No, payment processors mitigate risk and volume

Or maybe that is steemit

and currently its only sources of income are shopify and startengine, both of which are likely to be lost as they rely on the same payment processors through a middleman

TBH I'm not gonna shed any tears over gab

mind's internal crypto is a failure

But there's nothing that really prevents it from operating

You could e.g. host it as a Tor service

network effects

the value of a cryptocurrency is directly dependent on the number of people using it, and the number of people using minds is directly dependent on having a means of making money using it.

Oh I agree, it's a problem

tor barely functions as is

To a degree, but there are also other factors

putting something like a major social media platform on it would cripple it

What we're seeing is the intensification of those other factors

Gab is not a major social media platform

We need to find the source of there not being a good alternative payment processor. Without identifing the roadblocks, you are not solving the problem.

Tor's capacity has also improved a lot over the past few years

Partly due to Snowden, likely

Meaning any regulation would be a bandaid

And that is very bad

The only solution I can see is some kind of cryptocurrency

Or at lest, something with most of the same properties

There's still likely a cash-out endpoint (for the near to medium future)

But at that point you're worried about e.g. banks stopping transfers because of your opinions

I can't say there's 0% chance of that, but they seem to be used to being hated

So probably are less susceptible to the sway of popular opinion

Corporations control our money (banks) and the government indirectly controls the banks. Without something decentralized, one of the two will always shut us down

If you go with regulation, you are giving a tool to the democrats when they get back into power

I don't think the banks are quite so helpless

They were able to get themselves those bailouts, after all

It's a highly regulated industries. Only take a law or two to basically nationalize them.

But like I said, one of the two will always be able to shut you down. Corporation or government

some sort of legislation preventing financial institutions from taking ideological stances might do the trick

I agree there's always a possibility

something such that they can't refrain from doing business with you just because they don't like your politics

There always was, is, and will be

It's more about making it relatively more difficult

In the limit, you could imagine crypto being outlawed

E.g. the ISP being required to report crypto traffic, or this being sufficient cause for a search

But at this point I think you're talking about a US that's far more totalitarian that it has ever been

So there might be more...pressing issues in such a world anyway