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Comment by zyrthofar | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that exactly what we shouldn't want, that the credit card companies also record our financial transactions made via a currency created to be decentralized?

This basically ends as a bit of convenience for us, at the cost of them keeping the near monopoly on world-wide transactions...

What's the point of bitcoins if VISA, MasterCard, etc. still know everything we buy world-wide, conveniently accessible in their databases?

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Lower fees for everyone (merchant, user, CC company). Most people will gladly give away their privacy to pay less.

Recording financial transactions has nothing to do with decentralization. I see nothing wrong with this.

Recording financial transactions has everything to do with centralization, when only a handful of companies control world-wide purchases.

These new electronic currencies are inherently untied from anything. What happens when the same handful of companies control them also?

Wasn't it Russia who was denied its own credit card by the same US companies? That's way too much power to have over the world. If we finally have a chance to decentralize some of these transactions, to remove some of that power they currently have, we certainly should take that chance.

>Isn't that exactly what we shouldn't want, that the credit card companies also record our financial transactions made via a currency created to be decentralized?

Yes, actually. I want my budgeting and spend tracking tools to continue to work.

If you pay in bitcoin, every one in the world can see that transaction. It's not trivial to tie to a person, but de-anonymisation can happen at any time later.

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