Puritans
this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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And they still wont introduce crypto payments
Crypto is only better because of the hosters.
Watch the Video Line go up by Folding ideas. Crypto is just as much controlled by the people having the means as the banks are
What people controlling means? These are decentralized automated systems.
The ones with the most servers can just fork the chain when something that they don't like happens
Generally, zero trust means zero privacy: they can at any point just discriminate anyone
But now its everyone instead of those who have money, so yay I guess?
Not really, at best large opearators in BTC can censor transactions, ETH devs are working on encrypted mempool, so even that shouldn't be possible there soon.
Businesses deciding what rights we have is the part of capitalism no one talks about. I'm so tired of unelected people making rules for my life.
Fuck them all why can a company decide what is "right" If Kickstarter doesn't want NFSW content then fine that is their choice it is their platform. But why should a payment processor be able to tell you what you can and can't have.
I’m so tired of unelected people making rules for my life.
When people ask if I trust the government on any conversation that things like this come up I tell them my motto is "Don't trust the government, unless it means trusting a corporation. Then DEFINITELY don't trust the corporation."
It's also because of "Karens". Your average business wouldn't give a shit what you do, if there wasn't other losers making trouble because somebody else doesn't live by their standards.
No doubt the threat of a Stripe ban on Kickstarter is predicated on the expected ban on Stripe by MasterCard and or Visa.
In other words, online censorship is being controlled by two credit card companies.
We really need more payment processors, preferably not based in the USA.
We need more of every company that is not American. There are no global companies just American ones that operate in other countries. And yes I know there are other countries that have global companies but if they operate in America that still poses a risk. As if they continue to want to they may have to do what American Government wants like MS has admitted to.
I know this isn't new, but I think we can officially consider our society a cyberpunk one, where corporations control global policy.
Plus: AI assisted omnipresent survailance, Police states, needless tech everywhere, no one owns anything just subscriptions...
We have that, it’s called crypto and everyone seems to hate it.
Yah no, it has to be more stable I don't want to one minute be paid a fair price and the next have nothing or have paid 2x what the thing was worth.
Crypto isnt a payment processor, and it has no backing as a currency except current social agreement (yes thats most money but issued currencies are backed by central authorities) and it basically exists for ponzi schemes. Its so insanely volatile that its not for every day people.
That's not even mentioning that its sole value is to convert back into regular backed currency.
Lol nobody gonna want to use an extremely volatile currency as payment processor. Rest of the world just needs to implement system similar to PIX from brazil.
one with... fuck, last i checked (a while) something like $40 transaction fees. vs 3% to $3.50 transaction fees. Can't remember which, i'm trying to fall asleep and remembering will wake me up..
We desperately need sovereign digital currency like the digital euro project
Good luck using those digital euros if you criticize Israel. Or try to use them to buy a unapproved VPN service. Or any thing now or in the future deemed inappropriate.
Yeah and I'm sure Visa and MasterCard will be very accommodating
The alternative to corporatism isn't fascism, in fact they're the same thing at different stages. Accepting the fascists because they are an 'alternative' to corporations is like accepting castration because it is an alternative dentistry.
But what I propose wasn't fascism at all, saying there should be sovereign currency is a separate point for how it's governed
Regardless of what power structure we have in the future the need for that currency to be accessible to all and free from corporate interests is paramount
Unfortunately what you're suggesting is crypto. Which as we've seen isn't really compatible with any world where capitalism still exists; as capitalists will just monopolize it.
Mullvad, VPN provider, takes cash sent by postmail for payment.
So we have at least that!
You're conflating two separate things: currency infrastructure vs. the economic system it runs under.
All the problems you're describing are problems of capitalism, not problems of digital currency.
The point is: right now, Visa and Mastercard are an unelected, profit-driven gatekeeper. Replacing them with a state-backed, insured, physically-backed digital currency isn't "crypto" it's just removing a parasitic middleman.
Same money. Same banks. Same insurance. Just no corporate toll booth.
Will capitalists try to capture it? Absolutely. So build it with guardrails. But "they might capture it later" isn't an argument against building it better than what we have today. Otherwise you can't support anything short of revolution.
What state? Because it cannot be any european state. It can't be any state in the Americas. It can't be most asian countries. It absolutely cannot be Australia.
There is no state that is both already uncaptured by capital and palatable enough to avoid sanctions in the west. Since that's the actual only reason sanctions exist, to punish those not currently fully captured by capital holders.
So it cannot be state backed.
Can it be insured without a state? Maybe, but then whoever insures it sets the rules for it. This is the problem with the Federal Reserve owning USD versus the US government. Can it be physically backed without a state? No.
If this magically came into existence in a state and was even slightly effective, that state would magically be developing nuclear weapons the next day and invaded. Just a reminder Gaddafi was doing what you're proposing... and global capital was so mad he was allegedly anally penetrated by machetes while the entirety of the country was effectively destroyed.
Any solution that gains traction developed by a state would get that state eliminated.
And any solution not made by a state will either be a scam, be monopolized by capital as its an asset and someone will be willing to sell it, or will simply not catch on since businesses would find no incentive to use it in large enough numbers to function. You'd need half of a country's economy, at minimum, to switch to that new currency for people to effectively circulate it. Which is why bitcoin never took off as a currency. Which is why no crypto will ever really be used as a currency outside spot transactions. Your employees need to be able to pay their taxes with it. Which in any country means the government approves of it, which means its not a threat to them, which for 150 countries means it is not in any way a threat to capital and can be fully controlled by it.
It's a good solution for global socialism. And socialist countries wanting to make that transition away from the last vestiges of capitalism might find utility in a state-issued digital currency... as long as capitalism does not exist anywhere at any point at that time. Because it just takes one economy where you can buy this digital currency like any other commodity in exchange for USD or other currency that can buy goods; just one to ruin everything.
You did it again, by this logic there's not point improving anything until we fix the universe
No, there's just no point in painting a burning car or swapping the door hinges during a house fire or putting lipstick on a pig post slaughter.
You have to fix the core of the problem before you start worrying about the minor details that cannot meaningfully exist without the initial problem being solved. Creating this currency would not solve any problems whatsoever with the current state of the world. It would not improve anything.
You know how I know that? Bitcoin was the thing you are describing. How'd that work out? The same way literally any digital currency will work out while the concept of capital is allowed to exist. It will be bought, hoarded, and narrowly metered out in the absolute best case scenario. And all possible frameworks that could possibly avoid that fate are just the concept of socialism dressed up in increasingly silly and decreasingly useful abstractions.
If you want to have a nice sailboat you don't start with the deck trimming. You don't even start with the sails. You start building the framework of the hull and then possibly get to the finer parts later, when what you have won't just be dunked in the ocean because you think you don't need the entire rest of the boat to have a boat.
Jesus you're pedantic, and incorrect. Bitcoin is stateless, that is not what I described.
Gaddafi got killed not because of a digital currency, but because he tried to sell oil for gold instead of dollars. That's a different fight one about reserve currency status, not payment rail infrastructure. Let's not confuse the two.
But you're right about the core problem: any state that seriously threatens capital's control over money will be destroyed or sanctioned. So what do we do? Wait for global socialism? That's not happening this decade.
Don't aim for the whole currency. Aim for the rails first.
A digital euro as currently proposed is trash, full surveillance, no anonymity, state as Visa 2.0. But a different digital currency, one with mandatory judicial oversight for freezes, low-value anonymity, and multiple non-corporate validators is not "lipstick on a pig." It's a fire escape.
Your "burning house" analogy works against you. If the house is on fire, you don't say "no point installing a fire escape until we rebuild the whole house." You install the fire escape now to save the people inside, then rebuild.
Bitcoin failed because it had no state backing, no insurance, no physical anchor, and no judicial oversight. I'm describing the opposite. Don't throw out surgery because leeches didn't work.
As if sex workers were treated fairly in the EU…
This is more about a country not being beholden to corporate interests for their laws
We're due for a second sexual revolution.
I'm just picturing a riot but instead of axes and pitchforks they are holding body pillows and fleshlights
Dumbasses, should have told stripe to pound sand like Master card and visa. This platform is going to die in this econ if they pull that.
Mastercard and visa are likely who made stripe do this
Just curious if kickstarter is in the wrong here or not. Because when it was Valve, lots of folks were losing their minds blaming Valve for capitulating to Stripe and Visa/MC.
Valve didn't capitulate tho.
The way you'd have heard them tell it, Valve folded like a cardboard box.
They did, they removed all content that Mastercard / Collective shout doesn't like.
And what was this material, still seems to be hentai on the store. This is basic shit that can be disprove immediately.
Hint: it wasn't ALL adult content. Like they've already said.
These things are tricky, I would generally like to say the platforms and associated processors, hosting, etc should be neutral. However, there are plenty of things that are just plain bad for society if they get created which despite being massively unpopular might get enough niche support to be brought to existence given the chance.
It could be by law, decree of the platform, or vote of the users, but somebody has to have the ability to draw a line on what can be done in public, the broader consensus on the question the better though.
Edit: Curiosity since this seems to have irritated some people. Would you suggest that a platform not be regulated in some way if it where enabling the creation of exploitive and hateful content? Note that I didn't specify sexual content but rather things that can be bad for society.
The reason people are down voting you is you’ve created a who watches the watchers situation. Whose job is it to determine what’s bad for society? We’re already having that problem right now with the won’t you think of the children bullshit and people trying to get books out of libraries just as one for instance. Censorship is censorship and censorship is bad.
Which is why I say it's difficult but necessary at some point. As a thought experiment, take a list of things in a topic, in this case it was brought in as porn things because apparently the credit companies are prudish. Array out that list going from mundane safe hetro sex all the way to snuff films. Somewhere in there any given person would find 'their' line and perhaps a separate 'the' line which they see as acceptable to film and diseminate.
So who orders the list, who draws the line, and by who/how does it get enforced? To say all censorship is bad would imply that no line should be drawn. One can't just say it should be based on 'common sense' because I guarantee there are people who would think what's sensible to you is either too outlandish or tame out there.