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Why do people without money need to have bank accounts? If you answer is: To be able to make payments Then maybe a better question is -- Why should people nee

• hakfoo 5y ago
  As much as anything, people need bank accounts to receive payments to be part of a modern economy. Many retirees would fall well into the "people without money" category, but they still need to get their Social Security payment direct deposited. Many employers, especially in low-wage "people without money" sectors, aggressively push extortionate-fee prepaid-debit products on their workers if they can't accept a conventional direct deposit. Putting everyone on a single network, at the very least for this use case, reduces cost and complexity. Can you imagine the guaranteed confusion and error in a system where 40% of your employer's payroll was paid over ACH, 25% via crypto transfers split among a dozen blockchains, and the rest via paper cheques or prepaid debit cards mailed out? Yes, it's not the only possible solution to a payments ecosystem, but it's the closest thing to a universal one we have. People understand how it works and there are well-established risk and mitigation models for it. This is part of the reason I'm a bit hesitant about things like the "self banking" paradigm via cryptocurrency. Even once we solve the nuts-and-bolts problems of risk mitigation and seamless user experiences, it's likely to be a sharded market for the short term. I can easily imagine incurring fees and delays because my money is in a Dogecoin wallet but the water company only wants Monero to settle their bill.