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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Luckily they can increase their 'financial privilege' through something like a Wise multi-currency account. That lets people in huge swaths of the world (and growing) send money internationally, free of charge or for very low fees. [1] Crypto isn't the answer.

And neither is charging anyone who has non-crypto solutions with 'financial privilege.'

There's a world of 'trad-fi' solutions to this problem. Wise. M-PESA. Flutterwave. Just to pick 3.

What you don't pay in crypto with direct fees (and you do pay direct fees for everything) you also pay in counter-party risk, volatility, irreversibility. Trying to foist that on the world's poor as some kind of implement of financial freedom is kind of shameful, imo.

[1] https://wise.com/us/multi-currency-account/

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I used it before, but it needs a bank account as far as I know. Right now I'm in Colombia, and most of the people here don't have a bank account, because they know people who were burned by huge late fees.

When I was in Costa Rica a person asked me if I know a bank that doesn't take his money away, because sometimes money just disappears from the bank accounts.

With Bitcoin you can get hacked, you can lose your password, but at least you can really own it, and no bank can just randomly take away your money.

Just a few weeks ago Russia did the same thing for international accounts of people there, which is in the news, but it's happening in lots of 3rd world countries every day.

> I used it before, but it needs a bank account as far as I know.

Wise Multi-Currency does not, to my knowledge - it is a bank account and provides you banking details in many jurisdictions. The fact your bank charged you late fees isn't a reason not to have a bank, IMO, but to each their own.

> With Bitcoin you can get hacked, you can lose your password, but at least you can really own it, and no bank can just randomly take away your money.

Lots of people get their crypto seized by the government, all the time. At one point the biggest single Bitcoin wallet holders were the FBI and the Bulgarian FBI. It's time to let that narrative go.

> Lots of people get their crypto seized by the government, all the time. At one point the biggest single Bitcoin wallet holders were the FBI and the Bulgarian FBI. It's time to let that narrative go.

Cryptocurrencies are not "backdoored" like the banks as governments cannot order Bitcoin to hand over a specific person's money. While you can bug their keyboards or compromise their OSes etc., the best you can do is a $5 wrench attack if your target is not willing.

Doesn't the lack of a central authority increase the odds that coins, once seized, will be extremely difficult to recover? On par with trying to recover physical cash seized under civil asset forfeiture statutes, at least.

I don't have any direct experience here, but my understanding is that bank and credit accounts are typically frozen, not seized, so the process is easier to reverse.

Siezed by an exchange. When your coins are on an exchange you don't control them.

Just checked wise to transfer from USD to ARS and the exchange rate is the official mandated by central bank which isn't the real market exchange rate, it's roughly the half.

Since you can't receive USD here (well you can, but the government wants them more than you), you either send ARS from abroad or you receive USD and they get converted at the official rate which means you lose half your money.

I know Argentina is a big red edge case, but it shows how crypto can help when the currently existing financial system crumbles due to power abuse.

Doesn't Wise charge ~3-5% for currency conversions or cross-border payroll?

It's around 0.2-0.3% for most currencies I believe.

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