Fun fact, the Luddites weren't actually anti-technology - many of them were skilled machine operators. They were protesting for better working conditions, higher pay and apprenticeship programs. [1]
[edit] Of note: the machines they were attacking were not new, and smashing industrial machines in protest was not a concept that began or ended with them. They were some of the more prolific victims of anti-organized-labor smear campaigns.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
I'm a sci-fi reader. It seems to me that digital cash has utility. I've gone to Apple Pay wherever possible, my only wish was that apple pay would have taken out Visa and Mastercard with a direct offering with much lower fees.
On merchant side there are still ripoffs - a lot of ACH processing fees are absurd (1% - no cap on amounts etc - so you end up at $100/transaction if you do a $10,000 transaction through certain platforms) and there is no way in person trx have enough fraud to justify the 2.x%. charged there. Chip and pin would solve the issue there anyways but for whatever reason has not been adopted in US.
Can speak to this. Historically the US has been reluctant to adopt CVM PIN because of the extra transaction time. A CVM Signature transaction (or even a CVM None) takes 1-2 seconds. Asking someone to enter their PIN takes an additional 10-20 seconds. A full order of magnitude longer.
For places like McDonalds, this was a non-starter. It's even fairly painful in the countries where it has been adopted.
The solution in both markets was to move to contactless EMV cards and especially to contactless-enabled mobile wallets. You get the best of both worlds with mobile wallets: low transaction times and low fraud risk.
The interchange rate you're referencing (2.x%) isn't due to fraud risk really, it's used to fund the cost of reward programs. The EU just doesn't have nearly the same kinds of cash-back or frequent flyer program type cards - which just cannot be funded by the regulated 0.3% interchange cap.
With my apple device, I touch the terminal, and its basically instant.
In other words, the bandwidth sticking my card INTO the device (plus whatever time it takes to do some calcs on device) is something like 2,000 times slower over a wired connection then my iphone does over wireless.
There is some failure in the current CVM implementation in the US because this makes no logical sense at all.
About half the chip terminals have to put big stickers on about LEAVING card inserted until told to remove. We've gone backwards from mag stripe here which despite being supposedly inferior was definitely a lot faster.
This depends on the terminal and the EMV kernel. The fastest possible signature transaction is about 1-2 seconds, including powering up the card. Some implementations are just not particularly optimized. Some will perform 'full EMV' transactions which require two round trips from the card to the issuer and may actually run scripts sent by the issuer on your card before you can remove it.
A properly optimized solution in the US will use 'quick EMV' where the card is only required to be in the reader until just after the authorization request cryptogram is generated - before its even sent up to the payment network. [1, p.9]
> With my apple device, I touch the terminal, and its basically instant.
Indeed! Contactless transactions are modeled basically like quick EMV transactions and the whole system was brought in because contact PIN EMV was too slow.
> In other words, the bandwidth sticking my card INTO the device (plus whatever time it takes to do some calcs on device) is something like 2,000 times slower over a wired connection then my iphone does over wireless.
It does take a couple hundred ms for a smart card to boot up. Like-for-like you'd have to compare enabling Apple Pay or Google Pay and entering your PIN or capturing your face.
> There is some failure in the current CVM implementation in the US because this makes no logical sense at all.
Hope the above helped clarify!
> About half the chip terminals have to put big stickers on about LEAVING card inserted until told to remove. We've gone backwards from mag stripe here which despite being supposedly inferior was definitely a lot faster.
Yeah, I do agree - but that's also why the US was the last to the party! Low fraud rate, and large transaction duration costs.
[1] https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/regional/na/us/run-you...
Digital cash has great utility, but decentralization of digital cash has marginal utility over centralized alternatives. In particular, physical cash is centralized and is just as useful as decentralized fiat.
But yes, if the US stopped collecting taxes, the dollar would heavily devalue, and eventually reach zero
In general, the value of fiat currency comes from how useful it is in satiating the demands of the government backing it. Usually, that is taxes, but there are a few other ways fiat is used that have to be taken into account (judgements, etc)
I've never argued someone wouldn't buy it from you - I'm arguing it's worthless to both parties. It's the manifestation of the bottle imp paradox. [1]
HODL? Illogical unless you believe there is some underlying value. Otherwise there will be bagholders and all you've accomplished is to guarantee you'll be among them.
Nevertheless, my basic economic background in crypto told me that, since the currency is neither tied to ownership in something with value or some entity that actually produces something valuable or some token which governments will arrest you if you fail to pay, that it has no useful value. For years, I pointed this out to those around me, who thought I was some kind of Luddite.
But, I think this is going to vindicate my basic argument. There is nothing valuable in crypto. It failed as a means of payment. It's failed to decentralize finance. And now, it's failed to be a store of value as well.