4 ms·

What can also happen with banks is that they forbid you from withdrawing more than a certain amount, or take x% from the top of every account because of economi

• ajxs 7y ago
  I've never heard of the latter occurring, can you point me to an example of where this has happened and which countries it has happened in? I can imagine that anything could happen in Zimbabwe, but if this happened in the western world I'd expect widespread outrage. The former isn't particularly common in modern times. In the US deposits are insured by the FDIC, which has pretty much brought bank runs to a halt. It's happened in Greece recently if I recall, but even then it's still pretty rare. I don't consider either of these good reasons why an international consortium of tech giants is any more trustworthy than domestic financial institutions that, while greedy and wicked as they may be, are tied up in regulations.
  • swift532 7y ago
    Well Greece is the example I was going to name. It doesn't happen that often, but it's quite possible. As for the FDIC, there's a similar deal in most countries up to a specific amount(FDIC is $150K, other countries sometimes have less), but I don't think the FDIC has enough money for a more massive bank run. I agree with you that Facebook & co. aren't that much more trustworthy at all, my comment was aiming more towards pointing out some benefits of things like Bitcoin.