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Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

(www.economist.com)
666 points jcartw | 1 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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marcodiego ◴[08 Apr 25 11:55 UTC] No.43620631[source]▶
I'm a Brazilian. Everything here can be paid through pix. It's very convenient, fast reliable and, for a country like ours where walking on the streets with money is a risk, safe.

There's only one reason I don't use it: there's no FLOSS app (AFAIK) to use it.

Something as common as the dominant payment system should not depend on proprietary software.

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JusticeJuice ◴[08 Apr 25 11:59 UTC] No.43620665[source]▶
> Something as common as the dominant payment system should not depend on proprietary software.

Name one dominant payment system worldwide that doesn't? Banks are proprietary, credit cards are proprietary, paypal, crypto is all proprietary.

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Asraelite ◴[08 Apr 25 12:06 UTC] No.43620732[source]▶
> crypto is all proprietary

What?

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Etheryte ◴[08 Apr 25 12:08 UTC] No.43620747[source]▶
I think a steelmanned version of their comment is that crypto apps are proprietary, which I think is mostly true. There are open source apps, but most of the big ones are all proprietary.
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1. aspenmayer ◴[08 Apr 25 12:52 UTC] No.43621177[source]▶
I interpreted it as: crypto is proprietary in that it is bespoke. Crypto prior to ethereum didn't even have a concept of compatibility. Forks of existing crypto could be considered proprietary with respect to each other and with respect to the original project being forked. The need for bridging to other chains/coins as well as the need for on/off-ramps also speaks to the somewhat-proprietary nature of modern cryptocurrencies.

All that said, however, crypto isn't proprietary compared to traditional banking or other payment transfer tech in the ways that make crypto, well, crypto - the lack of third party intermediaries. Anyone can develop for crypto, and the capabilities of the network can be extended by properties of crypto tokens.

Any individual crypto token or network may be open source or proprietary with respect to its development and acceptance of outside contributions, but the ecosystem as a whole is amazingly interconnected and interoperable. This seems incongruous conceptually when crypto is framed in terms of being proprietary, because crypto is constantly reinventing itself in plain view, through entirely new networks and tokens, and out of sight, through the efforts of working groups and individuals to support and maintain existing projects.

I think it's entirely fair to call crypto proprietary, and also fair to find it not to be, but there's a world of difference between how proprietary bitcoin or even ethereum is compared to something like xrp. Who controls the network and who controls development are the key differentiating features among these axes to my mind.

Crypto could potentially be the best or worst of both open and proprietary worlds, but in the best case, crypto can be open in ways that are good, and only proprietary in ways that are necessary and sufficient.