Gumroad, an e-commerce company for creators, updated its rules to more strictly limit NSFW content, citing restrictions from payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
And people continue to mock cryptocurrencies.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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They’re still pretty bad at being currency. Transaction fees are still too high and it’s still pretty slow and/or complicated
Fees are high in Bitcoin but there are other options that are low fees/faster (still too complex for most people imo
I see cryptocurrency ATMs in various random places around town, they're evidently not too complex for common usage. I think this is a bit of a chicken and egg thing, people would figure them out if sites like Gumroad actually used them. Porn is a powerful motivator for human ingenuity.
And yeah, Bitcoin's fees are silly and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone wanting to use it as a currency. The Bitcoin community long ago decided they wanted to be "digital gold" and are firmly dedicated to making the token unusable for anything other than that. For general currency usage I'd recommend looking into stabletokens like USDC or DAI, they run on the Ethereum blockchain instead.
I see the occasional Bitcoin ATM but they seem to be Bitcoin only, and they have their own high fees. I agree with the stablecoins point, though. Although ethereum has worse fees than Bitcoin these days there are ofc L2 options like those listed at https://l2beat.com
Fees with lightning (Bitcoin) are often under a penny per transaction and transactions settle instantly. Usability has come a long way here.
Is it? The ATMs have been all over the place for half a decade at this point.
As for fees it cost me 3 cents to send a $50 Litecoin transaction a few days ago. If I did that with Bitcoin it would have cost me $8 in transaction fees so you're right there.
Now days there's a coin for every purpose.
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Bitcoin = gold bars
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Litecoin = mundane transactions
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Monero = digital cash
Crypto has been around for 15 years already. Time flys.
all over the place
Speak for your own location.
Also, "crypto works as a functional currency, which can be demonstrated by how you need to sell it for cash in order actually buy anything with it" isn't the argument you think it is.
I didn't "sell it for cash" I paid my VPS hosting bills with it. It's simple for business to accept crypto these days, couple clicks and they're set up.
If your business is making NSFW art than you better be willing to adapt.
Yeah, but name a single big box retailer that takes a cryptocurrency at the point of sale? You can't because none do. Having to find an ATM to be able to complete a transaction isn't scalable. And for retailers, seconds count at the PoS. So if it takes any significant time at all to process a transaction, they're not going to do it. Further, they're not going to eat the kind of fees that crypto brings along with it. Same reason a lot of retailers don't take AmEx, for example. The transaction fees are outrageous. So as a retailer you either eat it, which most won't, or you pass the cost on to the customer, and alienate your customers.
Until you can walk into a McDonalds or a Walmart and swipe or tap something at their payment terminal to pay with your cryptocoin, it's not going to be viable. And I'm not talking about exchanging it for cash, and then paying. I'm talking about the retailer actually accepting the coin.
As a currency, crypto has utterly failed. It's nothing but a speculator market, and an extremely dirty and volatile one at that.
Having to find an ATM to be able to complete a transaction
Much like cash an ATM isn't needed by a lot of people as they bank online and use cards. Crypto has all those options as well.
Point is here you either adapt or have to find a new job because old payment processors won't let you sell your Giraffe bukkake art. It is what it is.
So simple you need to use three different currencies
And people continue to mock cryptocurrencies.
And rightfully so. They've demonstrated their lack of worth as an actual medium of trade, and have wasted an alarming amount of electricity, while pumping an unconscionable amount of carbon into the atmosphere for jack-fucking-shit.
Ethereum, the number-two cryptocurrency, has been using proof-of-stake consensus since 2022. As a result it no longer uses significant amounts of electricity. Bitcoin's still stuck with proof-of-work, but if you want to mock cryptocurrency as a whole you need to update your talking points.
How many etherium transactions are able to be processed in one second? Still just 30?
Currently it's handling about 140 TPS. The Dencun upgrade to Ethereum that just went live a couple of days ago adds a new feature, data blobs, that lets this go significantly higher at reduced cost.
Crypto currency is gambling like nfts or anything else. It only has value as a hot potato.
What potato stays hot for 15 years?
As opposed to Real currency, which has a perfectly stable and scientifically defined value fully backed by... credit.
Yes, because they are jokes
We mock crypto because anyone who has it wants to hoard it as an "investment". Nobody wants to use it as a currency.
I tried for years, buying and selling goods with crypto. I never purchased any crypto, I just earned it. I tried to talk others into the same. You need to spend to have value.... they just laugh and day hold your bags tight with diamond hands.
Yeah, it's never going to work.
and will continue until there is security (state backing) in the exchanges.
And that will only happen when the politicians get thier kickback.
Just earlier today i saw this phrase about cryptocurrency: "price discovery for bitcoin happens on an exchange that admitted a few months ago to being a criminal conspiracy". Yeah, there's HUGE problems with central banks, but by this point it should be very clear that a wild west casino full of scammers will not save us from that, it doesn't matter what were the initial ideals of people about crypto, it's main function now and for many years since it's beginnings has been scamming real money out of people.
I wouldn't recommend using Bitcoin specifically for an e-commerce site like this, both because of its volatility and its high transaction fees. A stabletoken like DAI or USDT is more specifically designed for this use case.
That's just a different color of casino chip, in the end is still cryptocurrency, which as mentioned is not where we want to be
No, you misunderstand the point of a stabletoken. They are designed to have a fixed value, usually tied to the US dollar. Is the US dollar a "casino chip"? That's what these sites usually price things in to begin with.
Yes, it is just a casino chip. The US dollar has been backed by jack shit for a long time.
Then isn't Gumroad already selling goods in exchange for "casino chips?" What alternative would you suggest?
Crypto would be great if the idea wasn't "zero-trust money exchange". That is the root of the problems with high payment fees, super slow transaction throughput and excessive resource (storage space, energy) consumption
But that feature is the whole point. The alternative is Paypal et al, which this very article points out the problem with.
Also, those problems are being addressed by the more modern cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has fallen far behind the technical curve, I wouldn't bother with it frankly.
Which crypto is the easiest to actually use (send/receive), can handle 1k transactions per second (a bit under 5% of VISA's TPS) and is least likely to suffer wild price fluctuation? Honest question
I'm not a frequent user myself so I'm probably not the best to answer on the usability front, but for the combination of high TPS and low price volatility I'd probably recommend using one of Ethereum's stabletokens (DAI, USDT, etc.) on one of its layer-2 networks (such as Arbitrum or Optimism). Stabletokens are cryptocurrencies whose value has been tied to some external measure, in most cases the US Dollar, so they're ideal for use in commerce.
If I commission a piece of art, and they refuse to deliver what is my recourse?
If an honest artist is issuing a refund, and adds an extra 0 what is their recourse?
There are distributed marketplace applications that can handle those matters in various ways. You'd need to be specific about which one you're using.
Hey I can pay you in turnips, it's better than having a normal money operation. Like, it doesn't matter that gumroad is turning to crap, we have turnips. People mock my turnips
It's probably not payment processors as such that care, but rather countries. Payment processors are just a convenient lever. Payment processors are vulnerable to national pressure, and random commercial website is vulnerable to pressure from payment processors.
Payment processors do care, but not for the reasons people seem to assume. NSFW purchases have disproportionately high rates of buyer remorse and charge reversals, which understandably make them much less desirable for anyone to deal with.
Prudishness may also play a part, but the chargeback rate is a major factor.
I wonder how often Visa and Mastercard had to deal with those problems up to the early 2000s, with nearly every porn site being paid access and none of them accepting Paypal, as far as I remember.
The industry found another way through a company called CCBill, that essentially became the adult industry's preferred payment gateway. They took a lot of the heat off the unsavoriness of it.
Can I download the videos for the class I signed up for and actually watch them when I have no cell signal yet? No? Cool. Cool. Banning porn was important too I guess.
wtf
(no, I'm not asking to be able to export content. I'm talking about using their paperweight of an app)
Oh, it says Gumroad. I thought it said...
Well this is going to be a problem, since they're also getting chased off Patreon.
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Gumroad, an e-commerce company for creators, updated its rules to more strictly limit NSFW content, citing restrictions from payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
For creators who sell adult art, like explicit comic books or lewd cosplay photos, these sudden policy changes can be detrimental, resulting in an unforeseen loss of income.
“This is obviously far from the first site that is bending to the pressure of payment processors, and it will not be the last, but this is the first time my content (which is primarily academic and educational) seems to be threatened.”
When creators have to port over their followers to a new platform, or direct fans to a different web shop to buy their products, the friction can result in a loss of income.
People who appear in porn on OnlyFans must verify their identity through both legal documents and biometric scans, and they must sign a form confirming that all models consented to be recorded.
“I am trying to plan next steps, but Gumroad was an ideal, free storefront for e-books and instructional videos like I sell, and all other sorts of digital content.
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