Hacker News Reader

Comment by SimianSci | Hacker News Reader

The Crypto industry continues their speedrun of rediscovering all of the reasons for why the global financial system exists.

What you've described is the same thing that many Crypto enthusiasts call a "Bank"

View on HN

Many banks don't have physical branches.

One that I'm using does, but I find it extremely annoying when they have me go to a branch to unblock my account that they locked due to a poorly calibrated risk system (that they need due to not supporting actually secure 2FA methods).

except banks staff can easily be bribed too. There is plenty of bank fraud happening.

I can walk into a bank branch and show documents.

I guess I can walk downtown to CB HQ, but something tells me I won't get past the front desk.

If my bank money gets stolen from me via fraud (unless I literally just Zelle the scammer), I get it back. That's the big difference.

Zelle is ultimately a bank transfer. Yes they say to consider them like sending cash, but a bank transaction is at least tracable to a real account owner, who could then be pursued in the case of fraud, and it well might be reversible if push came to shove or if there is documented fraud.

I know it's the massive exception but I was reimbursed when the exchange that tried to rugpull its users felt legal pressure. Things have changed slightly over the years - don't get me wrong, scams are still rampant.

It's been ages since I was in college and had an overdraft or some other bs bank related fee, but the bank manages to 'scam' you legally too. I'm just playing devils advocate and sharing an anecdote, I'm minimally involved in crypto anymore.

Can you show us that? Where the consumer is left with no money at all and bank does not take the loss.

Go Zelle someone and try to get the money back.

When I was "hacked" two years ago, their final hurrah before I finally got everything offline for a time, they sent zelles as much as they could and was able to recover it without any loss on my end.

I guess things have changed since it has not always been the case that the bank would reimburse you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-fraud-z...

Yeah, I think it truly depends on whether you hit the send button or not. Since I was hacked, it wasn't me hitting the send button.

If YOU are the one sending the money of course it is not a hack etc becuase YOU are sending it. If Zelle is hacked and someone steals your money through that hack you will not be left with the loss.

Coinbase is identical to a bank because it holds customer funds. Your comment isn't quite the dunk you think it is. Blockchains allow money to be held anonymously without any banks involved. Centralized exchanges are just profiting on speculation and probably should be banned.

My money in the bank in case of fraud is protected unless I voluntarily gave the fraudster my money. If a bank goes bankrupt, my money is protected by the government

First one might be kind true in the US. Second one is only true up to $250k and how much Yellen likes you. But they are not true around the world and probably for most of it.

By law yes it’s only $250K. But when the banks collapsed last year, the government made sure that no one lost money. In fact, no one has ever lost money because of an FDIC insured bank failure.

No they don’t. “Cryptocurrency” isn’t money at all. Just because you can trade it in for money, doesn’t make it so. I can also trade in my hat to the Buffalo Exchange for money. But my hat is not money.

There is no bright line separating "money" from any other type of fungible asset

Except for, you know, being able to spend it where you buy things? And deposit it into an actual bank? Those seem sort of intrinsic to how we use money today.

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

> > There is no bright line [...]

> Except for, you know, being able to spend it where you buy things? [...]

The extent to which you can use it to buy things is a good metric, but I think that comes in varying degrees rather than being a sharp line or binary true/false. There are at least some things you can buy with cryptocurrency, and arguably there are some forms of "regular" (fiat, national, government-issued) money that aren't very widely accepted.

what's more important to me is how quickly can you trade your hat, how quickly can you determine the marketable value of your hat for selling, how close in value can you buy that hat for the same price you sold it, how many hats can you buy or sell at that price?

and that's where hats fail in all metrics to cryptocurrency and how cryptocurrency satisfies my criteria for money

Any publicly traded stock is the same as your critetia, yet it isn't money either.

publicly traded stock is not liquid or fungible enough for my criteria actually

but it could be, especially if it was tokenized

I am paid my salary in crypto. I pay my rent in crypto. I pay for flights and car rentals in crypto. That's surely enough to be considered money.

Yeah, it would be more accurate to say that Coinbase is de facto a brokerage but does not have the same level of regulation as traditional brokerages. The result is the same though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com