Also here in Belgium, plenty of people are getting scammed by wire transfer, and no way to get their money back.
I think you have overly optimistic view on banks or the court system giving your money back.
If somehow you get through an in-person meeting with a bank branch manager to unwittingly wire millions of dollars, and the topic of how much money you're wiring and the exact purpose of wiring such a high amount isn't brought up, and you somehow still accidentally wire millions of dollars away without anyone ever bringing up the amount and purpose of the transaction, then I'm sure you'll still be able to recover that money back because banks are required to actually validate transactions of that size with KYC, AML, etc. laws. Only cryptocurrencies allow one the ability transmit this amount of money in seconds.
Isn't that only for cash transfers?
> which would likely involve a mandatory in-person meeting with the bank customer
At least at Chase and Fidelity, wires can be done over the phone with no limit.
> to verify their credentials and purpose
I've never seen a banker really help to verify wire instructions, as in contacting the intended recipient. Normally they just ask the sender if they've verified the instructions, if they understand that the wire is irreversible, etc.
Of course when it gets to the bank's wire department, they make some attempt to block suspicious wires. But they're guessing based on limited info, as they don't typically contact the sender or recipient.
> I'm sure you'll still be able to recover that money back because banks are required to actually validate transactions of that size with KYC, AML, etc. laws
From what I've heard, fraudsters will (indirectly) transfer funds to e.g. a Nigerian bank and cash out there. It doesn't always succeed, but it does sometimes, or wire fraud wouldn't exist.
But the scenario in the OP is only possible in cryptocurrencies. You can't put a button on a website "Click here to send a JPEG through email for $3.50*" with the fine print "*and also 100 million dollars" and expect that to ever work out with the legacy banking system. Only in cryptoland could someone ever accidentally yeet 100 million dollars in a few seconds by visiting a website and clicking a button.
I'm able to work with total strangers, raise money, sell products, contribute to causes, commission art work etc, etc, hold those funds in a smart contract treasury and encode rules to govern the spending of those funds.
Safe guards do exist for the aforementioned issue. Number one is not holding significant sums of money in a single wallet, unless it's a multi-sig that requires multiple parties to agree to transactions (like Gnosis Safe wallets, which store $100B+ in assets and are battle tested at this point).
The value of the PEOPLE tokens on the secondary market proceeded to increase nearly 10x in the weeks following the dissolution of the DAO. Even though market cap is declining, at $327M mcap, it is still many multiples of the amount raised.
PEOPLE tokens in circulation are still redeemable for the underlying ETH, but the monetary premium has increased as a result of the dispersed liquidity to so many holders (16K+) as well as the novelty of retaining the token for a failed, yet valiant effort.
When I purchased a house, I Googled the recipient, confirmed the certificate, Googled the number found on their website separately to confirm it was listed elsewhere as belonging to the company I expected it to belong to, called it, and got them to tell me the account details for the wire transfer, confirming it matched what I had been sent. Which, to their credit, their instructions also told me to do. And I initially sent the down payment, confirmed they received that, and only later in the process sent the remainder.
While there still are some ways to beat that (compromise the recipient's infrastructure, change the website, lock out the recipient from their email, insert into the email exchange, get a wire transfer done before the recipient can proactively call the target to warn them), it's a lot harder to pull off than "find a target that won't read the code very closely".
At least with crypto, the chain of ownership is transparent and can't be faked. So validation is cheap and easy to do.
In theory. The devil is in the details; does everyone know how to validate the chain of ownership, even the most non-technical of users who must rely on the system? If not, you either will never be mainstream, or you're reliant on a trusted agent to validate on your behalf (sorta like a title company!).
And if you screw something up with crypto, there is no way to address it. The complaint of "dealing with lawyers and trying to get someone to pay for it" is a feature, not a bug. Worst case, it's no different than the crypto outcome; best case, you have recourse.
AFAIK you don't need to be a title company to do this, any buyer could do it themselves.
And what if you don't know enough about land law to make sense of everything? That's when you need companies to do it for you.
Is checking the chain of ownership of cryptocurrencies easier than land? It depends whether you're talking to a real estate lawyer or a NFT seller.
I'm neither, and I don't see the intrinsic difference.
I worked at a financial institution, no way you could open an account, deposit some spare change, and then withdraw 900k after a few weeks especially in America. Compliance would be all over that account, which is probably why they got the money back anyhow because the crooks would have a lot of talking to do after getting that much money in their account. KYC and AML is required for both sides of the wire transfer.