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Comment by null0pointer | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty clearly not a failure of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin et al. are still chugging along just fine. This is, once again, a failure of a centralized business in which people placed way too much trust. I hope SBF, and other "crypto" company execs, are held accountable for misleading customers about their offerings. Specifically calling it crypto when it's not.

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Bitcoin failed, though?

All the proposed usecases except speculation and censorship resistant wealth transfers (eg. getting money out of Russia) have been abandoned.

I pay all salaries in Bitcoin. Way faster, cheaper, easier than fiat.

I used bitcoin to remit money to another country just yesterday.

I sent EUR from one bank account in country X to another bank account in country Y the other day. It arrived in five seconds and it cost me less than 1 EUR to transfer 2k EUR.

I have also done that. Congrats. Some places it’s easier to move money with bitcoin as even though i can send money directly they have tons of limitations in place around amount that you can send that is very low.

Just because you haven’t found crypto helpful doesn’t mean it doesn’t have use cases.

Well yea, the main use case is crime. You've just admitted to committing a crime.

Surely we can think of other reasons they might want to avoid TradFi?

Maybe the payment is related to, say, Cannabis, so companies like Wise would refuse to facilitate it [1], legal or not.

Or perhaps they've heard the stories of PayPal seizing funds with no explanation or recourse (e.g. [2]), and don't want to roll the dice on that.

Maybe they want to exchange currency at the actual market rate, rather than PayPal's 3-4% spread.

Or they might not want to wait forever for a two-sided ACH transfer (usually the cheapest option with e.g. Wise), or pay wire fees and still have to wait until Monday morning before a US bank will consider processing the transfer.

[1] https://wise.com/acceptable-use-policy

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/paypal-stole-use...

I'm assuming this was in the EU and you weren't exchanging currencies?

Correct.

I used PayPal to remit money to another country just yesterday

While losing a ton of money during this process

I used the app my internet only bank made to send money to buy a house for cash a few months back, pretty sure bitcoin wasn’t an option.

You can buy houses for bitcoin in some places but im really not arguing that bitcoin is the best money to use for every day. I responded to a person who said it had no use case. I use bitcoin multiple times a year for transactions where it works better. And i happened to do that yesterday.

It’s crazy how stupid HN becomes at the word crypto.

“A non binary view about crypto omgzzz can’t compute!!!”

No, you are not buying houses for bitcoins. You are using bitcoins that are converted to the currency the house is quoted at and if the amount is greater than the contract price you get the house.

It is no different from saying "In some places I can buy houses with cocaine". Sure, if the buyer thinks they can immediately offload cocaine for cash, the buyer might take it. That does not mean that the house is sold for cocaine.

1. BTC has cratered 20% in the past couple days. I know, par for the course for crypto, but also a good example of why it doesn't share standard features of real currencies.

2. All the "not your keys, not your coins" mindless chanting misses the point. While true, a modern financial system depends on being able to have trust in financial institutions if you actually need to move money quickly. Years ago I went the "move everything to cold storage" route, and it was a major pain in the ass, not to mention slow and expensive every time you needed to move to an exchange to trade or convert to fiat. It's the equivalent of stuffing your money under your mattress - valid for emergency situations, but not for a currency you actually want to transact in.

Oh, and the reason hardly anyone actually stuffs money under their mattress any more is that we've built up institutions (e.g. FDIC insurance, SIPC insurance, and the associated regulations to provide this insurance) to reliably protect depositors.

> 1. BTC has cratered 20% in the past couple days. I know, par for the course for crypto, but also a good example of why it doesn't share standard features of real currencies.

Currencies tanking is not uncommon either. I'm not sure what you think this proves exactly.

Major fiat currencies tanking 20% in a matter of hours is extremely uncommon, that's my whole point. In the forex world moving a percent or two in a single day is considered a major, major move. In the land of crypto that's standard lunchtime volatility.

Cold storage is kind of an old concept. Now there are multisig variants and tools like Fireblocks to allow active trading without being immediately hacked.

That's what people don't get. FTX' spectacular failure is literally an advertisement for decentralization.

The "no true Scotsman" is such an old and failed defense for crypto. Not even the believers believe in it anymore.

What? FTX is a centralized custodian. It is in competition with DeFi protocols.

I think you missed the point. It’s about saying “this is different, the rules don’t apply and we can do whatever we like”

The actual tech is sort of irrelevant, it’s the hubris and exceptionalism

Bitcoins is not fine. It is down roughly 75% over this year.

Cryptocurrency failed to be fast enough to support sophisticated DEXes. This failure created the need for FTX.

This is good for Bitcoin.

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