Ask HN: Digital paper money? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Digital paper money?

3 pointshacalox8 comments

Is there any way we can use a debit card the same way we use paper money? I can use paper money without having a bank account, but I feel like there is no way I can use a debit card without having a bank account.

Is there anyone here who feels that digital money and paper money should have the same benefits?

I don't like banks. I don't like how they multiply money out of nothing. I don't like how they operate.I don't want my money to be borrowed to others nor being invested in financial products I don't know. I don't want to lose my money if they fail as a company while investing my money.

Is there anyone out there feeling like this? Have you found any solutions to this problem?

Edit: Debit card instead of credit card

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I think this is what's known as a "stored value card," whether it's like a traditional gift card with a number and signature stored on a magnetic strip, or a smart card-based system, where a tamper-resistant cryptographic chip (just like the one in your SIM card) stores and manages a value on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored-value_card

https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsservices/gov/pmt/storedVal...

> I don't like banks. I don't like how they multiply money out of nothing. I don't like how they operate.I don't want my money to be borrowed to others nor being invested in financial products I don't know. I don't want to lose my money if they fail as a company while investing my money.

Some religions don't allow interest to be earnt on loans. You might be interested in their financial products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance

Thank you for your comment, very much appreciate it as I didn't know any of the Islamic banking finance system. But that's now what I'm worried about.

I don't want a loan. I want my digital money to have the same qualities that physical money has. I'm looking for a place I feel comfortable giving them my money without having to worry about if they loose my money or not while investing it nor deleting me from their db. I don't want them to track my info neither. Just a place where I bring them my money, they save it and they give me access to that money with a debit card.I would pay 10$ a month to have digital money, or something similar to what I describe.

If you want to use a 'credit' card then that means your spending money you don't have, so you're spending the banks money, that's why you need a bank account, sort of simple but that's the idea.

A 'debit' card is money you do have, and you don't need a bank account for some of those, for example you can get 'pre-paid' cards, you top them up with paper money then spend them wherever.

There's also bitcoins and all the other digital currencies you can use, I think some places even have Bitcoin ATMS now.

You are right, thank you for the correction. Post edited. The problem with prepaid cards is that I don't feel like my money is secure neither. What if visa fails? What happens to my prepaid card if visa/master card fails?

Don't you feel like it has to exist at least one company in the globe that the only thing it does is taking your money, secure it and give you a credit card?

What if any of these companies delete you from their db? It sounds like I'm paranoid but I don't understand why we do trust them at all. In Spain and Italy two big banks have failed this week.

(Deleting this, guess I'm wrong.)

I'm not an expert and I'm really willing to learn from others in case you know more.

Could you please elaborate more in the matter?

As far as I know, they give credits to people and they invest money to earn more money. That's how banks make money and become profitable. And for what I know they can even operate with more money than they really have.

By the way government just guarantees a certain amount of money, in countries like Spain it's just 100K$/account. In other countries like Portugal I believe it's 30K$/account.

EDIT: Responding to the government protection fact.

It sounds like you don't understand how banks operate. They only need to have reserves to back up customer deposits of a percentage, like 10% of total deposits, which means they very much do loan your money to other people and invest it too. And your deposits are protected by the government in case the bank fails only up to a maximum per account, which can be $100k

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