want to do this on mobile... how? You can't do the actual payment parts securely using just a web browser--if you think about it that kind of undermines the whole concept for a lot of people: you would need to host that website somewhere--and then crypto wallets that support dapps and payment processing tend to get banned by Apple, because they provide a way to bypass their cut for services using an app (even if that app is just a browser) :/.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by Sevii on Thursday August 19, 2021 @08:12PM (#28240897)
Metamask and WalletConnect have solved this problem. You can use a browser wallet, or a mobile wallet that connects to your browser.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by noobermin on Thursday August 19, 2021 @05:45PM (#28239758)
Honest question, I tried to ask it below: the optics issues of being associated with illegal activity, being a waste of energy and hardware during a chip shortage, as well as the actual reality that most people in crypto are speculators at this point, these seem like issues that crypto advocates can actually recognize and address so crypto can achieve wider adoption. It unfortunately feels like crypto enthusiasts just dismiss these concerns and think they don't matter, which just maintains the status quo with respect to its adoption.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by dvdkon on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:32PM (#28238993)
The properties of certain cryptocurrencies that make them good for illegal transactions also make them good for pornography and other "not illegal but touchy" areas.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by moonchrome on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:34PM (#28239024)
Not really - these are high volume low value transactions and need to be low friction. Money laundering and similar illegal transactions are fine with the opposite.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by dvdkon on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:43PM (#28239129)
The cryptocurrencies I consider viable for this kind of thing (mostly Monero) are actually better for low-value transactions than conventional card payments, since they have a low, fixed transaction cost (well under 0.1USD, try that with VISA/MasterCard). I'm not sure about scaling volume, but the current situation looks promising.

Friction is a problem, but I don't see why sending Monero has to be any harder than with conventional payment methods. The hard part is overcoming the network effect of payment cards.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by teawrecks on Thursday August 19, 2021 @05:46PM (#28239771)
The "only people doing illegal stuff use it" point doesn't really hold up when you consider how much energy is going into keeping legal uses less convenient than centralized finance. It's like saying only robbers wear masks, and then we have a pandemic and suddenly everyone does. With the right economic incentives, defi is a tool waiting for the right moment to shine. This could be such a moment.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by xvector on Saturday August 21, 2021 @07:00AM (#28255938)
> If crypto was actually a viable alternative they wouldn't be doing this.

Adoption is a thing and takes time. Crypto itself is also a technology still in its infancy with at least a decade+ of engineering remaining to begin to resemble something that everyday people can use, but it's already quite promising.

Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by redisman on Thursday August 19, 2021 @05:19PM (#28239505)
There are many cryptos that would be perfectly viable for payments here. XLM, USDC, Polygon for example. I think the investors told them that it’s too niche and they’d rather have credit card payments for whatever remains after the policy change.
Re:OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in Oc... by xvector on Saturday August 21, 2021 @07:02AM (#28255945)
All of these are literally senseless for buying porn. Are you seriously telling me you want your family and friends to know when you buy something from OF?

Monero is really the only thing that makes sense here.