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Comment by dontbenebby | Hacker News Reader

"Crypto" is just egold with extra steps.

cryptocurrency allows you to send money over the internet seamlessly which is pretty amazing.

I can do that today with no fee. I actually did it today and it was free to pay someone.

I can already do that far more easily using my bank. I sent money from my European bank to a Vietnamese account yesterday. Including opening my banking app, selecting the amount and so on, maybe 60 seconds total for the money to leave my account and arrive in the VN account.

Well how wonderful for you to be part of a certain privileged subset of people whose banking is fully accessible, easily usable, flows smoothly and has no political obstacles binding it. There are many others for who this isn't the case and all shills, NFT hustlers and cryptobros aside, the basic functionality of cryptocurrencies allows an excellent, hard-to-block workaround of these possible problems that many people I personally know have used to save their own assess in countries such as Russia, Mexico, Venezuela and (oddly perhaps) Hong Kong.

I don't understand that logic in your counterargument (and it's common among many people who hate on crypto btw. I don't single you out on this). It amounts to, "I can do this in this way and I love it, so I'm going to shit on alternative means that others might have to use for doing the same thing because they can't use my method" Really?

as long as seamlessly means paying very high fees and waiting a ridiculously long time for the transfer to be confirmed..

and explaining crypto to your non technical grandmother in law who needs some cash to pay some bills in a foreign country

You can rob someone blind more easily than ever too!

You can do that for free and faster (and also transferring actual money, not virtual coins you need to re exchange at the end for real money to be able to anything in the real world)

Where and how exactly? I'm not a huge crypto fan, but what you're saying is generally a huge problem with FIAT, unless you are sending it to someone in the same country as you.

see PayPal, TransferWise, IBAN etc.

Have you used paypal extensively? Have you not read the MANY horror stories about its arbitrary blocks, lockouts, outright thefts of funds or at least months-long freezes and so forth? All of these things happen with many other corporate platforms. Sure, they also work for millions of people but it's good to at least have an alternative that can be called on for when things go bad or you live in a place where banking isn't as smooth as it often is in interconnected western countries. What's wrong with having that? One doesn't need to be an NFT hustler, cryptobro or shitcoin scammer to appreciate these basic benefits of a means of wealth transfer that it's very difficult for governments to control.

I actually haven't heard the horror stories but I have been using PayPal relatively extensively since at least 2007 and never ever had an issue. Aside from many retail purchases in the UK I've used it to send money around the world also. I'm also pretty sure TransferWise (now "Wise") works for sending money across most of the world. Plus the latter is regulated in the UK so I know that up to £85k is guaranteed by the government to be safe. I am one of the bigger critics of government yet I trust them a lot more than anyone in crypto. Sure they've done bad, but at least they've done some good too.

I'm definitely not a crypto hater, I have used several cryptocurrencies somewhat. I wouldn't call it that smooth, and I'd also worry significantly about the lack of regulation (despite that being one of the main selling points of crypto) and the wild volatility.

It’s also completely uninsured against losses.

My bank and fidelity can both go bankrupt and shutdown, but I’m still FDIC and SIPC insured, I’ll get all my money back.

Good luck with getting your money back from Celsius, Binance, and Coinbase.

I can mail someone a check in about a day or two for the price of a greeting card, and for about fifteen bucks a formal wire transfer. The issues around payments in the USA are due to policy, not technical issues.

etulips

I suspect OP meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

Which, some believe, is where the idea for Bitcoin ultimately originated from.

I suspect parent was making an economics joke

etulips == electronic tulip mania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

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