Yeah, I know leftists hate crypto but this shit legit is making me want some.
I know crypto sucks in a lot of functional ways but those issues can probably be sorted out eventually. I don’t want to let puritanical authoritarian dipshits dictate what I can buy with my fucking money, or even see if they start also fuck with hosting of free content as well.
I don’t even buy porn games, doesn’t matter. Its the principle of the thing. And this shit can easily get worse if we let them.
It can help with mutual aid. People with savings can more easily strike, and support others who are striking. Activists shouldn’t have their accounts frozen, and donating to them should be anonymous.
Everything improves when you get rid of capitalism.
Crypto without capitalism would still be dictated by market economy though and a lot of anti-capitalists are anti-currency or anti-market. Not just anti-private-property anti-absentee-ownership.
But yes, I agree. A mutualist (or a “Libertarian” Market Socialist economy) would be pretty cool.
And not even truly de-centralized, as most services that support it actually do it through a few centralized third parties instead of implementing it directly.
Also, in the US at least, every single transaction needs to be reported on your tax return. There are tools to help you do this, but goddamn! imagine compiling all of that each year if you used it regularly. I used it at one point and it was such a pain in the ass come tax season, that I just sold all my crypto the following year and never touched it again.
I traded it in person when I was just testing it out and didn’t want any accounts. In theory if things get even more cyberpunk, we could use dead drops.
You just need to know where to look for shady people in alleyways where you can buy them with cash. It’s harder to find shady porn artists in alleyways.
Crypto also single-handedly invented ransomware. Like without Crypto, random Russian and North Korean hackers aren’t financially incentivized to target towns, hospitals, small businesses etc. There are legitimate payment processors other than just Visa.
I mean, ransomware as a thing has been around since the 90s. Crypto may have been the main factor in its skyrocketing prevalence, but it didnt “single-handedly invent” or facilitate the idea of ransomware.
That’s a nominally correct answer at best, like the scale of ransomeware then required the target to be in physical reach so you can physically hand off cash or equivalents. North Korea couldn’t extract money from Americans so they had no incentive to do so.
Lol at the crypto shills hiding behind that though. “it always existed so it’s ok” get out of here
I genuinely do not understand why my comment has made you feel the need to repeatedly insult me. You seem to agree with my point but then continuously shit on me for seeking a state of correctness in lieu of the inaccurate hyperbole of your op.
First I don’t know what insults you’re talking about, unless just the act of disagreeing with you is insulting.
Second, I used one expression to make a point, which was that crypto is foundational to the existence of ransomware, specifically on the massive scale it exists today. And then in every subsequent comment I have explained that said point is my main argument. And yet you keep ignoring that point and instead hyper-fixate on some combination of semantic pedantry and perceived victimhood.
The problem is not so much “paying for stuff without payment processors”. On an individual level, that can fairly easily be achieved.
The problem is the chilling effect that the puritanical positions of these payment processors have on the creation of art. What are you going to do with your crypto if the game or art you wanted to buy gets self-censored for “compliance” or simply isn’t created anymore?
That’s already happening for the sake of gaining access to console markets. I find it depressing TBH. However, I think its arguably worth trying to at least put a dent into the issue in any way possible.
Personally, I hate crypto, but I like the idea of crypto. Like decentralized currency, useable anywhere by anyone, independent of locale/government, is an awesome ideal. What drives me away from it is the fact that it’s not reliable (it fluctuates all over the place, and there’s no guarantee what you have one day will be there tomorrow), it eats more power than a country just to track transactions, there’s tons of different ones, and it’s generally used for scams and illicit purchases. Which I suppose is part of its reason it be, but no legit storefront I use takes it… probably for the first reason.
It also doesn’t help that it’s got a bad rap from all the crazy crypto-bro/fly-by-night scams and NFT stuff.
The problem has been solved to some extent, at least. Unregulated casinos and Polymarket are entirely banned in the US, but citizens here regularly bypass it with VPNs and transferring stablecoin. In the case of obscene games, it’s not illegal (yet at least) so the only thing needed would be the infrastructure for accepting and distributing crypto payments.
None of it is without flaws, but many small websites managed to make it work without issues. The main issue would probably be convincing enough people to move to crypto to create a stable user base. I’d imagine some would be “driven” enough to jump through all these hoops though. Personally I’d like to see a platform that is free of this anti-democratic fuckery going on.
Payment processors should have no authority whatsoever to monitor or police the transactions they facilitate. This would be true even if these two companies weren’t an illegal trust. Between the two of them, they effectively have a global monopoly on digital commerce.
It depends on the project. Many cryptocurrencies (Like Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin) have a public ledger. So every transaction (participants + amount) is visible.
Other Projects (where Monero is the most well known) use special cryptographic systems to hide all that. So the only thing which can be observed by 3th parties is that some transaction was successful somewhere.
There are also projects which are private but prioritize efficiency (all the cryptographic hiding has a notable computation-cost) by sacrificing hidden amount or hidden participants.
source of trust on this can’t be centralized, thats what visa/mastercard are
You need to be able to calculate a balance
traditional currency does this by physically possessing things
you can’t “own” data; it’s fungible i.e. it can be copied trivially. If I copy my wallet onto your computer, who owns it?
digital currency gets around this with a ledger
that’s the detailed log of transactions
the transactions in the log are signed with cryptographic keys, the validity of the signature can be verified with the corresponding public keys. The owner of the private key (which never leaves your PC) is the owner of that wallet and is the only one who can generate the signature - the wallet has a 1:1 mapping to the public and private keys
(This is also why you don’t need accounts, your PC generates a random Private key, generates the corresponding Public key and that’s your wallet. Everyone accepts that it is your wallet because you have its private key)
This is just the very basic system that is traceable and there are newer schemes that are better.
Actually, you can think of all crypto as a log of transactions plus the infrastructure to create, manage, and provide information about those transactions. It is public, but the “accounts” are basically just blobs of numbers, so they can be hard to trace, depending on the platform.
My understanding is that even if that is the case purchases are still not easily trackable/traceable if that is your concern. I myself don’t know specifically why though.
It is, but there is little or no detail of who exactly it was that made the transaction. Some cryptocurrencies are better than others about keeping that information hidden.
Transactions should be autonomous push transactions, which crypto does. To send money with crypto, you actually send it, as opposed to a merchant pulling money like with credit cards. The additional part is crypto is autonomous. No card company acting as arbiter of all transactions
In that way crypto is objectively a superior method of transaction
Where it fails is throughput, use as a speculative investment, and lack of stable backing. Throughput can be solved, but I don’t have a solution for the other two. Bitcoin was honestly great to use for transactions (where you could) until the value exploded. Ethereum is okay, but not great, even with other transaction technologies stacked on top
The US recently passed legislation regarding stablecoins. If I understand correctly, they now need to be backed 1:1 by the US dollar or a “low-risk asset”. The latter seems dubious to me, but I’m curious to see what will come of 1:1 dollar pegged coins if the US government is throwing its weight around to support the concept…
I can’t believe I’m seriously entertaining the idea of using cryptocurrency, but here we are in 2025… -.-
Or, use one of these, and make your own wholly NSFW version of itch.io
You could try to tie it to a crypto, but uh, if you don’t want to just be paying creators directly in WhateverCoin, you basically now have to run a foreign currency exchange operation.
Theres a good deal of cost and risk to that, and… the alternative use of crypto would imply you are actually regularly holding a large crypto balance as an operating budget, which can be rather bad, as even the least bullshit of cryptocoins are way, way more volatile than almost any real currency.
…
Also, Nutaku still exists, though they’ve seemingly also completely axxed all paid games that actually have explicit sex in them.
Free ones are still there, but yeah.
Nutaku is in the position of being known for mostly adult android games… they could switch to an adult payment processor, and also expand to other platforms.
Itch io is… in arguably a less good position, as they sell / distribute adult and non adult games, so they basically have to pick one or the other.
I feel the same way. Monero is the best contender for that philosophy, and governments/corporations hate it because they know it’s a threat to their financial chokehold. Whoever controlls the money controlls the power, so if the money is decentralized and private, no entity can ever hold that power over everyone
I don’t have any issues with crypto, but it’s more so the people who promote it. They tend to be techno-billionaires Who want to make something needlessly complicated and expensive or else creating a currency that has no real value. The other issue is that it’s computationally expensive and not as good for the environment as other payment methods.
I myself, am a proponent of cbdc, but the government has outlawed any creation of a consumer cbdc
Yeah, I know leftists hate crypto but this shit legit is making me want some.
I know crypto sucks in a lot of functional ways but those issues can probably be sorted out eventually. I don’t want to let puritanical authoritarian dipshits dictate what I can buy with my fucking money, or even see if they start also fuck with hosting of free content as well.
I don’t even buy porn games, doesn’t matter. Its the principle of the thing. And this shit can easily get worse if we let them.
Crypto without capitalists is pretty cool
Yeah, crypto as an “investment asset” is a load of steaming hot shit that feeds environmental collapse.
Trustable decentralised finance? That’s rad as hell.
I mean not as rad as mutual aid and battering but why let perfection be the enemy of the good?
It can help with mutual aid. People with savings can more easily strike, and support others who are striking. Activists shouldn’t have their accounts frozen, and donating to them should be anonymous.
Everything improves when you get rid of capitalism.
Crypto without capitalism would still be dictated by market economy though and a lot of anti-capitalists are anti-currency or anti-market. Not just anti-private-property anti-absentee-ownership.
But yes, I agree. A mutualist (or a “Libertarian” Market Socialist economy) would be pretty cool.
Yeah which is basically the idea of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative
Lmao
Here’s the issue: How do you put money into crypto or take it out? A payment processor is how.
Crypto mostly just reinvents the same things. Its also usually not actually anonymous, as has been proved many times.
Some cryptocoins explicitly address privacy and anonymity issues, for example Monero (XMR).
And not even truly de-centralized, as most services that support it actually do it through a few centralized third parties instead of implementing it directly.
Also, in the US at least, every single transaction needs to be reported on your tax return. There are tools to help you do this, but goddamn! imagine compiling all of that each year if you used it regularly. I used it at one point and it was such a pain in the ass come tax season, that I just sold all my crypto the following year and never touched it again.
I traded it in person when I was just testing it out and didn’t want any accounts. In theory if things get even more cyberpunk, we could use dead drops.
Good luck paying on Steam using dead drops.
Look, supporting game creators is really important to me.
I take money in and out via bank transfers with my exchange company.
You just need to know where to look for shady people in alleyways where you can buy them with cash. It’s harder to find shady porn artists in alleyways.
Crypto also single-handedly invented ransomware. Like without Crypto, random Russian and North Korean hackers aren’t financially incentivized to target towns, hospitals, small businesses etc. There are legitimate payment processors other than just Visa.
I mean, ransomware as a thing has been around since the 90s. Crypto may have been the main factor in its skyrocketing prevalence, but it didnt “single-handedly invent” or facilitate the idea of ransomware.
Never thought about it before y’all’s discussion, but how did they take payment before crypto? Gift cards like the phone scammers?
They didn’t, ransomware pre-bitcoin was basically just regular scams. Not even close to comparable to what goes on today.
I shit you not, literally mailing money to a PO Box in Panama.
That’s a nominally correct answer at best, like the scale of ransomeware then required the target to be in physical reach so you can physically hand off cash or equivalents. North Korea couldn’t extract money from Americans so they had no incentive to do so.
Lol at the crypto shills hiding behind that though. “it always existed so it’s ok” get out of here
I’ll take nominally correct. I’ll also take “I can’t handle being corrected so I insult people to feel better” for $200, Alex.
My main point was that ransomware is massively facilitated by crypto, but you’re arguing semantics to run interference from addressing that point.
Here’s a simple yes/no question. If crypto disappeared overnight, would the ransomware industry generate even 1% of the net income it makes now?
I genuinely do not understand why my comment has made you feel the need to repeatedly insult me. You seem to agree with my point but then continuously shit on me for seeking a state of correctness in lieu of the inaccurate hyperbole of your op.
First I don’t know what insults you’re talking about, unless just the act of disagreeing with you is insulting.
Second, I used one expression to make a point, which was that crypto is foundational to the existence of ransomware, specifically on the massive scale it exists today. And then in every subsequent comment I have explained that said point is my main argument. And yet you keep ignoring that point and instead hyper-fixate on some combination of semantic pedantry and perceived victimhood.
deleted by creator
The problem is not so much “paying for stuff without payment processors”. On an individual level, that can fairly easily be achieved.
The problem is the chilling effect that the puritanical positions of these payment processors have on the creation of art. What are you going to do with your crypto if the game or art you wanted to buy gets self-censored for “compliance” or simply isn’t created anymore?
That’s already happening for the sake of gaining access to console markets. I find it depressing TBH. However, I think its arguably worth trying to at least put a dent into the issue in any way possible.
Agreed on both counts, but I’m not very hopeful.
The older I get, the more puritan the world seems to get, like we’re regressing.
Personally, I hate crypto, but I like the idea of crypto. Like decentralized currency, useable anywhere by anyone, independent of locale/government, is an awesome ideal. What drives me away from it is the fact that it’s not reliable (it fluctuates all over the place, and there’s no guarantee what you have one day will be there tomorrow), it eats more power than a country just to track transactions, there’s tons of different ones, and it’s generally used for scams and illicit purchases. Which I suppose is part of its reason it be, but no legit storefront I use takes it… probably for the first reason.
It also doesn’t help that it’s got a bad rap from all the crazy crypto-bro/fly-by-night scams and NFT stuff.
One is an inevitable consequence of the other.
The problem has been solved to some extent, at least. Unregulated casinos and Polymarket are entirely banned in the US, but citizens here regularly bypass it with VPNs and transferring stablecoin. In the case of obscene games, it’s not illegal (yet at least) so the only thing needed would be the infrastructure for accepting and distributing crypto payments.
None of it is without flaws, but many small websites managed to make it work without issues. The main issue would probably be convincing enough people to move to crypto to create a stable user base. I’d imagine some would be “driven” enough to jump through all these hoops though. Personally I’d like to see a platform that is free of this anti-democratic fuckery going on.
Payment processors should have no authority whatsoever to monitor or police the transactions they facilitate. This would be true even if these two companies weren’t an illegal trust. Between the two of them, they effectively have a global monopoly on digital commerce.
I fully admit in advance I know very little about crypto, so please someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Isn’t part of crypto a detailed log of transactions?
Monero obfuscates transactions. Parties and amount are private.
It depends on the project. Many cryptocurrencies (Like Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin) have a public ledger. So every transaction (participants + amount) is visible.
Other Projects (where Monero is the most well known) use special cryptographic systems to hide all that. So the only thing which can be observed by 3th parties is that some transaction was successful somewhere. There are also projects which are private but prioritize efficiency (all the cryptographic hiding has a notable computation-cost) by sacrificing hidden amount or hidden participants.
Crypts currencies like Monero even hide that
Yes.
But also, how can you make digital payment work without one? Not a rhetorical question by the way, legitimately don’t know. llmost seems impossible.
My thought process:
(This is also why you don’t need accounts, your PC generates a random Private key, generates the corresponding Public key and that’s your wallet. Everyone accepts that it is your wallet because you have its private key)
This is just the very basic system that is traceable and there are newer schemes that are better.
Edit:
RingCT
Stealth Addresses
ring signatures
Transactions over Tor/I2P
Dandelion++
Actually, you can think of all crypto as a log of transactions plus the infrastructure to create, manage, and provide information about those transactions. It is public, but the “accounts” are basically just blobs of numbers, so they can be hard to trace, depending on the platform.
My understanding is that even if that is the case purchases are still not easily trackable/traceable if that is your concern. I myself don’t know specifically why though.
Encrypting That is the difference between Zcash and original Bitcoin.
Arguably it’s all crypto is physically speaking. A log that details this money it’s referencing.
It is, but there is little or no detail of who exactly it was that made the transaction. Some cryptocurrencies are better than others about keeping that information hidden.
Transactions should be autonomous push transactions, which crypto does. To send money with crypto, you actually send it, as opposed to a merchant pulling money like with credit cards. The additional part is crypto is autonomous. No card company acting as arbiter of all transactions
In that way crypto is objectively a superior method of transaction
Where it fails is throughput, use as a speculative investment, and lack of stable backing. Throughput can be solved, but I don’t have a solution for the other two. Bitcoin was honestly great to use for transactions (where you could) until the value exploded. Ethereum is okay, but not great, even with other transaction technologies stacked on top
The US recently passed legislation regarding stablecoins. If I understand correctly, they now need to be backed 1:1 by the US dollar or a “low-risk asset”. The latter seems dubious to me, but I’m curious to see what will come of 1:1 dollar pegged coins if the US government is throwing its weight around to support the concept…
I can’t believe I’m seriously entertaining the idea of using cryptocurrency, but here we are in 2025… -.-
2: It’s gradually stabilizing, with the % change of bubbles/crashes getting smaller over time.
3: In the sense that gold is backed by its usability for jewelry, bitcoin is backed by its usability for secure time stamps.
https://www.merchantmaverick.com/adult-payment-processing-merchant-account/
Or, use one of these, and make your own wholly NSFW version of itch.io
You could try to tie it to a crypto, but uh, if you don’t want to just be paying creators directly in WhateverCoin, you basically now have to run a foreign currency exchange operation.
Theres a good deal of cost and risk to that, and… the alternative use of crypto would imply you are actually regularly holding a large crypto balance as an operating budget, which can be rather bad, as even the least bullshit of cryptocoins are way, way more volatile than almost any real currency.
…
Also, Nutaku still exists, though they’ve seemingly also completely axxed all paid games that actually have explicit sex in them.
Free ones are still there, but yeah.
Nutaku is in the position of being known for mostly adult android games… they could switch to an adult payment processor, and also expand to other platforms.
Itch io is… in arguably a less good position, as they sell / distribute adult and non adult games, so they basically have to pick one or the other.
Monero is rad AF
I feel the same way. Monero is the best contender for that philosophy, and governments/corporations hate it because they know it’s a threat to their financial chokehold. Whoever controlls the money controlls the power, so if the money is decentralized and private, no entity can ever hold that power over everyone
Maybe also throw them a curveball by buying 1000 hits of acid on the black market, and feeding it all to Carpenter Ants.
Selling bitcoin requires actually bribing miners to commit the sale.
They call it “paying gas” … but it is a bribe. How is a bribe in an unregulated market better ?
That sounds more like paying them rent. Bribes pertain to paying an authority to do something illegal.
Its parasitic behavior and bad. Submitting to it is a lesser evil compared to letting puritanical authoritarians dictate and censor however IMO.
One of the main benefits of difficulty adjustment is that it minimizes profits.
I don’t see why people hate on crypto. It’s an amazing technology, fully decentralized, with mathematical proof that no one can cheat or abuse it.
I don’t have any issues with crypto, but it’s more so the people who promote it. They tend to be techno-billionaires Who want to make something needlessly complicated and expensive or else creating a currency that has no real value. The other issue is that it’s computationally expensive and not as good for the environment as other payment methods.
I myself, am a proponent of cbdc, but the government has outlawed any creation of a consumer cbdc
Crypto 100% can be abused.
Fiat currencies can be abused too.
And I know, I know, crypto is used for scams, but does that make it any less valuable for you? I assume you don’t scam people.
Edit: also wdym by “abused”?
I meant scams, rent seeking behavior by minors and payment processors, using bitcoin as an investment rather than for its utility as a currency.
Then there is the environmental issue from back when all the mining was done and what it did to GPU prices.
Minors got too much power, which is why they aren’t releasing the Epstein files.
Oh, miners is what you meant.