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Cash is instant. Venmo is instant. You can pay for goods with a credit card and know it was approved instantly.

In the very rare case you need to make a domestic wire transfer, yes it's currently slow, but that's not a technological problem, it's a political/institutional one. Plenty of countries have instant bank transfers as well.

AND -- instant bank transfers should be coming to the US in 2023, when FedACH is supplemented with FedNow (settles in seconds) [1].

So the slowness of wire transfers is just a temporary problem that's already been solved or is being solved. Crypto isn't necessary here at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedACH

Venmo isn't instant in the same way that USDC is though. When a USDC transaction settles, I know the money is mine, when a venmo transfer settles, or an ach transfer settles, there is an opportunity for the money to be clawed back for quite a bit of time [0]. We can argue if this is a good or a bad feature, but it does mean that the transfer really isn't instant as I don't have guarantees behind the money being mine.

Wire transfers are a bit better in this regard (my understanding is that "clawbacks" are quite difficult / impossible), but they tend to be expensive for consumers, and take a few hours domestically, days internationally. My employer regularly has to deal with overseas wire transfers, we would hands down use USDC instead if it were an option.

To me the fundamental difference between crypto and legacy finance is that my crypto is mine. I can move it when and how I want. With legacy finance, I am effectively asking a custodian to move the funds for me, and I'm tied to whatever antiquated system they use.

[0] https://twitter.com/bweidlich/status/1403084816665354241

Venmo is instant.

Clawbacks are an entirely different matter.

And while yes, the absence of clawbacks means your money is then "yours", it also means that if you're hacked or defrauded, there's no way to recover funds because it's now "theirs".

For people who aren't engaged in illegal activity, the ability for banks and courts to retrieve illegally (or even accidentally) transferred funds is widely seen as a feature. Most people prefer the legal system to be able to ultimately determine who owns money (or real estate or shares of a company), instead of something anonymous and irreversible. After all, enforcement of property and contracts is the main reason government even exists, if you're a libertarian -- which means restoring property in case of theft and fraud and breach. (If you're a regular liberal or conservative, then it's one of the main reasons.) Are you suggesting it's beneficial for cryptocurrencies to be outside the realm of property rights and the legal system?

Your concerns about your funds being "yours" are really only worth worrying about if you live in a failed/anarchic/warlord/etc state... which fortunately isn't the case for most HN'ers, or most people generally.

Venmo isn't instant. Send yourself more than 15k. If that goes through, try to send it back.

Sure, the row in the database is instant though.

I agree it is a feature for a bank to be able to undo mistakes. The problem happens when a bank commits the mistakes and refuses to acknowledge it.

This is akin to all of us submitting to google and gmail, its great unless our account gets flagged by an algorithm by mistake. No mistake, i would be screwed.

It's exactly as instant as Strike.

Further, both will be totally instant vis-a-vis your actual bank account in a few years as RTP rolls out. No crypto needed. [1] I'm led to believe the delays in implementation were ensuring small community banks had a risk model.

> This is akin to all of us submitting to google and gmail, its great unless our account gets flagged by an algorithm by mistake. No mistake, i would be screwed.

Have you met typos?

[1] https://www.theclearinghouse.org/payment-systems/rtp

I'm not arguing that crypto is necessary. I'm telling you that I can use it to settle a transaction in the US right now in minutes that currently takes days to settle through bank transfer. I'm glad to hear that instant bank transfers are coming and I'll use that tech happily when / if it arrives.

Are you being purposely disingenuous here?

Perhaps crypto is an improvement over some archaic US banking standards but in the UK transactions will clear basically immediately and cost nothing. A money transfer is asymptotically just updating a couple of database records in a transaction. Execution speed is a technical problem, and one that is not solved efficiently by cryptos.

Finally, most western countries offer an analogue of FDIC for bank accounts. Countries which don't have such a scheme in place need to install one, again its not something that cryptos solve in any (novel) way.

Same goes for half a dozen countries in Europe that I had the fortune to live in.

They are being serious.

Crypto financial services are a huge step forward in environments with broken banking systems. The US is one such place.

You're living in comfort and wealth in a civilized nation with modern regulated banks, so your perspective is narrow.

Ironically, the only times I've wired money internationally was so I could deposit fiat to a crypto exchange.

Canada to Japan, Canada to Poland. Each time it takes more than 2 weeks to arrive or be accessible in my account.

Whenever I "wire" crypto, it shows up in my account and is accessible in hours.

This is due to AML/KYC. The only reason you can do that with crypto is it's got the safety off.

No, I'm not being disingenuous. I'm telling you that it can take a number of days (4 if a weekend is involved) for retail transfers between American bank accounts to clear. I'm very aware that this is a matter of updating a simple database record--that's why it's so frustrating and why many people are bypassing this system entirely with stablecoins.

> A friend who works in real estate foreclosures told me that everyone he works with is using stable coins now for this very reason.

How exactly does that work? Have trustees started accepting stablecoins for deposits? Are there auctions where you can pay with stablecoins? Or is it just for payments from foreclosure buyers to their representatives who make bids on the buyers' behalf?

I believe they were just using it as a method to prove available funds while waiting on the traditional banks / lawyers to do their thing. The more interesting part to me was that he said it was guys in their late 50's / early 60's with backgrounds in construction learning how to use crypto for these foreclosure auctions.

> I believe they were just using it as a method to prove available funds while waiting on the traditional banks / lawyers to do their thing.

That sounds really vague. A proof of funds letter has nothing to do with money transfers. You can walk into a bank branch and get a signed proof of funds letter right there. The people actually selling the property that require a proof of funds letter are going to be either a trustee or court auction (foreclosure), or when making an offer to a bank for an REO/bank-owned property (what some people mistakenly call foreclosures).

It would be really interesting if those parties started accepting stablecoin signed messages as proof of funds letters, but I do not know of any that do. The real interesting part in that scenario would have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies - it would mean the widespread acceptance of public key cryptography for legal and financial documents and transactions. Once that happens there would be even less reason for the really shitty distributed database part of cryptocurrencies anymore. Not a popular opinion, but one I have held for a long time, and if you think the system through it is hard not to arrive at the same conclusion. "You mean this all could be done with PGP in the 1990s?"

What it sounds like is happening is that third-party companies involved in foreclosure buying are accepting stablecoin signed messages to act as financing intermediaries. That really does not mean a lot - there are even financing companies out there specializing in supplying "instant" proof of funds letters to house flippers that are really conditional loan offers.