Comment by trixie_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trixie_ | Hacker News Reader

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It works amazing. I can send large sums of value across the world, in minutes, without going through a bank.

Moving money any other way (ACH/wire) feels primitive by comparison. Plus often you have to use a bank as an intermediary which doubles the send time - not anymore.

This goes for mineable crypto and stable coins alike. Mineable crypto has the added benefit of controlled inflation which is amazing for storing value without the rug being pulled out from under you.

Easy to get stolen? You can literally store millions of dollars yourself with a 12 word pass code that never touches the internet.

Given how irresponsible the government has been printing trillions of dollars, dollars are not a store of value.

Stocks and real estate are good, like crypto it’s about diversification. All asset classes will fluctuate. Crytpo is still early days.

But as a liquid store of value really nothing beats it. Inflation controlled, fast to transfer, easy to verify, able to hold yourself, zero weight, decentralized, etc.. <- THIS is the intrinsic value of crytpo and what makes it valuable.

Show me another form of money with better properties than these and I’ll use it.

> It works amazing. I can send large sums of value across the world, in minutes, without going through a bank.

There are a multitude of remittence organizations which provide the same service, you could run down to your local Hawala for example. In non western parts of the world, remittences are quite often done outside of banks.

I gather you are in the US since you mention ACH. Here in Asia the concept of non bank transactions have existed for a long time due to the amount of unbanked people in the world. I can even have money delivered to my door.

There are tradeoffs on both sides, if I send bitcoin to the wrong address I would likely never see it again vs a bank where I have a high probability of getting it back even if it was my mistake.

I’m not talking about just Asia, I’m talking about anywhere from the world no matter what system is in place. That’s why crypto is valuable. It doesn’t matter what banking or remittance services are available, crypto not just works, but works in a way that lets you send more money, cheaper, with zero paperwork’s or middlemen. Really frictionless. Like handing cash to someone in real life (which I guess in your world wouldn’t be allowed because you might not get it back)

> I’m not talking about just Asia

Neither am I either, I am using Asia as an example because the financial system has similar features to those you mention you desire in a system. There is an entire world out there with many countries (contrary to the world series of baseball), and many of them have different needs and services.

I am a westerner, I grew up having to go into banks to make transactions and I have seen the technical advancements which banks have made over many decades. I moved to Asia, and the financial system here is different. It functions different, many people do not have bank accounts let alone id to open one.

What I am suggesting is that the issues you may have have grown from a market with different drivers. The banks aren't just difficult because they want to be, they need to be. Legislation and regulation has made them that way.

> It doesn’t matter what banking or remittance services are available, crypto not just works, but works in a way that lets you send more money, cheaper, with zero paperwork’s or middlemen. Really frictionless.

You are describing part of the system, not its entirety. It is easy to send money, you could send me 10,000 USD now for an example (feel free to :)), I cannot access it easily. To access it I would have to sell it on Binance, then have the proceeds sent to a virtual wallet. I am fortunate, I have these accounts setup, many people in Asia and other places in the world don't have bank accounts, they don't have id's, they don't even have smart phones. All you are doing is moving blocks on a block chain it's not really moving, while people in other parts of the world still use money as a functional part of their daily lives.

> Like handing cash to someone in real life (which I guess in your world wouldn’t be allowed because you might not get it back)

It's not like that at all. I live in a real cash based economy, one where shops cannot even take credit cards in almost all but the minority of cases. I would not hesitate to say that 99% of transactions in the country which I am currently in are cashed based, real cash, not swiping your credit card, real paper. I would be lucky to find a store which could sell me a banana for a full bitcoin.

Of course I would be worried if I sent 10,000 USD to the wrong person and could not get it back. Now in saying that I am not an opponent to the idea of crypto in fact I have some, I am not sure even if I am proponent of regulation of the crypto industry. But I did need to point out that the problems you mention are because of the attributes of the banking system, in some ways crypto lacks attributes which makes it worse in other areas. If USDT crashes one day, we can compare why the regulation of the banking sector made that industry a better one for example.

There are multiple services out there than can send/receive crypto as well as seamlessly convert it to fiat and load a debit card, all through the same service. This basically solves all the issues you illustrate.

Total international transfer of whatever form of crytpo you want, without banks or middlemen, that is instantly usable in whatever local currency. Diversify - store some of your money across different crypto’s, stable coins, and when you want to use it you can easily do that through a debit card or take out hard cash with the same debit card.

Seriously crypto is the first real form of digital cash that can be personally held. It is revolutionary. Before crytpo all electronic forms of money were basically abstractions of bank transfers.

> There are multiple services out there than can send/receive crypto as well as seamlessly convert it to fiat and load a debit card, all through the same service. This basically solves all the issues you illustrate.

This is a last mile issue, those services simply do no exist or are not accessible in other parts of the world.

I agree with you that Crypto is efficient for the transfer of money. But I disagree with you on its frictionless use and availability.

A quick Google search points to the global remittence market being worth over 700 Billion USD annually. A lot of this is not done via banks, they go through 3rd party services such at Western Union, or Zoom or one of many other services. People have been doing money transfers for a long time prior to crypto and without banks and still have not resolved the last mile issue, and crypto hasn't either.

> Diversify - store some of your money across different crypto’s, stable coins, and when you want to use it you can easily do that through a debit card or take out hard cash with the same debit card.

That's pretty hard to do, when there is an ATM for 100KM for some people. But this is the irony, you say that Crypto is without banks, and is more efficient but then you revert back to a banking solution like debit cards to fix the last mile issue. Take away the ATM, take away the debit card, take away the bank, take away the merchants who accept it, you have crypto now in your wallet and you pretty much cannot do a single thing with it. But I guess you can transfer crypto fast.

Ah yes the third world has bigger problems.

I’m talking about easily moving and using crytpo in countries that have access to ATMs and debit cards, in which case it’s very useful.

I can send large sums of value across the world, in minutes, without going through a bank

Oh, I can do that too. The problem is when I’m on the receiving side, because most goods are sold in fiat and I have a hard time explaining where this large sum of fiat came from to unfreeze my bank account.

You’re talking like bitcoin is a uncontrolled sea, and now that it’s there, it’s so easy to send a boat from Asia to North America. Problem is, North America is US and Canada, both running their border protection services. And there is just nothing in the sea itself.

If you have a hard time explaining where the money came from then yea they were right to freeze your bank account.

The regulations and tax reporting requirements from the IRS at least are very clear. No problems at all with that.

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