PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s Crowdfunding Account

Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by rockdoe on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:22AM (#7971228)

It's nice to propose Bitcoin as an alternative, but there's no "they didn't make it so you get your money back" system like pledges, is there?

Also, I don't see how they qualify for PayPal donation status as a nonprofit, so the outcome of this was predictable by day 1 and entirely their fault.

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by tinkerrr on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:33AM (#7971340)

Yes there is. See Assurance Contracts on the Bitcoin Protocol (they haven't been implemented yet though, I think): https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_3:_Assurance_co...

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by rockdoe on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:38AM (#7971387)

they haven't been implemented yet though, I think

That's kind of a show-stopper, then. Saying that Bitcoin is an alternative to Paypal for these kind of Kickstarter-like efforts is just disingenuous and exposing your "customers" needlessly.

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by tinkerrr on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:57AM (#7971533)

Well, USD doesn't have that feature either, but we have central agencies we trust (e.g. kickstarter). There's no reason why that model cannot be used with Bitcoin (so nothing disingenuous as you claim). The real power of Bitcoin would be to be able to do this in a trust-less manner. It hasn't been implemented yet, but exists in the Bitcoin Protocol. You're welcome to take a shot at it, by the way, the core developer team is always looking for new developers.

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by cwyers on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @12:30PM (#7971796)

"Well, USD doesn't have that feature either, but we have central agencies we trust (e.g. kickstarter). There's no reason why that model cannot be used with Bitcoin (so nothing disingenuous as you claim)."

Well, in this case, they're using one of those central agencies (PayPal). So using PayPal as the central agency on Bitcoin would be exactly the same, and using a different central agency is a change independent of the use of Bitcoin.

"The real power of Bitcoin would be to be able to do this in a trust-less manner. It hasn't been implemented yet, but exists in the Bitcoin Protocol. You're welcome to take a shot at it, by the way, the core developer team is always looking for new developers."

I don't know that 'Bitcoin has X if you write code to let Bitcoin do X' is quite the same as 'Bitcoin has X.' Lots of things can do X if I put in all the work to do X.

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by diminoten on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:49AM (#7971467)

They're in the protocol, no one's used them yet.

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by couchand on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:54AM (#7971499)

There's no reason that the crowdfunding platform couldn't hold the pledged Bitcoin in escrow, which seems like it would be pretty straightforward and transparent.

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by smackfu on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:49AM (#7971465)

Bitcoin is better for the people being funded, but leaves no recourse for the funders if the project just runs away with their money.

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by VMG on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:57AM (#7971527)

You can use multi-party escrow for that

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Re:PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail’s C... by smackfu on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @12:00PM (#7971572)

True, but then the project doesn't get the money until they ship, which means they pass up most of the benefits of crowdfunding.

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