Comment by slewis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slewis | Hacker News Reader

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"you can already have fast and scalable transactions through normal banking."

I see this repeated a lot. I think you're saying bitcoin is no better than normal banking for moving value.

Do you really believe this? Yes, in the US I can immediately wire money somewhere as long as:

1) I do it within east coast business hours. Weekend? Sorry, wait til Monday 2) I have the correct information for the receiving institution, some of which require a small transfer up front to confirm the setup. 3) My bank actually supports wiring (Wealthfront, for example, only supports ACH transfers which take a few days) 4) I'm sending within the US, otherwise there are a bunch of other complications and requirements

I also need to trust that the bank actually has my money.

With cryptocurrency you can confirm that your stored value exists and is stilled owned by you, and transfer it to anywhere else within 30 minutes, in a provably secure and verifiable way.

If the number of people tried who try to transfer money between banks tried to do it on the bitcoin network, you would be waiting months for the same transaction that is taking you a couple business days with banks.

On top of that, you'd also have all the additional risk and liability of dealing with potential fraud and uninsured institutions.

It seems absurd that transfers between two accounts you own at large financial institutions take 3 days to process. There are obvious safety concerns, but there should be provably safe and faster ways of transferring value at minimal cost. People should be able to specify their security level; you could even gate-keep it with licensing, but we should make it an option for people.

In the EU, bank transfers (in €) have to clear within one working day. Transfers between your own accounts at one bank are typically instant. There is no fundamental reason for bank transfers to be slow. And unlike bitcoin, banks can handle more than a few transactions per second worldwide without grinding to a halt.

I've transferred 5-figures of fiat a couple of times and it always makes me sweat. Sure those transactions make me sweat with bitcoin as well, but the difference is that the process is 100% transparent.

Plus the incredible annoyance of having to go through the KYC/AML procedures everywhere to do any kind of meaningful transactions. And still risk getting flagged for fraudulent transactions and possibly having your funds locked/confiscated.

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