Fiat currency is based on trust.
With so many security breaches around does it mean that currency is losing its value rapidly? Is a dollar on a credit card worth less post-Equifax?
With so many security breaches around does it mean that currency is losing its value rapidly? Is a dollar on a credit card worth less post-Equifax?
Examples of this sort of failure might be a hyperinflation scenario. Governments could try to place controls on wages or prices, but might (and will likely) still fail. Many historical examples of it.
(And even Bitcoin’s value is in part based on trust in government - specifically, that various governments won’t ban it. A ban might not be 100% effective but would clearly decrease its utility and thus its value; recent events wrt China are a small-scale demonstration.)
... and that other people will accept it in exchange for goods and services. Scarcity alone is no guarantee of that. For the vast, vast majority of people Bitcoin is literally worthless - the only thing you can do with it is attempt to convert it into real currency so you can actually use it for something. And they would rather you did that rather than trying to fob them off with a bunch of numbers.
The Financial Services sector is heavily regulated because of the importance of trust and correct information. You can bring the system to an immediate standstill since most of the automation in the sector relies heavily on credit bureau data.
I believe Amazon, Tesco, etc actually would hold now the most accurate information about customer repayment ability in the retail segment.
Luckily I was able to easily get the error removed, but it seems absurd to me that a clear system error of some kind had simply persisted on my report for years.