> how do you buy crypto with cash? Right now, you have to open an account with 1 of the exchanges, like Kraken, or Bitstamp, or GDAX, or wallets like Coinbase,

> how do you buy crypto with cash? Right now, you have to open an account with 1 of the exchanges, like Kraken, or Bitstamp, or GDAX, or wallets like Coinbase, link your Bank account and wire money in. This is like the Wild West these days, with horror stories of wire transfers not getting credited for weeks and some not getting any response from customer support (all do email only, no phone). I think they are also having a hard time with the insane spike in interest. Kraken CEO is claiming that they are seeing 50,000 Account openings per day[1] and are not able to handle it and hence the 5XX HTTP errors that people are seeing on their site. > This blaze is on fire. > The recent, unexpected explosion in demand has been overwhelming. Each of the past few days has produced 50,000 new account registrations and 10,000 new support tickets — an order of magnitude above where we were just last quarter. Concurrent users, daily trades and volumes are also hitting new all-time highs. We are struggling to keep up. [1] Source: https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-next-week/ https://blog.kraken.com/post/1399/degraded-service-upgrade-n... One thing I'm still not able to wrap my head around is this. In order to 'BUY' Crypto currency, you have to pay plain old Paper currency like USD or JPY (referred to as FIAT currency in the crypto world). So how does this make Crypto like Bitcoin an independent currency? There are also some stories that 40% of Bitcoin is 'OWNED' by less than 1000 individuals / institutions around the world. That's not the case with paper money though.