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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

Among many other great crimes, U.S. banks have stolen hundreds of billions of dollars from the poorest people through overdraft and bounced check fees. The banks own the regulators.

If regular people can just have a safe place to keep their money, without being actively exploited, that would be a huge improvement.

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You will need to construct a more targeted argument than, "All banks bad, all banks hurt people". The majority of Americans store their money in banks safely (and while the unbanked and underbanked is a huge problem, it is out of scope for this comment), protected either by FDIC insurance (banks) or NCUSIF (credit unions). The majority of banks behave responsibly (I don't work at BoA, Wells, JPMC, or someone else who has committed fraud). You don't even have to use a bank! That is what your local credit union is for [1].

Some banks have behaved badly. All cryptocurrency is a scam (see: SEC ICO determinations, outright ICO/token fraud, etc).

With fiat, you have recourse with regulators and the legal system. With crypto, you have none ("oops! someone cloned your SIM and you've lost your entire nest egg. better luck next time!"). Your arguments don't make the case for cryptocurrencies; you make the case for more regulation and oversight of the banking and financial services industry (which I agree with entirely, not because it's my job, but to keep the hard earned assets of banking customers of all income and asset brackets safe).

[1] https://www.mycreditunion.gov/about-credit-unions/credit-uni...

You will need to construct a more targeted argument than, “All cryptocurrency is a scam” if you want others to construct more targeted arguments than “all banks bad” (the difference being you had to paraphrase GP, while I got to directly quote you).

Cryptocurrency is infrastructure, while you are arguing against it as a replacement for all players in the current financial system. I would argue that's a shortsighted and under-informed perspective.

https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-b... (Bruce Schneier: There Is No Good Reason To Trust Blockchain Technology)

https://www.dailycal.org/2018/03/09/father-internet-vint-cer... (Vint Cerf: "In addition to discussing the history and advancement of internet technology, Cerf talked about cryptocurrency. When asked about bitcoin, Cerf said his first response was to “run the other way.” On the topic of blockchain, he struck a more moderate tone but cautioned about its applications.")

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/bank-of-america-skeptical-on... (Bank of America tech chief is skeptical on blockchain even though BofA has the most patents for it)

https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/breaking-the-blockchain-ma... (Breaking the blockchain: Major projects shelved as hype fades)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/blockchai... (Bundesbank: Blockchain Settlement Was Slow, Costly in Trial, Weidmann Says: “The blockchain solutions did not fare better in every way: the process took a bit longer and resulted in relatively high computational costs,” Weidmann said in Frankfurt on Wednesday. “Similar experiences have been made elsewhere in the financial sector. Despite numerous tests of blockchain-based prototypes, a real breakthrough in application is missing so far.”)

Distributed ledgers, blockchain, and cryptocurrency are solutions looking for a problem, overly complicated and underperformant infrastructure. They attempt to solve for trust with technology solutions in a world governed by human regulation and legal frameworks (which always take precedence). A database will work just fine. Everything else is snake oil.

So a bank who wants to patent blockchain for themselves and a bunch of people who don't get it. Not very convincing.

If you're not convinced based on evidence there is no practical, production use distributed ledger or cryptocurrency besides bitcoin (which works very, very poorly), that's not on me to address. Prove it works and is needed.

I mean… I could also post articles on Fidelity and Ernst & Young investing in the technology, Stripe, Square, obviously Facebook and a whole host of other companies in this announcement, etc, but it feels very much like you've decided your conclusion and are simply feeding it with whatever journalism confirms it.

Regardless, you asked for a more targeted argument, I asked you for the same, and your response was 5 different articles on 5 different things. That's not targeted, it's the literal opposite. The problem with not being targeted is you have to pick a thing that you're disagreeing with. Here you seem to be disagreeing with “people think blockchain is useful”. But… There's plenty of evidence that isn't true in the general case, even if specific groups certainly don't think it's useful. Alternatively, we'll take your opening statement of “All cryptocurrency is a scam”---which is both not targeted (‘all’ is the operative word there) and not really supported by your articles since they're all about specific people or specific attempts.

It's fine to be a skeptic, by the way! I take no issue with you not particularly believing in the hype; my own take on the hype is considerably more skeptical than the louder folks. Just… Maybe don't put down other people's arguments unless you're willing to put in the time to make a better one?

To your other points: (a) you can have a mostly-technological solution in a world whose final resolution mechanism is human and legal; (b) there are plenty of companies in the cryptocurrency space still operating with SEC approval, including teams that did ICOs; (c) cryptocurrency, even the completely public/trustless type, isn't mutually incompatible with banks as a concept, though it could eliminate certain aspects of banks that require direct human intervention in the long term.

None of these things are here yet. Technology takes time, and the difficulty with technology that's built in the open is that it's in the public eye long before it's fully ready for prime time, so the debates about it happen in the public eye. A classic example is the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate[1], except cryptocurrencies are being developed in a world that is 1000 times more connected than the Linux kernel was, and they are ostensibly applicable to considerably more people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum–Torvalds_debate

>Among many other great crimes, U.S. banks have stolen hundreds of billions of dollars from the poorest people through overdraft and bounced check fees.

I can agree with the fact that some of the bank fees for such services are ridiculous, but how is a customer using their overdraft or bouncing a check the bank's fault? How is it "stealing"?

In the case of overdraft fees, over 30 banks were ordering transactions in a punitive way, charging up to six overdraft fees per day, and not providing a way to decline charges when an overdraft (and related fee) would result. It also resulted in the Federal Reserve instituting overdraft protection regulations in 2010. It was predatory, plain and simple, and hundreds of millions of dollars in collective fines were paid.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/chase-reaches-settleme...

Ordering transactions from large to small so you are hit with the maximum number of penalties. It can easily end up costing you many multiples more than ordering chronologically.

Do a Google search for Wells Fargo and overdrafts.

Facebook is not even a safe place for your cat pictures. Why would they do a better job when it comes to your money ?

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