<story><title>What happened with the Web Monetization API?</title><url>https://chriscoyier.net/2024/01/24/what-happened-with-the-web-monetization-api/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>latchkey</author><text>A friend of mine in Vietnam needed some quick cash to go home for Tet holiday and asked me for help in paying for their travel costs and some spending money. Nothing nefarious, just a few hundred USD. I&amp;#x27;m happy to help them.&lt;p&gt;I went to a popular VN crypto website, put in their name and bank account number and how much I wanted to send them (and on what crypto network and token, as they support a bunch of them). The site spit out an address to send the tokens to with my wallet.&lt;p&gt;The transaction cost me $0.05, the conversion rates were totally fair and actually quite good, it only took a couple hours, and as an added bonus, didn&amp;#x27;t even require any sort of KYC because it was just a small amount of money.&lt;p&gt;For those of you dumping on crypto, I can tell you that it doesn&amp;#x27;t get any easier than that. There is no way that I can do something like that otherwise. We need more of this, not less.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nradov</author><text>The lack of KYC enforcement is likely to be a temporary situation. Cryptocurrency exchanges have kind of flown under the radar in some countries. But for better or worse, crackdowns are coming.&lt;p&gt;This use of crypto is fundamentally no different from the old hawala networks, just more automated and slightly cheaper. Authorities let that go for a while but then cracked down when criminal usage grew too serious to ignore.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.investopedia.com&amp;#x2F;terms&amp;#x2F;h&amp;#x2F;hawala.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.investopedia.com&amp;#x2F;terms&amp;#x2F;h&amp;#x2F;hawala.asp&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>What happened with the Web Monetization API?</title><url>https://chriscoyier.net/2024/01/24/what-happened-with-the-web-monetization-api/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>latchkey</author><text>A friend of mine in Vietnam needed some quick cash to go home for Tet holiday and asked me for help in paying for their travel costs and some spending money. Nothing nefarious, just a few hundred USD. I&amp;#x27;m happy to help them.&lt;p&gt;I went to a popular VN crypto website, put in their name and bank account number and how much I wanted to send them (and on what crypto network and token, as they support a bunch of them). The site spit out an address to send the tokens to with my wallet.&lt;p&gt;The transaction cost me $0.05, the conversion rates were totally fair and actually quite good, it only took a couple hours, and as an added bonus, didn&amp;#x27;t even require any sort of KYC because it was just a small amount of money.&lt;p&gt;For those of you dumping on crypto, I can tell you that it doesn&amp;#x27;t get any easier than that. There is no way that I can do something like that otherwise. We need more of this, not less.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ggm</author><text>If you amortise the kyc cost then wise or similar does this just as frictionless. Basically, crypto does not solve any real world problems that don&amp;#x27;t have other solutions.&lt;p&gt;Kyc exists for a reason, the same friction free transfer beneath your mental limit can be rerun 10000x by machine  and achieve aml outcomes.</text></comment>