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Comment by jmcqk6 | Hacker News Reader

> Crypto is a way to store and exchange things over the internet without counterparty risk.

I feel like I must be missing something, because there's still massive amounts of counterparty risk. If you're engaging with a bad actor, the only thing that it can guarantee is that the transfer of payment is completed, but there are no guarantees around the exchange of value.

If you're trading with someone operating in bad faith, there is nothing about blockchain that is going to help you, and in fact it becomes much worse, because there is no mechanism for forcing refunds. At least with legal tender you have entire systems in place for dealing with bad actors. I'm more that willing to recognize there are massive problems with those systems, but I have never understood how blockchain replaces those systems.

Can you explain in detail what you mean when you say there isn't any counterparty risk?

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You are right that in the scenario of exchanging crypto for physical goods there is counterparty risk but when using crypto along with digital contracts there is not.

I think what you are missing is that in all transactions in the current financial system there is an additional source of counterparty risk in the bank itself. When SVB failed, if the government did not intervene all depositors would have lost all the money stored in the bank and all pending transactions would also have been lost. Or if you use a credit card, if the issuing bank goes bankrupt between the time the purchase was made and the business received the funds in their bank the business would lose the thing they sold and not receive money for it.

> I think what you are missing is that in all transactions in the current financial system there is an additional source of counterparty risk in the bank itself.

This is not a risk I have really worried about. I much much larger problems dealing with bad faith actors dealing meatspace goods than I have with my bank.

Plus, you gloss over the fact that my money in the bank is actually federally insured. If both the bank and the federal insurance fails, I will have much larger problems than my bank account - there is unlikely a scenario where that happens and my basic livelihood is not threatened, and doubly unlikely that I'll have access to a reliable network for engaging with a blockchain.

You're describing things that are very unlikely.

Perhaps you're right about digital contracts? Maybe goods that can be encrypted are able to be effective traded without risk - though I have a hard time envisioning completely removing the risk of a bad actor. There will always need to be some kind of trusted third party to arbitrate, and block chains do not provide that.

Not to mention, I can't think of a single digital good that I've needed where the transaction would have been improved by using a blockchain cryptocurrency.

> You're describing things that are very unlikely.

It happened not even a year ago with SVB. Also, like my original comment says, you are taking a very US centered perspective when you say things are low risk.

Not OP, but based on my (limited) understanding.. it should be possible to use something like a smart contract to provide a stable and auditable surface area whereby two parties could exchange funds for goods via escrow. You would be trusting the underlying platform, but it seems to remove the dependence on the person selling to you as being a good actor.

Can’t you do that with a normal escrow service? People do it every day when they buy houses and other expensive items.

Why bother with blockchain?

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