Cryptocurrency reeks of desperation and willful ignorance. At its best, it’s a way to pretend you’re not gambling by disguising it with codewords.
74 Likes
I’m not trying to defend anything in particular. If you’ll look previously I said:
AKA- I’ve never really seen the attraction and wouldn’t buy one myself and do not support the high energy Ethereum model, however I do think it’s important to weigh up all the pros and cons before launching this “this is evil” I’ll bouycott this business, where as something else (like selling shirts, mugs,prints whatever) “is good” and I’ll support it. Things are not always as simple as people think when they look a bit deeper and sometimes you can promote an equally bad or worse environmental decision because of it if you’re not careful. And yes just about everything we do does have an impact, so it is good to find out these things and adjust opinions accordingly (like I did today when told about the high energy costs of Ethereum NFTs. Not having bothered with them from a buyer or seller, I knew what they were, but didn’t know the power requirements for it and thought it was a lot more frivorlous than that. I weigh up and adjust my opinion on things frequently as information becomes available.)
What I am saying, is actually not just that “everything needs energy” it is that people should look wholistically before making a judgement call and pick your battles. You are of the opinion that shirt sales are better than NFT’s from an environmental point of view. However, if the figure that Jason stated is correct, that’s unlikely to be true from either an energy or a total environmental impact, therefore you can still say that you don’t like that energy is required to generate an NFT, but not that it’s the worst option from a purely energy use point of view (AGAIN I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE ETHEREUM VERSION HERE. IT’S OBVIOUS THAT IS VERY WASTEFUL).
I know you don’t know me, but I know a fair bit about certain areas of conservation and pollution impacts. It’s something I care a lot about and have invested a lot of time and effort into over the years. What is very clear is that our carbon emissions are very bad, reliance on fossil fuels is not only damaging but non-sustainable and we do need to reduce it (which can be done via sustainable renewables and we really should be lobbying for that), however they’re not the only thing that we need to watch. It’s just about being mindful and getting the whole picture rather than tearing one thing to shreds while ignoring other problems that are arguably just as pressing to address.
10 Likes
I want to ask a different but related question.
If COG were to announce that we were going to auction one-off physical prints of the cover art to the games, what would you think about that?
(For now, please focus on this question, and don’t jump in to the thread to bash Ethereum NFTs, which everyone agrees are bad.)
7 Likes
For real money (Dollars, Euro etc)? Of course, that’d be nice. As said, setting up a redbubble store or similar would be nifty as well (like, heck, a CoG/HG/HC logo sweater would be pretty neat) as long as it’s actual money used.
Also, maybe make it easier for artists to promote their ko-fi/patreon etc?
edit: Additional Idea on how to support the artists and writers that did work for CoG:
Make an overview of all authors/artists on the page, with a short bio and a link to their social media (if they OK that) so people can support them directly via patreon/commissions/etc.
62 Likes
If all is legal, all terms are controlled by the administration, all rights are respected, and the volume of scarcity and the precise number of copies allowed to being sold and purchased with the accreditations necessary for future repurchases, yes.
But that is not normally the case with Nfts
The reason why they are so used to schemes. And don’t let me enter in the whole we only accept cryptocurrency that is a giveaway that is something sleazy morality and probably naughty tax wise.
5 Likes
That’s true if you are saying “If this is happening then I will leave.” But if you are saying “I am leaving because this was even suggested” then you provide no impetus to listen. You’re gone whether the NFTs happen or not (unless you’re just posturing or being overly dramatic, which isn’t really desirable right now or really ever) in which case by continuing along this line, the company loses nothing it hasn’t already lost in your regard.
As for me, I don’t know a ton about the issue beyond the general buzz. I love the idea of artists getting more pay, but I also agree that this feels like an odd position for a company that is progressive in so many other ways. Probably best to wait until the plans got more solidified before seeing if it was supportable or not. Right now this is just a nebulous future prospect and I’d rather folks not treat it as more than that.
14 Likes
I literally made an account to reply to this, because I like to play CoG games but this is ridiculous.
Jason, not only are all cryptocurrencies wasteful eventually, because of how their value is maintained (artificially, mind you, as it is not linked to any actual real life value) but also they’d put you and anyone using CoG into a very precarious position in legal terms.
Firstly, let’s start with how crypto is made valuable. The way any crypto coin is “mined” is by making a computer do a puzzle. At first they’re simple and don’t require much power to process. That way you flood the market with a large amount of coins in the initial stage. However, if you just kept doing that, there wouldn’t be sacristy and the value would be that of a Chuck-E-Cheese prize ticket. In order to inflate the value, the puzzles get more and more difficult. Once people jump onto the currency and more people mine it, the difficulty of the puzzle starts increasing faster and faster and that’s how you get the ridiculously bloated and wasteful crypto farms and people buying out consumer electronics to overclock and destroy them in pursuit of crypto.
As for the legal aspect, crypto is a ridiculously easy venue for money laundering and I say this as someone who worked in AML (sadly I can’t disclose most details of that employment as that is illegal, what I can say is I have worked in CitiBank’s AML division and while crypto wasn’t a thing then, art galleries were).
Many people are aware art galleries are a great way to launder money. You hot $2mil in human trafficking money. How do you make it legal? Well you grab an artist, get them to paint something, get your art gallery friend to value the something at $2mil, add the $2mil to your personal assets, then donate it to the gallery, write the $2mil off your taxes and bam, that’s where your $2mil is now legal.
NFTs make it even easier, because the value is so vague and you don’t need to employ any accomplices, you do the same thing with your own website you can put together from a wix template and you made your blood money legal.
And banks are waking up to this. Even if you don’t have any form of income that comes from horrible sources it can end up very bad for people who diversify into crypto. With how difficult for people like sex workers, who do no harm to anyone and who’s income is very often entirely legal where they live, it is often impossible to get money just because their income comes from a type of work banks consider “high risk.” You often can’t accept cards and have a hard time finding a bank that will accept your business if you run something as innocuous as a sex shop or even if you do NSFW art.
And crypto is hard linked with the deep web. People use crypto to buy things illegally and banks are aware of this. Many countries have started, and some already managed, to ban crypto altogether. I don’t think you realize that just by associating with someone doing crypto and NFTs, people using CoG may find themselves in a position where they can no longer get ANY form of income, because PayPal, their payment processor or their bank will drop them simply because they make games in your engine, which will be linked to NFTs if you decide to get them involved.
This will not happen suddenly, it will not happen all at once, but where crypto stands right now it is very likely to happen, because unlike sex work where you can point to parts of the industry that are actually harmful but many other are safe and should not be demonized, all of crypto is based on a very shaky, get rich quick, pyramid scheme-esque ground that destroys the environment by design.
Please rethink this.
103 Likes
I would like that. It would even be better if we could bis t-shirts or such things with the Logo or the game art If the artist gets a part of the money.
7 Likes
Sure. I’m not sure why you’d need to make them one-off, though. You can also consider hoodies or shirts. In full honesty, I’m not sure I’d buy it, because I live in Europe and shipping costs would be murder, but if you had a more local distributor there’s some really nice cover art (the Jolly Good cover art comes to mind).
EDIT: @Kaelyn has a good idea. If you go to clothes, you can put in a small-type web address for CoG below the image, and the game title in bigger type above the image.
EDIT2: You might not even have to stick to already-existing art, though admittedly at that point it starts involving the details of the contract you have with authors (which, obviously, I’m not privy to or legally-knowledgeable enough to comment on even if I were). But, providing shipping weren’t dreadful, I wouldn’t mind for example a hoodie with good art of the four girls from Wayhaven Chronicles or a badass-posed Melaxu from Pon Para. You’d have to commission that art, which would make the buy-in more expensive or possibly then split the income three-ways (author, artist, CoG).
@Daniel_Jakubowski China banned cryptos. Even if I WERE considering cryptos (which, lol), a currency (and I use the term loosely) not being accepted by the world’s second largest economy would immediately make me jump off that bandwagon, investment-wise.
@idonotlikeusernames Though you’re not wrong, this isn’t exactly the same situation. The purpose of a currency is to be USED - you either spend it, or you invest it (even if “investing” is reduced to a meagre interest in the bank). If you can’t use something that’s supposed to be currency in anything related to the world’s second largest economy, that something is, in fact, worth less.
People not being able to freely be gay in China-controlled territories doesn’t make gay people in other places more vulnerable (not that they AREN’T vulnerable, it’s just that it has nothing to do with whatever China does). If you can’t spend something on any transaction involving China, that makes that “currency” be worth less - even more so, because since large businesses will not be able to use any crypto that you give them to do business with Chinese companies, any crypto that you might pay them with is also less valuable to them. A global economy means it all cascades.
@jasonstevanhill I’m gonna chime in here just to say that having an NFT of something proves absolutely nothing, other than that you handed money to whoever made the NFT (not the art). There’s already cases of people taking NFTs of art they had no connection with (i.e., they were neither the artist nor the commissioner). Like, I can have an NFT made of the Jolly Good cover art, and then you, the artist, or the author can… do nothing about it. Not that it matters much, because me having an NFT of the Jolly Good cover art doesn’t prevent you from doing absolutely whatsoever with the Jolly Good cover art.
On the “future legislation” side of things, I have a vague recollection that there were talks in either the US Senate or Congress (I get the two mixed up all the time, not that it makes much of a difference) about legislating crypto, namely about forcing crypto holders and crypto handlers to be able to be identifiable, in case they’re the target of investigations (right now, your crypto wallet is a long alphanumerical sequence - the intended legislation would require that that sequence would be traceable to the individual in question). Considering what the majority of crypto transactions are FOR, that’s going to absolutely murder it if it passes. I’ve been out of the loop for a long while, so I don’t know what is the current status of that, but you might want to take a look at how it’s going (or possibly even wait until the thing either passes or dies) if you intend to dip your toe into this kind of stuff.
25 Likes
While what Uncle Winnie the Xi and his clique ban or promote is not usually a good indicator to do or abstain from something, being gay comes to mind, in this case I suppose we could chalk it up to the adage that even a broken clock is right twice per day.
In fact I hope the EU and US will soon start regulating, limiting or outright banning some crypto’s, Ethereum immediately springs to mind there, soon too because it is ridiculous when a heavily subsidised space consuming windmill park in this already postage stamp sized country gets devoted to two groundwater poisoning data centers and a number of crypto farms as “industrial use” instead of powering households in the midst of an energy crisis. 
4 Likes
I was actually unfamiliar with Redbubble, but it does seem like an interesting solution. The problem with that is, as always, how to compensate the artists. I could offer a one-time up-front payment to the commercial use of the art—but then someone loses out on that deal—or I could set up a royalty system that means I would have to manage royalty accounting on those sales. And, to be perfectly honest, there’s not a lot of margin there to justify managing royalties. But maybe artists would be amenable to another one-time payment for art they’re well and done with?
As for an artist gallery on our page, I’ve been trying to get an author gallery made for ten years. I’m sure we could make an artist gallery on the same timetable.
I don’t understand your claim that this is not normally the case with NFTs. In my understanding, that’s the whole point of an NFT: that there is a claim of authority both in the production and the ownership of the NFT. And, unlike with art forgeries, anyone looking at the ledger would be able to tell if the NFT was authentic or not.
I’m also not sure what you mean here. We would be paying taxes on any money we made via these sales, and I imagine the artists would be paying their taxes as well. If you mean other people aren’t paying their taxes, well, we don’t have control over whether they’re paying their fiat taxes either, so I don’t see how the concern holds up.
I disagree. Any currency’s value is based in its ability to be accepted by another party. This goes from USD to gold to crypto. None of those currencies can, on their own, put a roof over your head or feed you. Admittedly, you can burn USD for warmth, but that’s about the only intrinsic value to any of them; all other “value” is artificial/metaphorical.
You’re talking about Proof-of-Work systems. As I said in my initial post, I’m talking about XRP, which is not a PoW system. There is no mining involved with XRP, which is a large part of the reason the energy costs are so low. So please read what I say before you respond with an off-the-cuff lecture.
All currencies are susceptible to money laundering. As evidenced by the Paradise Papers, the Panama Papers, and now the Pandora Papers, money laundering and tax evasion has existed throughout human history, and is happening right now with or without the use of crypto.
More to the point, are you accusing us of money laundering? Because if not, I don’t see the point of your digression. I mean, I suppose that someone could buy in an buy our NFTs, but how much are these NFTs really going to go for? $250? You’re going to have to buy a lot of NFTs at $250 to launder any money.
I don’t understand your point. If they’re already high-risk, how does collecting royalties from us increase their risk?
China and Turkey are the main players here. I don’t really care what China and Turkey do with regard to crypto.
I think that’s a huge leap.
To begin, we have one author from Turkey and none from China. You’re saying that Turkey is going to hunt down this author will be banned from using Paypal, because we sell NFTs? I think that’s an absurd claim.
I disagree. I mean, if the SEC vs Ripple case goes sideways, then maybe you’d be right. But from everything I’ve seen, there’s going to be a clarity-giving resolution to crypto from the lawsuit.
(Mind you, we wouldn’t do XRPL NFTs until after the case was resolved, for this and a number of other related reasons.)
I don’t disagree that some, if not most, cryptos could be described that way. However, I do not believe that all of them are made that way, and I don’t support the ones that are. I think you keep conflating Bitcoin and meme coins with other currencies that are solving real-world problems.
A one-off print is easiest to compare to an NFT.
For example, if the objection to the use of XRPL NFTs is one of energy consumption, then I would posit that producing a single print of an image and shipping it to someone would consume a lot more energy that minting an NFT and transferring it to the new owner.
Think about it. Someone has to drive to a forest, cut down a tree, transport a log to a mill, produce the paper, ship the paper to the printing factory, run the machine to print the image. Best case scenario, the printer ships the print directly to the recipient. How much energy is that going to take? I think it’d take up a lot more than 0.00126 gallons of gasoline. (I doubled the energy cost because minting it would be one transaction and transferring/selling it would be a second one.)
Even if we were going to do a limited run of, say, 100 prints and/or 100 NFTs, I think the math works out pretty much the same: the energy cost is infinitesimally lower.
So, if the energy cost is the first major objection to the idea of minting XRPL NFTs, I feel as though I’ve pretty clearly settled those concerns.
The second argument that I hear is that NFTs are a ponzi scheme. That depends on how this community feels about the art from our games. If you’re buying our NFTs and…what? I don’t know. We’d mint one or a limited number of NFTs of the box art of our games. You’d be able to say that you own that NFT. It’s not that different from being able to say you own a limited reprint of a painting. It may go up in value, its value may go to zero. But you if you like the art, what does its market value matter?
I’ve personally spent some money on some antique Eugene Carrière lithographs. I could potentially resell them, but I wouldn’t make any money on the deal; in fact I’d probably lose money. But I enjoy the prints, I enjoy the knowledge that I have them, even when I’m not directly admiring them. If that’s your bag, maybe you’ll like one of our NFTs. If that’s not your bag, I don’t see how it affects you.
The third argument I hear here is that cryptos are criminal. Cash has been used by criminals for hundreds of years to conduct illegal transactions. Clutching pearls and saying cryptos are so much worse is fear-mongering. Look at the recent Colonial pipeline hack, where the FBI was able to recover most of the bitcoin ransom. These transactions are not invisible in the way cash transactions are, so there’s actually more transparency. Lastly, returning again to the SEC vs Ripple case, if things are settled in the right way, the question of regulation will be settled, and that will put the whole asset class on solid footing.
I would note that there’s no reason we couldn’t do a Redbubble store and NFT auctions.
But besides the environmental impact of producing physical goods and shipping them internationally, in the case of limited run prints specifically, artists get to experience no upside to the appreciation in value of their work. If person X buys a limited run print for $100, and sells if for $1000 the next year, they get to keep all that money. But with an NFT, the smartcontract governing the NFT could reserve some of the revenue for the artist, allowing them to participate in that appreciation.
I’d like to see a proportionate carbon tax on cryptos. I think that would solve a lot of problems.
11 Likes
This is genuinely how strongly people feel about NFTs, which is what I was trying to warn for in my earlier post. Consider the attention this thread has already gained overnight - I’m no PR expert, but I don’t think dismissing people’s concerns will have the desired effect.
Although this is hypothetical, I know I am not the only person who will from now on always be wondering when and if it will become reality. There is a significant playerbase centered around other social media platforms who will not join this forum to debate anything. As soon as the link to this thread is passed around Twitter/Tumblr enough times, those people will just move on.
I’ve been playing CoG games since 2011, and I’d like CoG to do well, but I’m not confident any argument against crypto will win out over FOMO and the allure of what looks like free, easy money. People will know the most effective response is to take their business elsewhere, and if that happens on a large scale I’m concerned it will hurt the authors that make CoG what it is.
You know, in addition to any other drawbacks to NFTs, about which @Daniel_Jakubowski knows more than me. I really appreciate that writeup.
@jasonstevanhill I hope this doesn’t come across as petty, because that’s genuinely not my goal with this statement, but I do want to openly draw attention to the fact that 13 hours later, there’s not a single ‘like’ on your initial post, even though this thread has seen quite a lot of engagement otherwise. What would you say in response to an author who is concerned this stance will tank CoG’s reputation with their target audience?
I wrote this post before yours went up, but now that I’ve read it, I’d really appreciate hearing where other staff/CoG as a whole stand on crypto. This is concerning.
66 Likes
Honestly, I think trying to argue the details of what exactly CoG producing NFTs would look like in terms of environmental and monetary costs and gains is, in this thread at least, missing the forest for the trees. It might be more helpful to you (and CoG as a company) to look more at the broad strokes here than the individual arguments:
CoG has cultivated a socially conscious audience who is aware of the damage of NFTs as a whole. Seeing the company get into this market is going to cost consumer loyalty and hurt CoG’s reputation among the people most likely to be dedicated users and spenders.
And my own opinion on that is that I don’t think NFT collectors are necessarily going to be interested in filling in that lost income.
On the side of giving more back to the artists, its a commendable goal, but that’s kind of the rub of doing commercial work–agreeing that the other party might end up with profit gains you never see. What kind of reprint allowances did your artists agree to? A RedBubble (or similar) store might be permissable, or it might not be. If you want the artists to get more financial compensation for the work they’ve done, the best thing to do would just be to pay them more at the outset. (Not trying to be glib here, I understand CoG is not made of money and budgets exist for a reason.) I understand that here you’re floating out ideas, not laying out concrete plans, but as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, artists might not be comfortable with their work being minted as NFTs. How to/whether to get more money for everyone out of existing artworks is something that is best sorted out between the involved individuals who are most familiar with what contractual conditions the art was created under.
62 Likes
I saw this thread last night and genuinely thought Jason’s reply was high-concept satire. Never in a million years did I think there would be a crypto fringe within CoG.
So, I don’t know what weight one author’s voice carries here, but please do not take CoG in this direction. Crypto is poison, and I actually like writing for you guys.
Give the artists royalties. Pay them a bonus at X sales. Rob an orphanage and distribute the ill-gotten gains. Do anything but this.
Same. I really hope nothing about this company’s long-term financial health is tied to this stuff because hooo boy.
74 Likes
Honestly, I think the idea of selling physical prints of the cover art of the games or t-shirts or hoodies would be a way better option than NFTs. Honestly, you already have a store where the Interactive Games are bought. It wouldn’t be that large a step from making a second store where artwork or clothing relating to the Choice of Games/Hosted Games/Choice of Romance brand and the games themselves.
It would likely be better to have an online store for merchandise for Choice of Games and sister companies than anything else. Hardcore fans would be far happier purchasing a hoodie with the company logo on it and maybe some cover art on the front or back or side than having something digital.
People tend to like things they can actually hold, from what I’ve seen. It’s physical.
The Interactive Games are a delight because they’re fun to read, and, even in a phone or on the computer, there’s a distinct “book-like” feel to it even if the game is stat-heavy.
If you want to ensure artists hired for the company to design the covers, why not put them on a royalty-based thing like the writer’s are? Why not just tweak the contract where, with each game sold, the writer, the artist, the company, and the platforms involved all benefit?
Combine that with an art store and maybe a merchandise store, on top of the games itself, and you’d far more likely keep all the people you already have and not alienate others who may want to write for the company later down the line because of NFTs.
57 Likes
Please don’t do this, everything I’m seeing looking deeper into NFTs makes me extremely wary. It’s an unethical pyramid scheme designed to be a shady get rich quick scheme. I admire so many authors here and would like to support them but a move like this would make it very difficult to do so in good conscious, seeing as most of the money from those sales would just go to CoG anyway and NFTs are something I want no part of.Nothing I’ve heard about anything to do with crypto had actually been good beyond the vague nebulous promise of making a lot of money. I don’t agree with how that money is made from the get-go nevermind the myriad of other issues that have been brought up in this thread and it’s clear from this thread that many feel similar. The fact that the currency you mentioned is currently being SUED FOR ILLEGAL ACTIVITY is a massive red flag regardless of who wins that lawsuit.
33 Likes
If I were proposing that we mint the NFTs on Ethereum, I think this response would be warranted. I understand that NFTs have a bad rap at the moment. But part of my job is to see beyond the now and look at the future.
If the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit is rightfully resolved, and the promised NFTs capability comes to be on the XRPL, then most if not all of the socially conscious concerns are nullified. In a situation where those concerns are nullified, I don’t see a reason not to make use of such an opportunity.
I’m serious when I say that I haven’t heard a legitimate criticism of my proposal other than “because your community doesn’t want it,” which is a quite legitimate criticism. In fact, I’m positing that an NFT on the XRPL is more ecologically responsible than a physical print or a hoodie.
To you next point, I’m not looking to market this to outside NFT collectors, I’d be looking to market it to our existing consumer base.
As for the commercial rights, in my opinion we do not (generally) have those rights to the art. Most artists would have to license us the right to either make NFTs and/or do a Redbubble store. If artists aren’t comfortable, I can’t force them to license the rights to us.
To begin, I don’t appreciate being called “a crypto fringe.”
One of my other jobs, as you know Peter, is handling the finances of COG. Therefore, I have and I do spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to move money across the globe as quickly and with as little friction and cost as possible. In case you’re unfamiliar, moving money is absurdly difficult, slow, and expensive, both within the US and outside of the US.
It would be irresponsible of me not to try and find better ways to get people paid, and for you to receive more of the money to which they are entitled, wouldn’t you agree?
It pains me that on a regular basis, watching platforms like Steam and Apple converting sales from one currency to USD at inefficient rates, and then for me to turn around and send that USD to authors, artists, etc, causing them to lose another few points. Not to mention that I can only send money during banking hours, and that money only moves on banking days. And don’t forget the way that the USPO has slowed down dramatically in the past three years, and is now officially taking another step down down in delivery times.
In short, if I could find a way to use crypto to send money better—and with comparable or even favorable environmental impact—I 100% would.
That’s an extremely strong statement, and I’d challenge you to back it up, setting aside PoW currencies.
Yes, a lawsuit was filed on the last day of the previous SEC chair’s tenure, and the next day he started working for an Ethereum-oriented hedge fund.
Moreover, if you listen to any of the analysis of the case, the SEC is being roundly embarrassed because their legal arguments are largely untenable.
So, yes, that case raises red flags, but not about Ripple.
The problem here is that we don’t want to hold and warehouse inventory. That’s totally separate from our current business model. Redbubble would work, as would NFTs: in both cases, we’re not involved with shipping, storage, etc.
I hear that, but you can’t hold our games, right? I mean, you can see them in your Steam library or in your omnibus Library screen, but that’s the same way you’d own/hold an NFT.
Anyway, I feel like we’ve about talked this out. COG is not doing anything at the moment, there is not internal agreement to do anything, and no real conversation would begin until the lawsuit was concluded and the functionality implemented.
That said, I’ll put Redbubble on our agenda for our next strategy meeting.
10 Likes
I think that if you do get to send more money to the artists in a environmentally responsible way you should go for it but have a reminder to the person buying the product that there using NFT then it would be up to the person buying the product whether they want to use NFTs or not
6 Likes
With all due respect it needs far more regulation or outright bans than that because it is also mostly a pyramid scheme to trickle wealth upwards, as others have already explained.
Proportionate carbon tax with actual enforcement with teeth (which many of our Western governments have a significant problem with to start). at best addresses a portion of the industrial concerns. But the industry produces far more pollution than just carbon and it would do nothing for consumer protection.
It is also increasingly indefensible simply on account of the looming energy crisis over here and if the government has to start to “triage” energy, like in the 1970’s, then data centers and crypto would be the first ones I would support stopping.
Although I suspect our neoliberal government has very different priorities.
It’s still less than Crypto because (international) shipping at least serves useful functions and is or will be subject to ever more stringent and hopefully better enforced regulation in the future, whereas crypto is just incredibly wasteful garbage. But, yes, International shipping can be wasteful too, not arguing against that.
If at the beginning a physical items store is limited to shipping to the US, Canada and maybe Mexico, I understand and I would in fact hope that a store like that would use local manufacturers and distributors instead of developing countries slave labour.
Now if that means EU expansion with an EU based manufacturer and distributor will not be in the cards for a great many years or ever I can understand that too.
I’m not sure I agree with that statement. Provided you don’t use third world labour and go for local manufacture and production then orders will use already existing infrastructure, whereas crypto, even more energy efficient crypto is uniformly useless except to launder money and dodge taxes for the (ultra) wealthy, as I see every day.
If the transport and manufacturing sector’s environmental impact is the overriding concern there may still be better ways to sell various digital extra’s, as also already stated here before.
11 Likes
OK I didn’t catch that bit about you considering XRP, I’m sorry. However if I had caught it, I’d have been even more concerned, as XRP is actually a lot worse than bitcoin (it is environmentally friendly, but that’s about it).
First, however, I think I didn’t explain this clearly but here’s basically why any crypto using blockchain is on shaky legal ground:
It’s insanely easy to use it to launder money. Especially if it works concurrently with an NFT.
Normally how you launder money is you buy something with vague value, like a painting, then get a critic to re-evaluate your purchase to the value you want to launder, then sell that painting to a shell company or gallery that is in reality your own, for the dirty money, boom, your money is legal now.
Blockchain makes crypto untraceable to any specific person. You can have it in your crypto wallet, but you cannot track where it came from. It’s even less traceable than cash, which has serial numbers at least. You cannot tell where each crypto coin originated. And all NFTs require you to use crypto.
With an NFT you do not need any third parties. You have $200k of dirty money, from drugs, human trafficking, whatever. You make two NFT wallets. Only one of them is officially yours. You put the dirty money in the secret wallet. You make an NFT. You sell that NFT to yourself to transfer money between the wallets. You tell the IRS the NFT was bought by an anonymous buyer. You now laundered your money at no cost or even much hassle.
I can tell you banks are already looking at NFTs and crypto and the only way they’re doing it is as a red flag. Regular currency has regular uses and it can be laundered but it’s not, in itself, a method of laundering. The only thing banks are looking at NFTs and crypto as is a method of laundering money. There are some things that, if a bank notices you do a lot, initiates a freeze on your account - multiple small transactions just under a certain limit, using Western Union transfers consistently and, now, crypto.
You can of course unfreeze those assets by producing documentation and presenting it to your bank. But imagine you’re a small indie dev making a CoG game and you rely on the income you get from it. And then suddenly all of it gets frozen and it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to get your account released. Not just the income from NFTs, everything on your account. This might not look like a big threat to you, because I assume you’re comfortable enough financially to be scared by this and a delay of a month or two would be annoying but not life-altering. For someone else, especially the many queer and disabled people using your engine to write their games, it could mean no more medication. It could be life-threatening.
As for XRP, that’s actually even worse as far as payouts work, because unlike mining cryptocurrencies that fluctuate based on what Elon Musk tweets, XRP is issued by a bunch of companies. Yes, it is environmentally less damaging, yes, it doesn’t require proof of work. Instead, it’s value is predetermined by the companies that issued it and it can be only lowered, as they issue more tokens, since that would inflate it’s value, just like printing currency does to traditional money. So all you need is the company issuing being in need of a tax write-off and all the tokens you have in your wallet that you’ve yet to redeem, because you live in the ass end of Poland and the only way to redeem them is to drive to Warsaw where there are like 5 crypto conversion booths, is now worth a fraction of it’s original value. Because if you try to do it another way, your paper trail for the income will become too suspicious to present in your bank. Because you’re just an indie game dev who wants to share their art, not learn local financial law to even get paid.
Moreover, as XRP is advertising itself as “Western Union” but faster and cheaper, that makes it even more risky to consumer banks and will very likely be flagged even faster than bitcoin or other mined currencies. I don’t have the patience to explain why money transfer services can get your account flagged in banks, but to keep it short, companies like Western Union have very little due diligence so the banks assume if your income comes from there only, especially if it comes with multiple small transfers overtime, it’s sus. Just like if you were to put in small amounts of cash into your account regularly, the bank will assume it can come from prostitution or drug selling and freeze your account unless you prove to them it doesn’t. Also if they decide you don’t have enough proof, you never get your money. I’m not saying that’s a good approach, I’m just saying that’s how AML often works.
And, as you yourself mentioned, the SEC is already suing Ripple. The currency is already high risk, it’s being sued by the United States government specifically because of it’s use in what the SEC is securities fraud. The currency already is high risk at this moment. Granted, it’s something actually harmful to people, as it’s being used to avoid registering income and avoid taxation, so it might actually come out on top but that’s a whole other rant. What is important is these schemes only ever serve people who are already rich enough to invest in them and lobby to make sure their interests are met. For people who just want to get some extra cash this is a huge gamble that might cost them all of their income, be it thru their accounts getting frozen for mere association with something deemed high risk (see every time a payment option is used by sex workers, where not just them but anyone using the same platform is suddenly assumed to be “shady”) or because the issuer of the crypto needs a tax write-off.
52 Likes