I’ve only had time to listen to the first 10ish minutes. I can follow his reasoning but I just don’t buy it. If payment options outside normal channels were so important why did they wait almost a decade? The framing of the issue with PayPal feels disingenuous too because there is/was a lot of crowd funding fraud. PayPal asked legitimate questions about the nature of the campaign and then quickly unlocked the account.
It also feels disingenuous because it’s not like Proton is going to ignore the laws. If a government legally asks for information they will turn it over. The same is true for money. So if Proton is in a position where banks are shutting down payments Proton has bigger problems. In fact, creating a wallet is going to cause more headaches for all Proton users. It already has a reputation as being used by bad actors and that belief* is being reinforced by having a built* in bitcoin wallet.
So if Proton is in a position where banks are shutting down payments Proton has bigger problems.
In a perfect world you would be right.
But it would not be the first time banks or credit card shut down payments for legal businness because they were forced into doing that by social or political pressure.
It would be simple for a government to say something like “you do businnes with Proton, you can no more operate in this country” to a bank or a credit card company.
If payment options outside normal channels were so important why did they wait almost a decade?
He stated that they planned Proton Wallet a long time ago. Also I think it’s because of the audit problems they feared to have, since Bitcoin was for a long time synonymous with crime. That changed just a few years ago (for context 49:00).
I would considered it “disingenuous” if they stated that PayPay did it in bad faith. He just stated that, at the time, their only money flow was blocked and they didn’t want such a situation again. I interpreted that he didn’t want to be dependent on only state controlled financial institutions and wanted to make it easier for peoples to use something more financialy decentralized and locally independent.
I still recomend you listen through the whole thing, since they touch on other things too.
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I’ve only had time to listen to the first 10ish minutes. I can follow his reasoning but I just don’t buy it. If payment options outside normal channels were so important why did they wait almost a decade? The framing of the issue with PayPal feels disingenuous too because there is/was a lot of crowd funding fraud. PayPal asked legitimate questions about the nature of the campaign and then quickly unlocked the account.
It also feels disingenuous because it’s not like Proton is going to ignore the laws. If a government legally asks for information they will turn it over. The same is true for money. So if Proton is in a position where banks are shutting down payments Proton has bigger problems. In fact, creating a wallet is going to cause more headaches for all Proton users. It already has a reputation as being used by bad actors and that belief* is being reinforced by having a built* in bitcoin wallet.
In a perfect world you would be right.
But it would not be the first time banks or credit card shut down payments for legal businness because they were forced into doing that by social or political pressure.
It would be simple for a government to say something like “you do businnes with Proton, you can no more operate in this country” to a bank or a credit card company.
He stated that they planned Proton Wallet a long time ago. Also I think it’s because of the audit problems they feared to have, since Bitcoin was for a long time synonymous with crime. That changed just a few years ago (for context 49:00).
I would considered it “disingenuous” if they stated that PayPay did it in bad faith. He just stated that, at the time, their only money flow was blocked and they didn’t want such a situation again. I interpreted that he didn’t want to be dependent on only state controlled financial institutions and wanted to make it easier for peoples to use something more financialy decentralized and locally independent.
I still recomend you listen through the whole thing, since they touch on other things too.