Bitcoin support guide, recent downtimes, upcoming server upgrades

[celsty]

@zerimas

Because Tether has been publicly traded on major crypto exchanges for years. The problem is that the org behind the currency is very opaque we won't know if it's actually backed 1-to-1 with actual dollars. There are alternatives.

We call these "stablecoins" in the crypto space, and generally the way to tackle the volatility is to back it up 1-to-1 to dollar or by overcollaterization (kind of mortgage, put a valuable asset to borrow crypto dollars, this way each crypto dollar can be redeemed back to the deposited asset.) Here is a neat overview https://messari.io/article/stablecoins
In fact, the exchange listed in the OP (Coinbase) also issues its own digital dollars called USDC.

In regards to buying crypto, it's either the safer, centralised KYC/AML exchange like Coinbase or a peer-to-peer escrow based marketplace like LocalCryptos. So yeah I agree it's still shitty. If Mangadex wants crypto then the best way to help is find ways to make it a smoother experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[zerimas]

@celesty

I know what stablecoins are.

"this way each crypto dollar can be redeemed back to the deposited asset"

Except you can't. I can't find any recent information about redeeming tether at all. The latest news is from 2018 and apparently tether allows deposits and redemption so long as you meet the minimum of $100,000.

or by overcollaterization (kind of mortgage, put a valuable asset to borrow crypto dollars, this way each crypto dollar can be redeemed back to the deposited asset.)

Wasn't the 2008 mortgage crisis a result of that? Except in this case the stable coins are "backed" by crypto (maybe?).

If Mangadex wants crypto then the best way to help is find ways to make it a smoother experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What I'm confused about is why they want crypto in the first place. I think it is phenomenally bad idea, and it going to result in a lot frustrated users who find the process difficult or possibly encountering more serious trouble. I predict that SFYL thing isn't going to go over well with the user base. Realistically many sites that also host copyrighted content somehow make a go of (though I don't know the specifics of it). Maybe they don't see as much traffic as Mangadex? I really don't know. 🤫

 

[zerimas]

@ thedestroyership
I like your idea.

 

[celsty]

@zerimas

Yes, some are backed by crypto. The most decentralised stablecoin so far is Dai (https://makerdao.com/en/)
This is an oversimplification, but the logic is by having ETH as a collateral, you can print Dai (the dollar) with a ratio of 50%. Ex: if the current value of ETH is 100$ you may print 50 Dai for each ETH deposited. If price of ETH goes down near the actual collateral value ($50) and you didn't return the 50 Dai, your ETH will be liquidated and sold to other Dai holders with a discount. This way the price stability of Dai is held. Not sure about the 2008 mortgage crisis, but this system has been running since 2017 (current supply is 80M Dai dollar) and survived the >90% value drop of ETH ($1357 to $80) in 2018.

Anyway I'm just pointing these out since it's a very viable option if MD team wants to hedge against BTC losing value. Just swap the BTC to these crypto dollars time to time.

Perhaps team is concerned over privacy issue? 😦

 

[Ryzou]

ITT - donation discussion turned into bitcoin discussion.

Btw @Holo, how to claim donation using BTC? Can straight key in Transaction Id into paypal email?

 

[Holo]

@Ryzou

Yes please, enter your wallet ID into the paypal email field for now.

 

[zerimas]

@celsty

I feel like I am too stupid to understand your explanation (sorry).

Anyways Dai, or MakerDao, apparently just just experienced a huge case of SFYL. I don't understand the intricacies of how the system functions, but apparently it broke recently. I don't understand why you would want to generate another currency backed by crypto. Why not just transact in the crypto you already have? I don't understand it.

@Ryzou

ITT - donation discussion turned into bitcoin discussion.

Yes, but: crypto is a pain in the ass and not straightforward at all, and by accepting crypto it is basically a tacit endorsement of the political leanings of the cryptosphere (i.e. libertertians, crypto-fascists—the "crypto" in this term doesn't refer to "cryptocurrency" the term predates the invention of it by like 50 years—and whatever) or at least gives them a platform. Also, there is the non-zero probably of something (who knows what) going wrong and all the donations collected going *poof* or becoming worthless. How would you feel if you spent $20 to get some crypto and donate it only have circumstances beyond your control render your donation totally worthless? I doesn't even have to be problem with crypto itself. If you mess up typing the wallet address your donation is gone. You've lost $20 and MD doesn't get the donation. You can't reverse the transaction. Everyone is SOL. If I were in that situation, I don't I'd be ponying up another $20 to try again.

There are just so many reasons that this is a bad idea.

@holo

Is crypto going to be an option, or the only means by which accept donations? If it were just an option, it wouldn't be a big deal. However, if it is only method by which people can donate it seems like a bad idea.

 

[GigAnon]

@zerimas
A JS miner would be viable. Yes, it's true that it's no longer profitable to mine bitcoin without specialized ASICs and cheap electricity, because the electricity bill would be higher than the value of the bitcoins mined. However, in this particular case it doesn't matter. What matter is that some money is *legally* and *effortlessly* spent on the users' side, and some money magically "appears" in MD's pockets.

And I do mean *MD*'s pockets. There doesn't have to be anything linking a bitcoin wallet to real people. Just take a look at how hard it was for the FIB to take down SilkRoad... no one would spend that kind of energy for a few copyright infringements. I mean for sure they could easily get the history of transactions, but they'd learn fuck all from it.
The same cannot be said from ads, and history has shown pirate websites like MD don't prosper with that business model. It would be only a matter of time before we see Holo's real name plastered in the news with headlines "ILLEGAL PIRATE DOWNLOADING SITE TAKEN DOWN, ADMINS ACCUSED TO HAVE MADE MILLIONS FROM ADS".

 

[zerimas]

Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you have to "win" (as in be the first to brute force whatever dumb thing it is they use to validate the chain) in order to claim the block rewards (12—soon to be 6—BTC plus whatever the TX fees are)?

>and history has shown pirate websites like MD don't prosper with that business model.

OK, what about 9anime, kissmanga/anime/whatever other sites are affiliated with them, every porn streaming site in existence, and whole bunch of other stuff. How are they managing to stay afloat? I don't actually know the answer.

>ILLEGAL PIRATE DOWNLOADING SITE TAKEN DOWN, ADMINS ACCUSED TO HAVE MADE MILLIONS FROM ADS".

I don't think anyone gives a shit about manga. The rights holders haven't issued DMCAs or anything on the numerous titles that have official English translations currently in print. The only time I can think of where stuff has been removed was when a bunch of scanlators got pissed for some reason, and the time that Rapeman was banned (which I don't know the story behind).

 

[sinnx3]

@holo

@sinnx3 Does it require strict verification?

Since I'm already partially verfied I can't remember exactly. But for full KYC verification they require the following:

Spoiler

 

[gormadoc]

@zerimas According to the first post it doesn't sound like there are going to be any other options in the short term.

As for piracy websites in general, they either subsist off of donations, invasive ads, or owner generosity. They can't just use GoogleAds or another above-the-board ad provider for decent money, so they have to use bad providers and plaster as much as possible. Batoto only lived as long as it did without the ads (the donations weren't all that much) because Grumpy put his own time and money into it.

For Japanese cultural product (anime, games, manga, movies ...) piracy aggregators specifically, many of them are run by the same faceless grey market conglomerate (NOEZ, or at least that used to be the name) that just chooses to ignore most DMCAs. They can do this because they operate in China, though NOEZ is (or was, at least) nominally in New York. They make money off of subscription models, ads, and merch from a ton of sites they own. Keep in mind that they don't produce any of the content; they steal that from scanlators and subbers, so all of their costs are just backend and hosting. Pretty much like every other grey market China-to-the-rest-of-us company. MangaDex is predicated on rejecting that model; they can't follow it.

You would be surprised about DMCAs for mangas. It's been increasing in recent years - Batoto lost a shit ton of stuff towards the end because Grumpy was never interested in fighting it. He had a thread of DMCA requests (https://vatoto.com/forums/topic/20345-more-dmca/page-2); you can see that it exploded towards the end, which exacerbated the moderation crisis (Kaguya was the big culprit). Now that Japan has finally realized that there's a large market out there for anime and manga they've ramped up activity. It just doesn't affect the other huge aggregators because, again, they are based in China and just ignore DMCAs.

 

[zerimas]

@gormadoc

so all of their costs are just backend and hosting

Would that not also be the case for Mangadex—with the exception being that people voluntarily upload their stuff?

>they are based in China and just ignore DMCAs.

Are there not lots of countries beyond the reach of DMCAs, and other forms of copyright suit?

> Now that Japan has finally realized that there's a large market out there for anime and manga they've ramped up activity.

Eh, I'm not sure I totally buy. I don't see Japanese companies aggressively pursuing Western licenses because it will mess-up their "Walled Garden" thing that they've got going on with respect to BDs. I don't know about manga. Currently in Japan they can sell a BD 4 episodes of a seriesfor around $100 (give or take—some are less). Western markets would accept that. They would have to sell it for less. So in order to prevent "reverse importing" the West either gets a shitty version (Ghost in the Shell is an example of this: it has only 2.0 stereo for the Japanese audio and you can't turn off the subtitles, et cetera) or you get nothing at all.

I don't think the market for Japanese cultural products is all that lucrative. It may be improving compared to what it was, but it still is a pretty niche thing. I can think of a couple titles (I'm sure there are lots) where the someone will get the license to a property, issue DMCAs, and then never actually sell the product. The fan-translations for Beatless were all DMCA'd, but they licensor never bothered to release more than 2 chapters. The story is similar for High School DxD—except I think some manga did get released. They killed the LN translations and then never sold their own. I believe the same thing happened with Saekano. Granted all my examples were LN related, but the market for Japanese IPs can't be that lucrative if they're not bothering to sell the stuff they legally have the rights to.

 

[gormadoc]

@zerimas

It's similar, but NOEZ also makes money off of subscription models and merch based off of copyrighted material, both of which are very illegal. They also sell the standard Chinese rip-off online games that plague app stores.

I'm not sure what your point is regarding other countries and DMCA. MangaDex isn't in one of those countries, they use compliant hosts, and they voluntarily comply with DMCAs. The whole point of MangaDex and older, similar, sites was to have a slightly more legitimate aggregator than is otherwise out there.

If you were using the site three months ago, you should have experienced the three-day outage that came partially as a result of DMCA activity against MangaDex. Cloudflare was hit with a subpoena before that and unsurprisingly dropped them: https://torrentfreak.com/mangadex-targeted-by-dmca-subpoena-now-migrating-servers-200103/. Mangastream died at the end of the year due to legal trouble. And again, the DMCA ramp-up at the end of Batoto's life contributed to the general deterioration of the website.

While you can come up with excuses for ignoring that they do have their licenses (like anybody else who uses the site), it doesn't change the fact that it's illegal to infringe on those and that MangaDex isn't willing to put up much of a fight for all the risk and little gain when it's put to the test.

If you don't have an issue with how the other aggregators do stuff, why even bother showing up here to complain about crypto donations? Just stay with them; nobody here is going to care.

 

[zerimas]

@gormadoc

If you don't have an issue with how the other aggregators do stuff, why even bother showing up here to complain about crypto donations?

1) Because crypto currency is stupid.

2) I am not only one with issues. Yes, I did go off on a tangent about crypto but other people feel that this whole accepting donations via crypto is a PITA and users who are unfamiliar with crypto are going to have a bad time.

3) If Mangadex is accepting crypto in order so as to not leave a paper trail or whatever, why not just avoid issue by having hosting in country where DMCA isn't a thing and accept regular money? There has to be some kind of payment platform that doesn't really care what Mangadex is doing (especially if they are hosted in a country to which DMCA doesn't apply). Basically any platform would be easier and have greater accountability than using crypto (which is complicated and has none).

If you don't have an issue with how the other aggregators do stuff, why even bother showing up here to complain about crypto donations?

Well, because they put a big announcement on the front page which linked to an open forum where other people are also giving their opinion on the subject.

illegal to infringe on those and that MangaDex isn't willing to put up much of a fight for all the risk and little gain when it's put to the test.

Well there isn't a "fight" to be had. The rights holders own the rights. My question is as to why Mangadex would be taking the risk of hosting copyrighted material in a jurisdiction where they can be subject to DMCAs, lawsuits, et cetera?

Just stay with them; nobody here is going to care.

I don't think anyone cares at all in the first place where I read my manga. I feel like you're trying to communicate some other sentiment, albeit in a very roundabout fashion.


Anyways, I think there are a bunch of impracticalities involved this situation.

 

[Rassah]

@Holo An even easier option than Coinbase is Edge Wallet with Wyre:
1) Install Edge Wallet app on your phone
2) From the menu select Buy Cryptocurrency
3) Select ACH Bank Transfer
4) Add your bank account
5) Buy Bitcoin

@zerimas There are no other payment options. US controls bank to bank money transfers, and threatens to cut off foreign countries if they don't follow US standards. Even if you set up in another country, paying with things like PayPay or credit cards will be blocked, and international wire transfers will be expensive and complicated, for a while, until they get blocked too. Unfortunately US doesn't care about their jurisdiction, and will go after you financially no matter where you are in the world. Nice thing about Bitcoin is it doesn't care where you are in the world or why you want to send money, it works the same way everywhere.
By the way, you can't mess up typing the wallet address. It's almost impossible, because the last few characters of an address are actually a math formula derived from all the previous characters. If you type something wrong, the formula won't match, and the wallet you are using will know you messed up somewhere.

 

[zerimas]

@Rassah

I don't ever transfer large sums of money internationally, presumably that is what attracts the attention of LEA blocking transfers. I'm pretty sure people have been able to transfer money internationally before crypto existed and continue to do so all without ever using crypto at all. Just googling it make it seems like there are quite a few. I'm also reasonably confident you can set up some kind of Paypal billing agreement with a third-party processor (like epoch) that how they sell porn. Vendo is a thing. I dunno it seems like there options that don't involve using crypto.

I looked into the Edge Wallet thing. You have to give them your SSN and bank account details which sounds pretty sketchy.

Whatever. I am just filthy no-coiner spreading FUD or whatever.

 

[zerimas]

@Rassah

Okay, that does make it unlikely, but screw up can occur and have:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/one_user_accidentally_sends_520_000_in_btc_to_wrong_wallet

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j55ywg/people-are-losing-bitcoin-cash-by-accidentally-sending-it-to-bitcoin-addresses

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/69390/bitoin-payment-sent-and-confirmed-but-not-received —I don't know what is going on here

This does support your claim.

The reality is the company you've mentioned could very well exit-scam (like some many others have before). When you buy BTC from them is it sent to your wallet address or does it just simply state that Edge Wallet or whatever owes xBTC. How do you get it from that service to transfer it to where you want it to go (Holo)?

 

[Rassah]

@zerimas
US goes after copyright holders around the world. They arrested Kim Dotcom of MegaUpload even though it was hosted on a foreign server and he lived in a foreign country. If someone hosts copyrighted materials, they will go after you, and they will go after whoever is banking you. That's how they stop things they don't like: cut off its funding. Usually sending wires to foreign accounts is not cheap or convenient. And PayPal, Venmo, and others have a tendency to freeze your account, take your money, and even claw it back. One of my acquaintances was selling furry porn through PayPal, and when they found out, since porn was against their TOS they not only froze his account, but pulled the money he already withdraw from PayPal back from his bank, causing overdrafts and him not be able to pay bills. Basically banks and payment companies are total assholes. If it was for something that was legal, it wouldn't be an issue, but in this case...

Wyre asks for SSN and such because they are a registered and licensed business that requires to keep track of customers for AML/KYC (Anti Money Laundering / Know Your Customer) reasons, which is required in US, Europe, and most of Asia now. That happened since everyone got all obsessed with terrorist financing. But Wyre is a third party service that is just a plugin in Edge. When you buy through them, they send bitcoin directly into your Edge wallet. It's not like Coinbase or other exchanges that hold bitcoin on your behalf, who can exit scam or just seize your funds if government tells them to.

 

[wezerl]

@Holo But there is a slight problem with Coinbase, you can't claim the transaction here because you don't get a Wallet ID since if you directly sind it over to you guys, they send it directly from their "Cold Storage System" and you wont get a wallet ID, at least that's what their support told me.

 

[Holo]

@wezerl

I see. You can just PM me the time and amount of the transaction in BTC and I can match it to my records that way.