Tell HN: Coinbase now requires physical address of recipient in crypto transfers

Re:Tell HN: Coinbase now requires physical address of recipi... by kareemsabri on Friday June 24, 2022 @07:24AM (#31860182)

Gmail absolutely undermines the openness of email. That's fine, it's a choice users made because they don't want to run their own email servers, so they offload it to Google. Google decides what to classify as spam. As such, if I stand up a new email server and start sending email to Gmail addresses, I am at the whims of Google deciding what email from me gets delivered.

The protocol is open and designed to be decentralized, but the system as implemented in the real world is fairly centralized at this point. Saying "you can run your own mail server" doesn't matter if virtually nobody actually does.

If the end state of crypto will just be a bunch of web2 style companies running centralized servers that (maybe) interact with blockchains, and we say "that doesn't undermine the promise of crypto, you can run your own node", I guess I'll have to agree to disagree.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Coinbase now requires physical address of recipi... by strofcon on Friday June 24, 2022 @08:44AM (#31860904)

"As such, if I stand up a new email server and start sending email to Gmail addresses, I am at the whims of Google deciding what email from me gets delivered."

This is the critical point. Adoption matters, and always ends up with consolidated power. It's just how things are, and how they stay, short of the severe intervention of dramatically easy-to-use tools for "click to host your own stuff".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Coinbase now requires physical address of recipi... by onethought on Sunday June 26, 2022 @09:19AM (#31883650)

Yes. I think this is an important distinction, freedom to do something is still important even if the majority don’t do it.

It allows us to trust gmail/coinbase more knowing we can move away from it if required. Because they know that too

[ Parent | on HN ]