[Metalab] YaXwe hacker camp - "hacker autonomy vs money"

[Iang]

Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 10:45 +0200, Iang wrote:
>> Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
>>
>>> Kurz: Sobald es ein alternatives System gibt, daß großflächig verbreitet
>>> ist,
>>> wird es mbMn auch Spekulanten etc. geben.
>> Size is a big factor, and an important one to to watch.  But 
>> we can do better than that.  (Relying on a google/human 
>> translation here so maybe I got the wrong meaning...)
> 
> Don't get me wrong - I'm not stating with my last mail that I
> think it is good that way or should/must be that way and/or
> shouldn't be changed and/or. It's simply my observation together
> with some reasoning on the "why".


Sure!  I probably did get it wrong.  Google isn't good at 
subtle translations.


>> We know much more about how to put in place trouble-limited 
>> payment systems than we did in the digicash days.  There are 
>> many examples around, you can check for example the fee 
>> structure of Paypal versus the others, and wonder why Paypal 
>> fees are so high.  Easy answer:  they like and appreciate a 
>> floor of trouble, because that keeps fees high, and high 
>> fees means high profits.  Fee structures of other systems 
> 
> Another easy answer: AFAIK they were the first that offered such
> a service. So if you are the only supplier (the first one on the
> market with a completely new product/service or you have a
> monopoly or whatever is the reason), you usually can ask for more
> because of the lack of alternatives.


Paypal, I think you are talking about here:  no, they 
weren't the first, far from it.  They were the ones that 
filled a particular niche, learnt from the earlier mistakes 
by fixing the gross errors, *and* survived the minefields. 
Of course, today, they would rewrite history...  They were 
much more nimble than the competition though, and showed 
they were capable of ditching some things and trying others 
(e.g., they were a bank twice or so, from memory), which is 
an apparently rare skill.


>> are 1-2 orders of magnitude lower, and sustainable, because 
>> they use a lot of the techniques we have developed since the 
>> halcyon days of simple cryptographic designs.
> 
> So what are the (working) alternatives to PayPal?

WebMoney would be the up and coming.  Problem with WebMoney 
is that much of the doco and action is written up in 
Russian.  There is also the gold community, which is 
somewhat in disarray because of the e-gold troubles (and 
WebMoney has now offered a gold unit).

A lot depends on what you want the money unit for, of 
course.  If you want it for eBay, then it will be hard to 
beat Paypal's offering, because the others keep getting 
banned by Paypal's parent.  If you want it for international 
stuff, then gold is best.  If you want it for a game like 
SL, then that depends on too much that is already cast in 
the game to predict.

iang