Man, looking at the comments it's crazy to me that hn's knowledge of a $3T industry hasn't evolved at all in 7 years. For those not in the know, Bridge, the stablecoin partner here, was just purchased by Stripe for $1.1B because they see future cost savings from using stablecoins for global remittances and forex.
It's cool to have some skepticism, but update your beliefs. Scams and illicit transactions in crypto are actually smaller by proportion in all crypto than in USD or other fiat currencies at .3% last year.
This looks like just a secure enclave that you can deposit any crypto onto, so whether you trust the manufacturer of your smart card or credit card or not is up to you. Seems like there are easier ways to run a crypto scam, imo
A crypto security firm says that crypto is safer now and we are all supposed to believe it?
Also stablecoins like USDT which is supposed to be backed with USD but has never had an external auditor look at its books are somehow the solution here?
There is a reason crypto is looked at skeptically.
Why would a crypto security firm be incentivized to tell people there is LESS crime? They want to sell MORE services for hunting down criminals. They are the de facto FBI enforcement arm. If you don't believe them, check the FBI's official numbers:
Tether has public audited reports from BDO Italia S.p.A, the fifth largest independent firm globally, which are made available directly on their website.
Bold of you to "Show HN:" a crypto project. As best I can tell, this will be use for all the things scam gift cards are typically used for now but more (because now crypto is involved somehow). Your 'stable-coin' doesn't inspire confidence either. Why can't I just gift someone some BTC or ETH? The only reason to include a coin of your own is for a pump and dump.
Really though, this stuff all sounds quite technically difficult. It's surprising to me that people still work on these projects considering it's rather dense subject matter (fin-tech) _and_ it hasn't really proven to be useful for very much in the West.
Spent more than 4x as much on my Ledger, and it's far from perfect and def not ideal for gifting crypto. I'm personally supportive of any company/product that wants to make managing crypto easier, safer, and cheaper. Kudos on the launch!
You avoid a seed phrase, but how? I thought it was "not your keys not your coin".
My understanding is someone who wants secure crypto needs to cryptographically safely generate a seed phrase. For signigicant amounts of money you will want that backed up. I guess if this is like a $50 gift card people are treating it like that and might accept if it gets lost then shrug.
Burner comes with a pre-generated key or you can request that it generate a new key with entropy you supply (in part, it's hashed with entropy from multiple sources). In both cases you always need to trust the hardware, but this is true with any hardware wallet.
I would always recommend using a multisig for storing large amounts of funds regardless of the wallet vendor.
No, great question. We offer an open source SDK library that can interface with chips today (https://github.com/arx-research/libhalo) and will open source the web app.
Both would allow you to interact with Burner entirely offline as well if you use it for cold storage — libHaLo can easily be used with an off the shelf NFC reader through its CLI interface.
Any concern about conceptual namespace collision? The mobile app Burner is a completely different product (not to mention it fits in with the common definition of the term)
I like it and will sign up for one. What funding did you get to launch this? I cannot find the About etc, however I did find the pages slow to load, so maybe I missed it?
We’ve spoken to a lot of people who have done this, and more often than not the recipient in the midst of some life event doesn’t imbue a QR code with value (and loses it/throws it away).
Interesting...the name of this makes it sound like criminals will be using it to transfer cash around the world, like with gift cards?
Genuinely I'm curious, is there really a big market around gifting crypto, or is that market just sort of a front for criminal activity like why some retailers see a spike in gift card sales?
There is a massive trillion dollar market around gifting dollars on gift cards today, but you can typically only use them on Visa and Mastercard networks. We think gifting stablecoins is a better way to do that.
It turns out that many people don’t spend the gift cards designated for specific retailers, but rather trade or sell them for cash in their local market.
>That’s why we’ve created USD II – the perfect stablecoin to give with Burner. It’s backed 1:1 with U.S. Dollars held in reserve by our partner, Bridge.
The same reason one would use any other stablecoin like USDC, you want to send dollars to someone.
The added benefit is that you don’t need to be worried about sending ETH as well to use USD II. Put another way, if I gift you a Ledger with USDC today, you as a possible crypto newbie need to work out how to get ETH to move that USDC.
Half offtopic note, but maybe you want to know: uBlock origin seems to have a beef with your site - by default it applies enough filters that only a brown background remains.
https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/10/22/stripe-announces-1-1-b...
It's cool to have some skepticism, but update your beliefs. Scams and illicit transactions in crypto are actually smaller by proportion in all crypto than in USD or other fiat currencies at .3% last year.
https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-crypto-crime-report-in...
This looks like just a secure enclave that you can deposit any crypto onto, so whether you trust the manufacturer of your smart card or credit card or not is up to you. Seems like there are easier ways to run a crypto scam, imo
Also stablecoins like USDT which is supposed to be backed with USD but has never had an external auditor look at its books are somehow the solution here?
There is a reason crypto is looked at skeptically.
https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/philadelphia/ne...
Tether has public audited reports from BDO Italia S.p.A, the fifth largest independent firm globally, which are made available directly on their website.
https://tether.to/en/transparency/?tab=reports
You can keep your skepticism, but it helps to update your beliefs on new information.
Really though, this stuff all sounds quite technically difficult. It's surprising to me that people still work on these projects considering it's rather dense subject matter (fin-tech) _and_ it hasn't really proven to be useful for very much in the West.
My understanding is someone who wants secure crypto needs to cryptographically safely generate a seed phrase. For signigicant amounts of money you will want that backed up. I guess if this is like a $50 gift card people are treating it like that and might accept if it gets lost then shrug.
I would always recommend using a multisig for storing large amounts of funds regardless of the wallet vendor.
Both would allow you to interact with Burner entirely offline as well if you use it for cold storage — libHaLo can easily be used with an off the shelf NFC reader through its CLI interface.
We’ve spoken to a lot of people who have done this, and more often than not the recipient in the midst of some life event doesn’t imbue a QR code with value (and loses it/throws it away).
Genuinely I'm curious, is there really a big market around gifting crypto, or is that market just sort of a front for criminal activity like why some retailers see a spike in gift card sales?
Ah shit, here we go again. Why would I use this?
The added benefit is that you don’t need to be worried about sending ETH as well to use USD II. Put another way, if I gift you a Ledger with USDC today, you as a possible crypto newbie need to work out how to get ETH to move that USDC.
Or I could just gift them ETH instead of USDC