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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

If I wanted to send you $50 worth of assets, literally right now, what alternatives do we have apart from crypto? Certainly nothing that does such a good job of preserving our relative privacy to each other. I don't want to, but it is still an interesting question.

There are capabilities here that have never existed before, it seems likely that something radical will happen in time. There is already a lot of money sloshing around, and it takes a while for innovations to sink in.

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A regular bank transfer? I know the US doesn't really do that kind of thing, but here in Europe I can send money to another bank account within 10 seconds.[1] And it doesn't even cost me or you anything and all I need is your IBAN.

[1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

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Here is a Monero address. Things sent there ends up with me. I advise against sending anything to it. Are you going to post your IBAN and account details?

I don't actually know what my IBAN is, but assuming it is my account number I'm not comfortable posting it here like I just did for a crypto address. This technology is something other than what I've had access to before.

Have you tried sending money across the world in 10 seconds, to somebody outside of the EU? Most answers to this are PayPal, Wise, or another multibillion dollar private enterprise.

What do you have against multibillion dollar private enterprise?

SEPA instant transfers are (unfortunately) not free or even available everywhere.

My bank had them for a while, they cost 5€ but they are currently (and have been for a few months already) unavailable due to "widespread fraud".

At least I know that those 5€ only change on a term of months, or with inflation.

Last time I looked at ETH and BTC I spent a good 30mins trying to figure out how much the transaction would actually cost me and if it depended if I clicked GO at an opportune moment. And yes, I admit that this might have only been a difference of cents, but I wouldn't know that beforehand.

You say assets, but cryptocurrencies are not assets. They're funny little monopoly money bills that have no value in the outside world. If you send me $50 in ETH or any large, largely used coin, you're going to pay the same amount in fees. OH and by the time it arrives, it might be worth $45, or $55, you'll never know. Or you could send me a "stable" coin and hope you don't get rug pulled in the middle. Then I have to grab it and find a sucker that wants to buy it from me at exact value (either exchanges, which are going to find bigger suckers than them, or individuals in the street, which don't exist.). But we both know it's not going to happen because why would the sucker on the street buy from me instead of a "trusted" exchange, and why would the "trusted" exchange just take it from me at market rates, instead of charging fees and lowering the exchange rate to make a profit on it.

In the real world, if you have an actual asset, you physically ship it, and it costs money, but I have something in my hands. In cryptocurrency fantasyland, I can buy drugs with it. Or shitty NFTs.

You seem stuck in 2018. No one would use ETH to transfer $50 worth of money unless they already have that and the recipient wants ETH. But if you actually care about fees and speed you would not use ETH. (I wont shill any specific coin but there are plenty with Tx speed in the seconds and fractions of a penny fees.) And if you are actually worried about the price movements in the 3 seconds you could simply use a stable coin but realistically its only in your mind since "holding" a volatile asset for a few seconds is way less risky that holding a non-volatile asset for long time (which you likely do all day every day and dont even care about).

Needless to say that DEXes exist as well so you can exchange without using a "trusted" exchange. And CBDCs aka "gov stable coins" will come as well at which point the risk of holding it is exactly the same as holding paper money and less risk that holding fiat in your bank account because CBDCs would be a balance direly by the central bank so you avoid the traditional bank which could go bankrupt.

Just to be clear I dont think using crypt as a replacement for cash is a proper use case. Buying coffee with crypto and all that stuff is rather silly at least today.

I think crypto as a means for payment has its real use case in international transactions. There are millions of people who send money back home from all around the world and no traditional banking dependent service can even remotely compete with crypto. You can no use all the fast local apps that do not actually move any money just change balances between its own users.

Its only a matter of time before companies will use crypto for this as well if they deal with international payments. Crypto in this case will just be the bridge currency and its value or whether it goes up or down does not matter. I might send CAD and you get USD the exchange is done automatically from CAD to crypto to USD. You dont need a bank who takes a fee or gives a bad rate because this exchange can run over public DEX where everyone get the best rate aka the actual market rate. Nothing outside of crypto can do this. Every other solution has a middleman who sucks out a profit and make the system worse for everyone + is a risk especially if that middlemen is in another jurisdiction.

Sending any amount of ETH right now is going to cost you more like $3-6 of fees, not $50. This has been standard for a while. Other than a spike yesterday with the FTX fallout, fees for sending ETH have been in the $1-10 range for months now

And are you sending and receiving often 50$ worth of assets? It's one thing to say it's possible (and everybody will agree) and another thing is that sending it this way is "better" - for whatever definition of better. But back to my question: are you using this mode yourself? Often?

Cash. In an envelope. To an anonymous PO box. Or text a cash card or amazon voucher code to a burner number. Use a drop gang or mule. Find a Hawala broker. Etc. etc.

I can't tell at this point whether you are trolling, or one of the HN hivemind that actually believes sending cash in an envelope is somehow faster and more secure than using a blockchain and cryptography for payments.

The question was about sending assets and preserving privacy, not about speed or security. Most crypto currencies are the very opposite of privacy preserving, unless you really think that having all your transactions on a publicly available ledger in a form that is trivial to link to your real identity is a good way of preserving anonymity? Yes I know Monero exists. I also know that vulnerabilities in its privacy model pop up every couple of months and you still have to convert it back into something you can use to buy useful stuff and pay your taxes. Doing this means you're going to probably have to go through an exchange that adheres to stricter KYC rules than the average bank. So again, not exactly good for preserving privacy. Obviously as assets they have massive disadvantages due to their volatility. And given the frequency of hacks and people losing their keys due to general idiocy I wouldn't exactly call most crypto "secure". I'd actually say that the irreversibility of transactions makes it insecure by design.

Personally if I want to send money quickly and securely, be it within the UK or internationally, I use the banking system. It's cheaper, its faster, its more secure and if someone makes a mistake it is easily reversible. I even send a monthly remittance to Madagascar for free, and its not exactly known for its advanced banking system what with it being the 4th poorest country in the world. Yes it takes 2 to 4 days to get there, but I can pay anyone within the EU instantly or if its an American there's always paypal.

I'm 90% sure at this point that the main reason that cryptocurrencies became so popular (apart from the opportunities for massive fraud and bilking of the gullible) is because the USA has a banking system that has barely evolved since the 1980s. I mean they were still flying cheques around in 2004 and I still have American businesses trying to pay me by cheque on a regular basis in 2022. When you consider it through that lens it's no wonder Bitcoin sounds like a good idea.

Monero, zcash, aztec, tornado cash all work pretty well. Could you link to Monero's current vulnerabilities? There have been some known and theoretical issues with the privacy of Monero and Tornado Cash but it isn't a monthly occurrence. How are any of these protocols less secure than sending dollar bills in an envelope?

Sending money with a UK bank or PayPal is the opposite of privacy preserving. The convenience of it is fine for UK to UK and EU banks, not great for private, secure, instant and international payments.

Venmo? Cash app? Zelle? I use one of these every day

If you require that level of privacy you are either

-Buying drugs or illegal porn

-A terrorist

-A libertarian that opposes taxation

That's not how society works thank god.

I'm not a fan of crypto, but when I read things like this, I have mixed feelings. Porn showing homosexual acts is illegal in some countries. Abortion is becoming illegal in many parts of the US.

It's a conflict that isn't going to be ended any time soon: social control is used for good and for evil. We celebrate social disorder in Tiananmen Square and fear it at the U.S. Capitol. It's not like we can pick one side, order or disorder, and feel completely safe with our choice.

I don't see how I would buy drugs or conduct terrorism on HN. And while avoiding tax on $50 might be a win, it is a boring part of the scenario.

I don't want to post PII info publicly from this account. But, in practice (ie, we're long past theory) if I want to accept payment as roenxi I can. And if I use something like Monero, it'll be extremely anonymous. There'll be a use for that sort of tech to someone and for legitimate purposes.

People with your logic agrees with mass surveillance because good people have nothing to hide. Privacy doesn't mean you have something to hide.

you forgot that the only use of cryptography in general is for pedophiles

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