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Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

I feel like Kickstarter is more like a tactic than a strategy.

That said, this might be a good "real startup." The problem domain seems modest (e-ink playing cards) but... could be a bridgehead to interesting territory.

These might be designed/used as playing cards, but it's actually a computer with lots of little portable screens. The actual thing is general, a proverbial "computing paradigm."

These are playing cards, but could be concert tickets, conference badges, security doohickeys... They can open a door, clock you in and display your in/out status. If you want to go full "SV Pitch:" these cards are money. Transfer 69 FTX coins onto a card at a secure terminal, and pay by handing it to the hooker. A casino could give you one of these to be your wallet.

Solutions looking for problems sometimes find them. See apple/msft.

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> Transfer 69 FTX coins onto a card at a secure terminal, and pay by handing it to the hooker.

Nah. Part of the strip club experience will always be showering the strippers in dollar bills... and why would you do regular payments for hookers with a special token?! Almost all credit and debit cards (=EMV cards) already can do this by NFC and you can also use watches and phones for this, the problem rather is:

- sex workers are pretty much banned from conventional payment methods and networks because sex work is illicit in many countries and even where it's legal, many sex workers prefer hard cash because chargeback fraud aka "post nut clarity" or actually stolen credentials is so common

- whenever you start a new payment scheme - because you are doing precisely this! - you WILL have to follow banking laws and regulations: customer identification, anti-smurfing and other money laundering measures, compliances for data protection, reports to banking authorities... an insane mess to do right. Of course, you can also hope to do a Bitcoin... but given the penalties if you are ever caught by the authorities, it's not worth it.

>> whenever you start a new payment scheme - because you are doing precisely this! - you WILL have to follow banking laws and regulations

Sure. Problems problems. The FTX coin reference was supposed to tongue-in-cheek over specifics. Yes payment systems have payment system problems.

My point is that these cards have all sorts of potential uses. They're a programmable physical tokens that display a fixed image until updated by physical contact with the plinth. Playing cards are just one set of use cases. The device itself is more general than that, potentially.

I think the road to a new ubiquitous technology often starts with toys.

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