As much as people love to hate it: crypto

Specifically Monero. No evidence for Puritans or data-mining companies to try and shame you or make you pay to forget.

I wish there was an easy way to handle subscriptions with crypto. Like if MetaMask or other wallet apps agreed on a "pull-based" billing system. That would probably never happen, but I can dream.

As an operator, I'd also want a smart contract that collects payments from a list of tokens/altcoins and immediately converts it to USDC.

You can do that by making a smart contract that the payee can only pull X amount from on certain block intervals, and the payer can deposit and withdraw from a often as they like. It would essentially be a checking account.

Also re: auto converting tokens - you can jusr make a service to do that, it doesn't have to be a smart contract. A smart contract probably could be used with a DEX though, but I think that may be needlessly complex.

> You can do that by making a smart contract that the payee can only pull X amount from on certain block intervals, and the payer can deposit and withdraw from a often as they like. It would essentially be a checking account.

This is super interesting. Has anyone done this?

Honestly it's pretty trivial. I haven't tested it (it does at least compile), but I had GPT-4 write a contract for this[0]. Obviously don't use this for anything meaningful, just meant to convey the idea. More features could be added to do things like allow the account creator to add / remove more payees with their own withdrawl rates, allow them to directly transfer to someone besides themselves (analogous to paying with a debit card).

[0] https://dpaste.org/NWFbE

> Honestly it's pretty trivial.

Literally no artist anywhere has ever received an actual payment from an actual customer with this method (I'm not counting the artist themselves making a test payment).

No, if Gumroad bans you, you can't just set up your own crypto smart contracts and make money that way. This is some academic crypto anarchist fantasy.

You can look at the code. It's like 50 lines. It is logically trivial. I was replying to a comment that called it "super interesting", which is why I pointed out how trivial it is.

> No, if Gumroad bans you, you can't just set up your own crypto smart contracts and make money that way.

For no reason other than people don't want to.

> For no reason other than people don't want to.

You're living in complete fantasy land. There are many reasons people find it hard to make payments in crypto, other than "just don't want to".

Again, I'm reiterating the point that artists need to eat food to live, and artists would be happy to set up payments in crypto, if that would lead to them gaining access to food. But it wouldn't, so they won't.

> You can look at the code. It's like 50 lines. It is logically trivial

Ah yes, the thing I always love to do before purchasing a naughty comic book: code reviews! I just love to read the code that verifies that my $2 purchase of a comic book. I love sweating nervously and verifying that clicking this button will not have unforeseen consequences, such as one where I lose my house because I missed something in code review. wHy dOEsNT evERyONe jUSt uSE crYPtO

> You're living in complete fantasy land.

You're just arguing against things I am not saying.

> There are many reasons people find it hard to make payments in crypto, other than "just don't want to".

Feel free to elaborate.

> artists need to eat food to live, and artists would be happy to set up payments in crypto, if that would lead to them gaining access to food. But it wouldn't, so they won't.

Can you give reasons why it wouldn't besides people (which includes payers) don't want to use it?

> Ah yes, the thing I always love to do before purchasing a naughty comic book: code reviews!

People are able to make apps. I didn't link an app because I don't know of any, and I don't really care to find one if it already exists. I linked code because this is a hacker forum, and it was trivial to get.

> Can you give reasons why it wouldn't besides people (which includes payers) don't want to use it?

Sure! Acquiring the required paperwork and banking connections to get on crypto on/off ramps is difficult. That's one reason.

Anyway, see how you retreated your argument to "which includes payers"? So it seems that you actually agree with me that artists wouldn't be able to set up crypto payments to provide a livelihood for themselves, due to reasons which are outside their control.

A lot of artists already are using crypto to accept payments. Look at “crypto art” space as a whole. You don’t need tons of paperwork to set up on and off ramps.

> A lot of artists already are using crypto to accept payments. Look at “crypto art” space as a whole.

You're conflating collectibles, which are purchased for speculative purposes, to the kinds of art which are purchased for consumption. Yes, you can use crypto to build ponzi-like games for digital assets, everybody knows that. The question here is can an artist charge like $5 for a comic book or $10 for a monthly subscription. And the answer to that question is no, not to an extent where they would be able to afford food, which they need in order to continue living.

> You don’t need tons of paperwork to set up on and off ramps.

I personally needed a passport, a driver's license, and a recent electricity bill. I also needed a mobile phone with video camera, plus a banking connection which is crypto friendly.

Owning a passport and electricity bill is hardly “paperwork,” lol. If an artist can’t manage to set up a crypto account—or a bank account, which requires the exact same documents—they are probably not in a position to run their own art business.

> You're conflating collectibles

No—I am talking broadly about artists selling their work through crypto, and some of it does include $5 comics, like Sloth Zine:

https://x.com/slothzine/status/1763674161333834057?s=20

> If an artist can’t manage to set up a crypto account—or a bank account, which requires the exact same documents—they are probably not in a position to run their own art business.

The artist, sure. But once the artist goes through all that work to set it up, will they get access to food which they need in order to continue living? No, they won't. Because the consumers will prefer products that are easy to pay for.

> No—I am talking broadly about artists selling their work through crypto, and some of it does include $5 comics, like Sloth Zine:

aaand the link you gave is an NFT collectible...

The price point was not the main point here - sure an NFT doesn't have to be expensive it can also be cheap. That was not the point. My point was that the audience for ponzi-like NFT games is different from the audience for more "traditional" consumers of art. If you are, for example, an artist who currently makes comic books that people will pay for with Visa and Mastercard, you will not be able to provide food on the table by switching into crypto payments.

Your argument lies on the assumption that consumers are too lazy to follow their favourite content creators to new payment avenues.

The reality is that a number of artists have already added crypto as an alternate and additional payment stream, and this includes comic artists and illustrators. This trend will probably continue as more platforms and payment processors make changes that are generally against the interests of their users (eg: the OP).

Can you show me one (1!) artist who makes a living wage off of crypto payments without any kind of ponzi-like speculative aspect? An artist who is just using crypto as means of payment AND actually getting paid with it. Just one example is enough.

I'm interested to see this as well. I know some who do Patreon and crypto, but none are just crypto.

I’ve already given you an example: Sloth Zine, an indie digital comic by illustrator Burka Bayram that is selling via crypto & tokenization. You can even read about his story here:

https://canvasrebel.com/meet-burka-bayram/

absolutely not the solution.

I don't see why not though? One of the benefits of a decentralized currency is that it is not subject to censorship by any central authority who disagrees with the content you are purchasing. That is exactly the problem these guys are having. Granted, they'll have to pay a lot of transaction fees/gas, and the volatility still makes it hard to fix prices, but for one-off transactions, you can ignore day-to-day volatility as long as the minute-to-minite volatility is bearable.

I didn't say it was "the" solution, but it absolutely is a solution to what they asked.

It’s “a” solution but not a “helpful” or “realistic” solution.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, because your comment succinctly highlights the issues and is correct.

It doesn't highlight any issues. It effectively just says "you are wrong". It doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It highlights the issue that the suggested solution is a theoretic or academic solution which we theorize might work out some day, but is not currently a realistic solution for the need to provide food for artists to eat so that they could remain alive.

The fact that you disagree with the explanation due to ideological purity reasons is not grounds for downvoting it.

> the suggested solution is a theoretic or academic solution which we theorize might work out some day, but is not currently a realistic solution for the need to provide food for artists to eat so that they could remain alive.

These are all your words, not theirs. They didn't suggest this at all.

> The fact that you disagree with the explanation due to ideological purity reasons is not grounds for downvoting it.

This is true, but:

1) I didn't downvote it (I literally can't)

2) There are other good reasons to downvote it, such as what I linked.

Unless you have something more to say about cyrpto I think we should leave this here.

> These are all your words, not theirs. They didn't suggest this at all.

I'm failing to understand how you could have read what I wrote and come to the conclusion I didn't suggest that, given that I literally said it was not realistic.

Well, that's your opinion. I believe I highlighted the main issues with your suggestion, and added exactly the same helpfulness to the discussion as an assertion that artists should rely on patrons to send them cryptocurrency to support themselves.

It still isn't a solution any way you cut it and in any case, hence the keyword 'absolutely'

It's a payment system that allows adult content.

If you're an artist who needs to eat food in order to live, this "payment system" does not facilitate your ability to achieve that.

Why? To me, it seems like a clear solution, and is actually one of the core goals of the creation of cryptocurrency.

Many artists I know are ferociously against crypto and they and their fans don't know how to use crypto at all.

Use bank transfer or better yet instead, purchase gifts for the creator on their Amazon, Etsy, etc wishlist in exchange for content or use gift cards.

The above solutions are way better than crypto as it's mostly used for crime and illicit transactions and speculation.

All it takes is one defi guy who can really draw rouge the bat with a juicy posterior and artists&dans will get into crypto.

There’s a lot of bad blood in the artistic community (on all fronts, production, distribution and consumption) to anything crypto due to the whole NFT thing… I don’t think you’re going to see anyone trying to do something that’s art + crypto for quite some time.

By what metric are these better solutions?

Modern blockchain payment systems (see Base) have transaction fees that are an order of magnitude cheaper than any trad processors; they don’t discriminate based on moral grounds; transactions settle in seconds rather than days; they are not bound to only certain countries; funds are not custodially held by a single centralized tech company; the list goes on.

Much of the rationale for anti-crypto among communities that would most benefit from it (eg: NSFW art) is ill conceived and held together by an almost religious zeal.

Yep. CCBill is one the bigger/better known in that space. I’m guessing Gumroad just doesn’t think it’s worth it.

Cash. Crypto is now, but will be regulated into submission, or out of existance.

As mentioned CCBil. Another is Epoch and SegPay. Most are found in the footer for pay sites.