Is it really a cryptocurrency when it's completely centralized? No. This is just Facebook-bucks. Store dollars. It's has absolutely none of the benefits of a real cryptocurrency.
Missed opportunity to call them "Marks", although maybe only German speakers will get the joke.
Germans use cash much more than the average Western European. The memory of hyperinflation and bank system collapse is one of the explanations why people prefer to store value in currency (often foreign currency) and not trust so much a bank or card issuer.
I've listened to people from the world bank, the IDB and at least one representative of a central bank explain to me with enthusiasm how their pet crypto and blockchain projects were creating new opportunities for their organizations. There's always some crypto consultant lurking in the background of these conversations.
Especially after learning all the downsides you get with these kind of distributed systems (slow finality, low throughput, limited in capabilities, inefficient, open to new attack vectors).
I've talked to economist and political scientist that understood the implications of trading without central banks very well.
In general, who cares how Chase keeps track of my checking account? It might have this feature or that feature but when it is being used as it is there isn't much to be excited about. If you're Chase it might make life a little easier to choose one thing or the other but the rest of the world probably doesn't care.
What's more Chase charges $25 per month to keep an open checking account, keeps only a small portion of your funds on hand and may both lock you out of your account and freeze your funds on a whim whereas Bitcoin won't.
I don't care what Chase does with my dollars because the promise isn't that there's a vault somewhere that a banker can point to a pile of bills and say "that's Cole's money right there." The promise is that at any time I can withdraw any amount of money, and o have no problem believing that promise.
As for locking my account on a whim, that's what I signed up for. Every time so far I have had a financial account locked it has been because someone who wasn't me was trying to use my money. As for avoiding being punished for crime well I'm not too into money laundering so I think I'll be ok. Otherwise it's balancing the risk that the bank will make a fixable mistake with the existing system which has the ability to fix errors and reverse thefts.
The public audit trail has yet to return thousands of my dollars from mtgox. I bet if there was massive fraud and or theft of the reserves at Chase that I would have had my money back immediately.
(I don't actually have a checking account at Chase)
This is just a ""feature"" of the backwards American system, plenty of countries still mostly have free current accounts. Although the very low interest rates are definitely putting pressure on banks to try to find ways to charge people.
If cryptocurrency is, for you, a way to get away from the abusive dominance of banks, why would you use such a service?
If you want to use a bitcoin bank you can. If you don't then you don't have to and can self custody.
You have the choice to do either. Which is not the case with electronic claims on fiat money, as they require a bank counterparty.
Then try looking at the post I responded to?
Your responses to me seem kinda pointless here.
"Crypto is great because banks suck" "I'm ok with banks, therefore this isn't a need I have"
Then you come along and tell me crypto can maybe act like a bank. So what?
Bingo! Social credit system with verified ID.
The crypto part is just to make sound hip.
Of course "deaf ears" is nowadays support emails being handled by copy-pasting bots.
Cryptocommunication might be nothing but HTTPS/TLS. Cryptocurrency could very well be something similar, without involving Blockchain technology.
What is decentralized about a handful of Chinese miners controlling all supply?
Same for open source software, the best pieces are generally run by a no-nonsense autocrats.
Take away decentralization (which I would be more comfortable calling "aspirational decentralization" to reflect actual practice) and cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from conventional electronic currency.
Just like with the OpenOffice, LibreOffice fork. Everyone was free to use one or the other. The community chose.
The "community" chose to roll back a $40 million transaction that was very inconvenient for Vitalik. If he had instead said "code is law, and we stand by it" then ETC would never have existed in the first place. My point is, it was Vitalik's prerogative to reverse a million dollar transaction that he didn't like, a privilege reserved for the elite.
Beyond that, the community didn't really have a choice either way. By definition of owning ETH you are incentivized to (primarily) support whichever chain the creator says he will continue to support. What kind of choice is that? There is no "market" in the sense you speak of, ETH users are a captive audience.
It's especially problematic for a project that was supposed to be PoS, where the coin holders are also the miners, with the privileges that brings.