this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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Pretty sure having a bank account is like an EU right, so banks can't just close your account willy-nilly over some online post.
Yes, but VISA would hold the keys to the infrastructure that let's you use it in in a modern world.
WERO might be the EU alternative.
Ah, so the good old nationalist argument. If the EU exploded tomorrow, none of these problems would go away. But we would cement the control of third country services, totally out of our the control. Generally, given how decentralised power is on EU level it is often less hard to fight these things on EU level than on national level where the executive is often much more powerful and just steamrolls through with much higher success rate.
The fight against the surveillance state is something we have to face in any case, no matter the framework. A look at the Sunny Uplands in the UK should make that obvious.
Spain is not a third country, as an EU member state it is bound by the same fundamental rights charter that also applies to the EU level as well as to Germany. If that doesn't cut it, then having everything purely national won't make a difference either.
Needless to say that your comment does not even have anything to do with the Wero system to begin with, yet apparently it is a duck.
The way to fight the surveillance state is to keep the fight simple
Fight for free computing, keep encryption legal.
With those two you can build much more on top, like secure communication, Monero and other crypto, etc.
There is no need for a national currency like Wero
Wero is no currency and there is nothing "national" about it either. At least have a basic idea of what you are criticising.
Wero has also nothing to do with your ability to use Crypto or whatever. It is basically just a wrapper banks are offering to make the existing European instant bank transfer system more accessible and easier to use and a competitive alternative to credit cards.
Extending the fight to basically anything isn't keeping it simple. Are you also fighting against classic bank transfers and credit cards or are you only fighting against Wero? If so why?
I simply don't want the government to be able to sanction individuals, block certain transactions they don't like. So I'm against any payment system controlled by a central authority (banks, government, etc)
There is a difference between the fight for free systems and fighting against everything else. Your opposition against Wero is the latter. That is not keeping it simple, that is the opposite of it, and making it much harder to support the free systems as one is then looking like a radical without consideration of reality (where any complete remodeling of payment systems needs rather a decade, unless one aims for high economic damage) trying to impose one kind of system on everyone else.
I don't think my proposition was a big ask. Free computing and legal encryption are already the norm, I'm simply saying we should not let them be taken away.
But I imagine that you're not talking about that. I imagine you're talking about the adoption of crypto. You are right, that it's a greater leap than Wero. But I would also hesitate to call Wero an improvement over the existing system. Visa and Mastercard are problematic due to their scale. That is why their actions become oppressive. If Wero reaches the same scale, then what prevents Wero from censoring the same content? Visa and Mastercard already compete with each other, why did they cooperate to censor porn previously, and why wouldn't Wero do the same?
The problem is centralization. Small central authorities having control over the world's payment systems. Wero doesn't solve that. Now I don't mind incremental improvements, but as long as we recognize that the problem is centralization, then we should also be pushing for decentralization, and the only system we have that supports it (crypto).
That fails the point. Wero is good because it breaks open a duopoly and mitigates the risk that the US can bring the European economy to a halt via Visa/Mastercard.
More comoetition is good, monopolies aren't. Nor would a Wero monopoly be.
From a strategic view Wero is extremely important for Europe. You are looking from a cery different view on the topic but that does not invalidate that other view per se.
My own views are that we need a balance of control and chaos. Both extremes have substantual downsides.
I'm not convinced that a triopoly (not sure what it's called) is significantly different from a duopoly.
My main view is that a centralized system can be built on top of a decentralized one, but not the other way around. And by the way, if crypto and traditional banking co-existed, with broad support for both, that would be a decentralized system, and I'm fine with that. As long as people can easily convert their fiat to crypto and interact with the same sellers in order to bypass censorship.
More competition is better than less. It is that simple. Your argument is just either nihilistic or an excuse to support a duopoly.
Well crypto is fully decentralized, with every node acting independently, so it really is the most competitive environment you can imagine, if that's what you're looking for
The problem with all of that is the "and other crypto" bit nestled in there.
You KNOW crypto on-the-whole is bad for humans, because the Orange Menace is promoting it.
"and other crypto" is there because the technology is still developing. I love Monero because it's private, and it's effectively the only way we have right now to make payments anonymously. But it also uses proof-of-work, aka bad for the environment. A choose-between-two-evils situation. But I'm confident a proof-of-stake coin can have the same privacy properties of Monero without the environmental concerns. That's why I talk about crypto the technology as a whole, and not specifically Monero.
I can agree that value proposition was a siren song, and that I backed a Fistful of POS coins POST coins during the second and third crypto waves , but I fully exited that space because I believe it is inherently exploitable and that the technologies will not be a net benefit for humans.
I get that a few of the tech firms I like including MullVad VPN company accept Monero as payment and I too want there to be financial networks which the US dollar and its interests can't lock people out of. But seeing the radical swings of Monero valuation, and it being the best example you and I have got, means the landscape is pretty disappointing for me because it will be pretty inaccessible for others.
At this point I'm just trying to learn how to get an intl bank account which will allow me to interface with BRICs.
it really sucks how unpredictable the crypto landscape is, I agree. But until a better alternative comes along (in terms of privacy and decentralization), I'll continue being optimistic about it
Got anything to say? Or do you prefer vague accusations that could mean anything?
Except for maybe international online payments, there are already alternatives, so I don't quite see how.
Visa doesn't hold the keys to the WERO infrastructure. WERO is basically a facilitator to the system of real time bank transfers that already exists anyway on European infrastructure. It is not a credit card system in that sense, because the money goes immediately from one account to another, but so what?
Not the banks, but the countries. The EU is getting the EU Wallet, and it must be linked to at least one bank account. This will allow other EU countries to enforce penalties and freeze accounts, seize funds, or whatever. Cool, right? 🤮
The EU wallet is not about financial transactions, is it?
Also there are two systems in the making, one is the public Digital Euro, the other is the private Wero. Sure, accounts could be frozen but neither a single company nor the US could freeze out people out of their financial life.
Imagine a country like Hungary decides to freeze another's entire population bank account
Most likely it is an EU right, but violations would require a lot of effort to straighten, so I wouldn't be surrised if they do sometimes close accounts willy-nilly