Stripe, the online payment processor, recently shut down the Keys4Coins account, which prevents them from accepting credit/debit cards and highlights the need for cryptocurrency as a permissionless payment solution.
[tweet https://twitter.com/keys4coins/status/1085267009896677381 align=’right’] Stripe did not give a detailed reason for the account shut down, just that “the risk of fraud is higher than they can legally accept“. The payment processor also claims to have “tried [their] hardest to accept” the Keys4Coins payments.
Keys4Coins provides gift cards, such as Steam, iTunes, Xbox, PlayStation, Google Play, Microsoft, hosting services, and more. Keys4Coins does also accept cryptocurrencies, including Dash, and highlighted in the tweet how these payment methods are unable to be shut down and censored. In this case, cryptocurrency allows Keys4Coins to continue integral business operations, despite losing traditional payment processing.
Need for censorship resistant payments
While centralized payment options tend to offer better user-friendly interfaces, they also have drawbacks such as arbitrary denial of services. The ability to conduct censorship-free transactions is not only a matter of freedom, but also enables businesses and entrepreneurs to engage in more innovation since they are free from the threat of censorship. Centralized payment providers often fall under heavy regulatory scrutiny and thus unnecessarily or unfairly crackdown on businesses. Even if services are restored after a few days or weeks, that can still have a devastating effect through lost potential revenues.
Keys4Coins recent predicament highlights the need for payment solutions that are not vulnerable to censorship by centralized payment processors that shut down services for arbitrary and undefined reasons. Cryptocurrencies were originally created to grant individuals more privacy and freedom and how it started to gain popularity. Wikileaks was one of the major early adopters after their traditional payment systems got pressured by governments to deny services. Additionally, organizations like Free Ross always have to be ready for the possibility that their traditional bank accounts could eventually be affected.
Dash focuses of providing reliable payment services
Dash has focused on not only becoming a premier digital currency through consistently fast transaction times and inexpensive fees, but also by ensuring that consumers and merchants can maintain their privacy. Dash is able to accomplish this through its unique DAO network comprised of around 5,000 Masternodes so no central organization has the entire deciding opinion. This inspires confidence in Dash since both consumers and merchants know that they can reliably use Dash for payments at over 4,800 merchants without the fear of censorship.
Additionally, Dash has proven to be one of the more stable payment options among the cryptocurrencies offered by Keys4Coins. Bitcoin’s fees and transaction times rendered it impractical for commerce in late 2017, and Litecoin experienced similar issues, while Bitcoin Cash has dealt with disruptions stemming from the forks of both Bitcoin and Bitcoin SV. Dash, meanwhile, has been tested at over ten times the daily transaction rates of Bitcoin without experiencing any major disruptions. This further helps illustrate that when censorship and usability is a concern, the attributes of Dash make it an ideal currency of choice.
