hocuspocus

Not only they aren't remotely comparable, but there's obviously a huge difference when fraud goes through accounts linked to real identities, since banks and payments systems are legally mandated to deal with KYC and AML regulations.

So, whataboutism.

There are entire categories of scams that exist only thanks to cryptocurrencies. Do you think random people in Western countries would wire money to human traffickers running pig butchering farms in Cambodia without stablecoins? Or to ransomware gangs in Russia without Bitcoin?

No true Scotsman fallacy.

In other words, they are essentially casino chips, not cryptocurrencies.

Well at least in 2012, people who cared about the space seemed to understand the guarantees a blockchain is supposed to provide.

Where coins are held is completely irrelevant. There are cryptocurrencies on real blockchains, and while the technology is dumb and mostly useless, nobody denies that PoW and properly implemented PoS are decentralized.

And then there are centrally issued and controlled coins on private, permissioned ledgers a.k.a. databases. But most cryptobros never cared about the technology nor the political goal, so anything can be called a cryptocurrency as long as it's a medium for gambling and speculation outside the regulated financial framework.

Native images shouldn't be too messy anymore, Oracle put a lot of effort into DX improvements and all major web frameworks are now aware it's an important and growing use case.

Struggling to build native images should be a sign you're reliant on libraries that are dangerously outdated and abandoned.

Most of that monster ecosystem is exactly that: monstrous code in one-off throwaway libraries written by people who don't care about software, as it's not their job.

If you set a bar, any bar, there's really not much offered by Python that you cannot find in a more reasonable language. Especially if you're gluing together C++ and Rust libraries for data processing or ML workloads. Python is still disproportionately popular there but I'm also convinced its days are counted. C++ will be tremendously harder to get rid of, in comparison, if that's even possible.

No, I'm not talking of SEPA direct debit.

Do you pay your groceries with SEPA instant transfers?

Merchants can't just slap a QR code with their banking details on their website or cash registers. Wero offers a convenient layer on top of SEPA transfers, and you can argue EPC QR codes are already enough (though most people would disagree).

Additionally, Wero provides a full payment solution that's integrated with many third party processors, and is basically an evolution of Payconiq and iDEAL. Sure, it does use SEPA rails, but there's a lot more to it. And that's the part that will need to interoperate with more than a dozen mobile wallets in Europe, inside and outside the Eurozone.

Wero should eventually become the interoperability layer in Europe and beyond.

The same way AliPay+ has enabled interoperability among 50+ mobile wallets globally, mostly in Asian countries.

Transfers and payments are different things.

You mean sanctions that have targeted EU citizens.

Wero has the right momentum, it'll get there. But federating mobile wallets in the Eurozone and eventually Europe at large is no small feat.

Vodafone NL data only SIMs are very common for IoT connectivity when devices need to roam in Europe, such as in connected cars.

I'd assume it's not a coincidence and fraudsters made sure there's no easy way to trace anything back from the SIMs.

It's also more token hungry than similar models, so does it really make a big difference in the end?

With GitHub Copilot pricing, I have found no practical reason to use Gemini 3.8 Flash vs GPT 5.6 Luna. And now I'll probably find no reason to use Gemini 4 when GPT 6.1 Sol is essentially as good and a lot cheaper.

Killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in the name of saving oppressed people; it's quite impressive such low-effort imperialist propaganda still works after Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya.