7 ms·

Whereas cash is much better! You can't lose it, it can't catch on fire, it can't be blown away by the wind, it can't be stolen, you can't give it to the wrong p

Whereas cash is much better! You can't lose it, it can't catch on fire, it can't be blown away by the wind, it can't be stolen, you can't give it to the wrong person! So good. That's why everyone keeps all their money in cash at all times. What's that? They put their money in a bank? What if the bank owner takes all the money and flees to Venezuela? "You should only use trustworthy banks", you say? Interesting.

ceejayoz 6y ago
Someone across the world can't irreversibly take my cash with a couple keystrokes. My cash in the bank is protected by the US government. If they're not good for it, I've got bigger problems of the "zombie apocalypse" scale.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Everyone keeps shifting the goalposts. Are we comparing cash to cryptocurrency? Are we comparing banks to exchanges? You can't say "Cash is better than cryptocurrency because banks". If you want someone to safeguard your cryptocurrency, find a trustworthy custodian for it. The fact that banks won't hold cryptocurrency for you isn't the cryptocurrency's fault.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    The goalposts were mobile by design, that's how cryptocurrency promoters like them :). After all, it's not the skeptics that spread the idea that crypto should/will replace the whole fiat economy. One important problem of cryptocurrencies is blockchain's immutable nature. This is, of course, by design, but it's not something you actually want for real money. When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. If the bank fucks up, they can easily undo it, or I can compel them to undo it by proxy of the court (or threat of it). In the fiat world, unmaking a transaction is a relatively cheap operation. On the blockchain, not so much. While we can start piling up social and technological abstractions on top of crypto to allow for decent UX, this also erases the whole selling point of crypto (decentralization, anarchy) - at which point one has to ask, why burn all that energy just to reimplement fiat, poorly?
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      > When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. Wire transfers
    - andxor 6y ago
      You can implement all of this, including reversable transactions under specific conditions, via smart contracts, without sacrificing decentralization.
      - ludamad 6y ago
        When I can use a major chain and execute a smart contract for <$1 (on say a $100 contract) I'll be reasonably stoked. How are people playing with these when the fees are so high?
        andxor 6y ago
        A lot of liquidity is moving to L2 Ethereum already and you can definitely execute smart contracts there for way less than $1 (e.g. on Polygon). As for why people are willing to pay high gas fees on L1 - have you considered the possibility that the opportunities and value that they're getting out of it are worth the cost?
        ludamad 6y ago
        I am not debating that the value can be worth the cost; I really meant "playing". Thanks, I'll look into Polygon
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Smart contracts should really be called "dumb contracts", as they're strictly dumber than traditional, old-school contracts. Here's something worth pondering: what happens if you trigger a bug in a smart contract? What options do you have to fix or undo it? Smart contracts are all bug-ridden by definition - formally codifying intent is a General-AI-complete problem, and since we are nowhere near close to making a human-level AI, it follows that a smart contract is just a crude approximation of the most obvious aspects of what you actually meant it to represent (no different than any other program here). Traditional contracts are smart enough to not even try - they don't codify intent, they just help achieve mutual understanding and pin down shared context for further reference. Interpretation, execution and debugging are all left to the general framework of common sense, tradition, regulations and accumulated case law.
Majromax 6y ago
> What's that? They put their money in a bank? What if the bank owner takes all the money and flees to Venezuela? "You should only use trustworthy banks", you say? Interesting. Bank failures are indeed a problem of the banking system. That's also why developed countries impose strict regulations and depository insurance on their banks, so average people do not need to perform costly due diligence on their daily-use bank. Cryptocurrency exchanges currently dis-favour government regulation, so I doubt they will be seeking a mandatory deposit insurance regime anytime soon. Nothing prevents an exchange from taking out voluntary insurance from a private insurer, but I imagine that the underwriting fees would be costly.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  > I doubt they will be seeking a mandatory deposit insurance regime anytime soon Certainly, but they have a big vested interest in telling their customers "your money is safe with us, we even have the insurance to prove it!".
  - Majromax 6y ago
    They may, but it again goes back to costs. Do any crypto exchanges in fact carry such insurance in a verifiable manner? (It's cheaper to _say_ they have a Lloyd's of London policy than it is to actually have one, after all). I also didn't get into it in the parent comment, but deposit insurance also may not be suitable for those who are deliberately taking advantage of the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency. In the event of an exchange failure, the insurer or trustee would obviously need to know the personal details of the account-holder in order to remit payment. Keeping such contact information up-to-date and verified would replicate many of the same know-your-client rules that exchanges hate to follow.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      > would replicate many of the same know-your-client rules that exchanges hate to follow. They may hate to, but do you know any that don't? All the ones I've used asked for ID.
imtringued 6y ago
The problem with banks isn't that they outright scam you, it's that they are mismanaged and are too eager to lend out money to borrowers who cannot pay their debts back.
- nradov 6y ago
  That isn't a problem for individual depositors. Even if my bank is mismanaged, my personal accounts are safely insured.

ceejayoz 6y ago

Someone across the world can't irreversibly take my cash with a couple keystrokes. My cash in the bank is protected by the US government. If they're not good for it, I've got bigger problems of the "zombie apocalypse" scale.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
StavrosK 6y ago
Everyone keeps shifting the goalposts. Are we comparing cash to cryptocurrency? Are we comparing banks to exchanges? You can't say "Cash is better than cryptocurrency because banks". If you want someone to safeguard your cryptocurrency, find a trustworthy custodian for it. The fact that banks won't hold cryptocurrency for you isn't the cryptocurrency's fault.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  The goalposts were mobile by design, that's how cryptocurrency promoters like them :). After all, it's not the skeptics that spread the idea that crypto should/will replace the whole fiat economy. One important problem of cryptocurrencies is blockchain's immutable nature. This is, of course, by design, but it's not something you actually want for real money. When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. If the bank fucks up, they can easily undo it, or I can compel them to undo it by proxy of the court (or threat of it). In the fiat world, unmaking a transaction is a relatively cheap operation. On the blockchain, not so much. While we can start piling up social and technological abstractions on top of crypto to allow for decent UX, this also erases the whole selling point of crypto (decentralization, anarchy) - at which point one has to ask, why burn all that energy just to reimplement fiat, poorly?
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    > When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. Wire transfers
  - andxor 6y ago
    You can implement all of this, including reversable transactions under specific conditions, via smart contracts, without sacrificing decentralization.
    - ludamad 6y ago
      When I can use a major chain and execute a smart contract for <$1 (on say a $100 contract) I'll be reasonably stoked. How are people playing with these when the fees are so high?
      - andxor 6y ago
        A lot of liquidity is moving to L2 Ethereum already and you can definitely execute smart contracts there for way less than $1 (e.g. on Polygon). As for why people are willing to pay high gas fees on L1 - have you considered the possibility that the opportunities and value that they're getting out of it are worth the cost?
        ludamad 6y ago
        I am not debating that the value can be worth the cost; I really meant "playing". Thanks, I'll look into Polygon
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Smart contracts should really be called "dumb contracts", as they're strictly dumber than traditional, old-school contracts. Here's something worth pondering: what happens if you trigger a bug in a smart contract? What options do you have to fix or undo it? Smart contracts are all bug-ridden by definition - formally codifying intent is a General-AI-complete problem, and since we are nowhere near close to making a human-level AI, it follows that a smart contract is just a crude approximation of the most obvious aspects of what you actually meant it to represent (no different than any other program here). Traditional contracts are smart enough to not even try - they don't codify intent, they just help achieve mutual understanding and pin down shared context for further reference. Interpretation, execution and debugging are all left to the general framework of common sense, tradition, regulations and accumulated case law.

Majromax 6y ago

> What's that? They put their money in a bank? What if the bank owner takes all the money and flees to Venezuela? "You should only use trustworthy banks", you say? Interesting. Bank failures are indeed a problem of the banking system. That's also why developed countries impose strict regulations and depository insurance on their banks, so average people do not need to perform costly due diligence on their daily-use bank. Cryptocurrency exchanges currently dis-favour government regulation, so I doubt they will be seeking a mandatory deposit insurance regime anytime soon. Nothing prevents an exchange from taking out voluntary insurance from a private insurer, but I imagine that the underwriting fees would be costly.

StavrosK 6y ago
> I doubt they will be seeking a mandatory deposit insurance regime anytime soon Certainly, but they have a big vested interest in telling their customers "your money is safe with us, we even have the insurance to prove it!".
- Majromax 6y ago
  They may, but it again goes back to costs. Do any crypto exchanges in fact carry such insurance in a verifiable manner? (It's cheaper to _say_ they have a Lloyd's of London policy than it is to actually have one, after all). I also didn't get into it in the parent comment, but deposit insurance also may not be suitable for those who are deliberately taking advantage of the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency. In the event of an exchange failure, the insurer or trustee would obviously need to know the personal details of the account-holder in order to remit payment. Keeping such contact information up-to-date and verified would replicate many of the same know-your-client rules that exchanges hate to follow.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    > would replicate many of the same know-your-client rules that exchanges hate to follow. They may hate to, but do you know any that don't? All the ones I've used asked for ID.

imtringued 6y ago

The problem with banks isn't that they outright scam you, it's that they are mismanaged and are too eager to lend out money to borrowers who cannot pay their debts back.

nradov 6y ago
That isn't a problem for individual depositors. Even if my bank is mismanaged, my personal accounts are safely insured.