Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce, is still lagging behind when it comes to new technologies and new means of payment. Cryptocurrencies, even with their flaws, are still a global emancipation tool when it comes to digital payments. People excluded from the financial system due to lack of banking services or for other reasons can still join the global digital economy by mining or buying cryptocurrencies. That’s why many businesses accept Bitcoin. Mercado Livre, for example, has already started testing payments with the digital currency, in addition to having reached the mark of BRL 80 million in Bitcoin in custody for customers with its service for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. These are high numbers, but not necessarily for the giant Amazon. On the other hand, Amazon is so huge that what might be a rare occurrence for a local store could be a sizable audience for Amazon. There are people who want privacy for whatever reason. Why should they give credit card details to Amazon which can be hacked? There are people who can have cryptocurrency, but cannot have a credit card. A situation that can no longer be ignored. The cryptocurrency market is also reaching a reasonable size. An estimated 20% of Americans now own cryptocurrencies. Brazil and Europe are on the way to the same percentage. Offering crypto as a payment option, therefore, may be about more than just the convenience of customers. Even if the vast majority don’t use crypto, turning what could be a bad experience on the edges into a nice new payment experience could be worth more than the raw data can tell. This applies to all online businesses. Especially airlines that are global. There is no excuse for an entity like Amazon not to accept cryptocurrencies. But with Amazon, it’s not about the customers, or the experience, or even how many can use it. It’s pure politics.
Sabotage
“I’m glad AWS didn’t make a big bet on this [blockchain]🇧🇷said Timothy Bray, who as vice president at Amazon, led the Amazon Web Service (AWS) efforts from 2014 to 2020, a period when cryptocurrencies were taking off. He basically brags about sabotaging Amazon when it comes to blockchain, let alone cryptocurrencies. And from that, he proves why his claim is wrong that there should be trust in the technology in question, why we should trust that he, of all people, has the right answer. Rely on authority, thus being a fallacy. Naturally, we must have some basic trust or default assumption that a new neighbor is an ordinary, friendly person, and also to people crossing the street, or that someone won’t grab our towel if we go for a swim at the beach. However, we must not trust Bray with the supreme knowledge of all things. Nor should we trust that he is not blindly biased. Maybe an ego too big for Amazon’s good, which he left in 2020 and so on. We also shouldn’t necessarily trust subjects when it comes to accounting, which is why we have audits. Trust with certainty, to some extent. Totally trustless, however when it comes to a payments technology it certainly is better isn’t it? But Bray doesn’t seem to have a lot of experience working around money itself, or payment systems, with his opinions and decisions therefore based more on ancillary aspects.
He is described as an environmentalist and political activist. His basic point of view, therefore, probably starts with ‘I don’t want this to work’ and maybe even ‘I don’t care if it works’.
What matters most to him is this idea in his head that cryptocurrencies are somehow these fringe libertarians, the opposite spectrum to him that is presumably closer to communism. “Of course, we also spoke to some of the leading lights in the cryptocurrency market. This didn’t help much, as they seemed more concerned with the aspects that got you out of troublesome government regulations and contract laws; everything had an unsubtle whiff of libertarianism.”, he said. For Timothy Bray, Bitcoin is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme that, in his own words, must rot in hell.
“Until this year, most of my conversations with crypto promoters had issues. For example: ‘This person thinks proof of waste [de energia] is correct and therefore can be safely ignored’. And ‘This person is pretending that the proportion of cryptocurrency trades that are actually Ponzi does not round up to 100%.”
“Bitcoin itself can rot in hell and hopefully implode tomorrow. But the Ethereum folks got the proof-of-stake working at scale; good for them. boring and disheartening.”
That dismissal is all over his statement, and perhaps not too unfair to people purporting to speak for bitcoin around 2014, when he likely met them. It was an atmosphere where the public was very angry with the government. Endless wars were raging in the Middle East. There really was a lot of darkness, and there was an uprising in effect both from the techies towards Wikileaks, Snowden, and the public on Brexit and Trump. But bitcoin has nothing to do with the government. Bitcoin may have something to do with the Fed, although cryptocurrencies can be designed anyway, including a Fed-like system, and bitcoin has something to do with banks. While many might argue that banks are the same as governments, they are two very different things, with cryptocurrency basically being an upgrade from the paper-based monetary system, to a native digital code currency and financial system. Disregarding this aspect of technology is objectively a mistake. You can say what you like about many things, but bitcoin solves the double spending problem. It is a technological innovation, objectively speaking, and in the raw form, not an incremental improvement. Therefore, one cannot afford to discard technology, be it Bray, Amazon or whoever, because although our society is hierarchically designed, it is decentralized in that each human being has choice in all things and in everyone. the moments. If the technology has a use, then for those who have a use, they will use it. Blockchain can be used in systems that require a very high level of security, such as the army, or in systems where the veracity of data is paramount, where this data is collected digitally through sensors. Bitcoin is used for global payments, mostly as an alternative or backup. This can include circumventing the government, such as capital controls. It could include the government using it to pay informants. It may also include some common person using it because the card doesn’t work for whatever reason. The claim, therefore, that someone can be ignored because “this person is pretending that the proportion of cryptocurrency trades is actually Ponzi does not round to 100%” is demonstrably false because cryptocurrencies have use for global payments. Someone like Bray, however, will likely never change his mind. He was infected by blind politics, where emotions, as well as rigidity, are often superior to rationalism. An entity like Amazon, however, cannot afford to have such opinions, especially when it goes against 20% of the public. After all, Amazon is just a database that can be easily replaced, and if they are imposing policies on their common business for unfounded reasons, their demise is inevitable. Because we can’t have a situation where we basically have ‘hater’ companies. It’s not up to Amazon to dictate which payment method users prefer. Of course, it’s their choice to provide it, but it’s also the users’ choice to start hating Amazon for that reason. This imposition of politics and sabotage on non-political issues where we’re dealing with a payment technology has to end if Amazon is to maintain relevance for the long term. Because we assumed that maybe they didn’t like cryptocurrencies. However, to have it confirmed in such clear language is something else entirely. And if you’re going against a whole technology and 20% of the public, you better be right. This article has been translated with permission from Trustnodes.
