Why not just build Stacker News on traditional financial rails?
1373 sats \ 20 comments \ @k00b 26 Oct 2022 bitcoin
@ThillerX_ sent me this tweet thread asking what advantages SN has being built on bitcoin. After all, SN could almost be built using the credit card system. The thought has occurred to me too. I even had a friend send me a (now defunct) fiat paid posting platform.
My response:
  1. lightning promises to eventually be easy to do non-custodially
  2. the global unbanked
  3. identity-free, permission-less, privacy money
  4. truly tiny payments in/out with proportional fees
  5. SN runs a copy of the bitcoin bank and can't be trivially unbanked
  6. interoperability
The people building these services don't long-term aim to be custodial. In Podcasting 2.0 a lot of the ecosystem is already hybrid custodial/non-custodial.
Early cars weren't much better than the best horses.
IMO It's just early and the tech is still expressing itself.
What did I miss?
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1747 sats \ 3 replies \ @nerd2ninja 26 Oct 2022
That your backend doesn't have to hold our credit/debit card data. Yes, you currently have $2 of value of mine on your server which if hacked would be irreversibly stolen, but to me, that's better than leaking my card info, address, and all the other details you have to collect to process a traditional payment.
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @SatRat 27 Oct 2022
And the fact that you can, at any moment, withdraw the total amount of the hosted sats instantly as final settlement alleviates a lot of the risk of tradfi custodial services. And FOR SURE the fact that I can interact without submitting personal data is the beauty of being built on the LN.
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362 sats \ 1 reply \ @ev 27 Oct 2022
You're trusting SN to honor the withdrawal request, right? Technically, you don't have control of the sat balance associated with your SN account right now.
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244 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatRat 27 Oct 2022
True, but it is a better dynamic for building trust. It is a direct relationship between SN and the user. No intermediaries have to be trusted to complete the transaction.
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756 sats \ 0 replies \ @ln123 26 Oct 2022
A growing number of people don't WANT to use a bank (who arbitrarily cut service and make you jump hoops to get it back), or payment processors that can go broke and reveal your name, transactions, and balances to the ENTIRE world (mtGox, Celsius).
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822 sats \ 0 replies \ @ev 27 Oct 2022 freebie
Hey @k00b and SN - author of the tweet thread here - thanks so much for responding and having this conversation! I am a regular reader of Stacker News on my morning/evening commute and love the conversations that happen here.
I want to clarify that use of bitcoin by itself is a compelling reason for me to use Stacker News, even if a SN clone could be mostly built on traditional payment rails. This is because I believe in the economics and technological principles of bitcoin, and am attracted to products that integrate bitcoin.
Many of my friends and family are no-coiners who haven't taken the time to understand bitcoin, and they wouldn't adopt bitcoin right now solely based on alignment with the principles of decentralization and clear issuance policies. I think that one way that we will onboard the next wave of bitcoiners is by creating digital services that can only exist on bitcoin.
I've seen a lot of excitement over the recent wave of products and businesses being built on lightning, and I've been excited by many of them myself. I was trying to figure out which of them have developed products that couldn't be quickly copied by entrenched tech companies and none of them seemed to have a major moat that I could see.
If and when SN is non-custodial, it would be a true step forward and offer something unique relative to the legacy payment rails.
I hope the message comes through that I am as bullish as ever on bitcoin, lightning, and the ecosystem that continues to grow each year. With so many smart people learning, building, and supporting each other, I'm confident that some folks will figure out some truly novel products that can only be built on lightning in the coming months and years.
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150 sats \ 1 reply \ @zodthebarbarian 26 Oct 2022 freebie
For the simple reason that banks are gross and Bitcoin feels amazing. We don't have to get technical to understand why this is so. Why eat chicken when you can have steak?
But in all seriousness even if the feature set seems similar to what banks can do it would only be a facsimile, as banks cannot at all replicate what lightning is doing for micro transaction sites like these. You might argue fiat banks can do a subset of what lightning can do(that is if they feel like it and don't decide to charge you a morality fine like PayPal or even worse), there is no future to it. The innovation is in lightning not fiat rails.
would you even be here if this site was built on fiat? I think the answer for everyone here would be absolutely not.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @chungkingexpress 27 Oct 2022
I agree with this. Fiat and Lightning might seem similar on the outside functionally, but it what they mean and what they stand for that is important.
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140 sats \ 0 replies \ @sommerfeld 26 Oct 2022
Rich entitled first-world normies don't understand right away the value of using a permissionless network.
For them, besides the monetary debasement, fiat works well technologically since you can also have free instant micropayments.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @faithandcredit 27 Oct 2022
The future of the traditional financial rails is questionable imo so better to build on for example bitcoin which you could argue have more growth potential.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @sandbeach123 27 Oct 2022
I would like the option of using my own wallet as an account, but I know it might be a bit slower. Technicly that is what lightning is for: the stream of money.
Dump Fiat/traditional rails. There is no finality there, only trusted custodians.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @KingZing 27 Oct 2022
Less information being exposed to the web, direct self custody for these value transfer etc. The only way I see that happening with card would be one that distribute the fund every X amount of time.
Everyone can have a wallet just by having internet access.
All of these are way better than anything else.
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100 sats \ 3 replies \ @scampy 26 Oct 2022
Ease of use. Once onboarded to Bitcoin, spending / receiving sats is far easier than fiat (instant settlement, no clunky card details, I can even login via lnurl through my mobile wallet).
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @ev 27 Oct 2022
This is a biased view though, as it is ease of use for you i.e. someone who is already a bitcoiner.
Imagine that you're not a bitcoiner and want to use SN (and login via lnurl). First you need to buy bitcoin, probably on an exchange that requires an account and KYC. Then you need to set up a lightning wallet, withdrawal your bitcoin from the exchange, and setup a lightning channel. Oh, you used a wallet that doesn't support lnurl-auth? Now you need to install a second wallet. All of the above take time and learning, which you're taking for granted due to being a bitcoiner.
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265 sats \ 0 replies \ @scampy 27 Oct 2022
Oh I agree, hence "once onboarded". For the average person there's the initial hurdle of buying and learning Bitcoin. This is not trivial.
I'm more thinking about the user experience for someone already familiar with the space. For me and you, using SN is smoother due to the reasons I outlined.
Let's be fair though: If you assume the user needs to be onboarded onto Bitcoin, we could also compare that to the fiat onboarding experience (many in the world are unbanked). I think it's also fine to compare the always-custodial fiat with custodial Lightning, which is easier than running one's own channels etc.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @chungkingexpress 27 Oct 2022
Still a lot easier than getting started with a credit card :) You do not need KYC for getting Sats either, plenty of faucets around to get a small amount!
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @chungkingexpress 27 Oct 2022 freebie
I would not use nor participate if it was on fiat rails. I can tip small amounts on Lightning that are not possible otherwise, and I can so anonymously. This is the future. Same with email / spam / streaming etc - it will all be lightning based. Even watching a movie or listening to music will use Lightning.
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244 sats \ 1 reply \ @ev 27 Oct 2022
This misses the whole point of the tweet thread - all of the above could be done on traditional payment rails. Netflix is currently a monthly subscription for unlimited use, but they could very easily offer an option where you pay for a certain number of minutes and pay the content provider based on views. Youtube is ad-based (or subscription) now but could also easily offer something where users pay for their usage directly.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @chungkingexpress 27 Oct 2022
It could be done, but I would not use it! I value Lightning/BTC differently and treat it differently to fiat and I bet many people here feel the same. From the outside, Lightning and Fiat might seem to have similar capabilities, but the difference is what they mean. I have no issues using Lightning for tipping, boosting, and doing V4V online, but I am very reluctant to reach over for my credit card to 'just deposit $10 to get 1000 credits to upvote on Facebook'. I would literally never do the later.
I am a funny fish like that, but just because two things seem the same on the outside does not mean that they are equal.
The circular economy of e.g. earning sats by listening to a podcast on Fountain.fm or from micro jobs, then tipping comments on Stacker News is great and will only continue to get better.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nymkey 26 Oct 2022
Exactly.  It is too early.```
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