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You see irony, I see a captured government. Wealthy, envious of seeing their assets outcompeted by crypto are now hoping banks can allow them to further privat

by r00fus 5y ago

You see irony, I see a captured government. Wealthy, envious of seeing their assets outcompeted by crypto are now hoping banks can allow them to further privatize the gains while socializing the losses.

arcticbull 5y ago
Whose exactly is "their" assets? Assets belong to people, and they're also not broadly stored at banks.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Financial instruments are assets as well. Banks handle those all the time.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Currencies aren't assets. [1] [1] https://www.commonfund.org/blog/is-currency-an-asset-class#:~:text=Currencies%20are%20not%20an%20asset,trade%20compared%20to%20another%20currency https://www.commonfund.org/blog/is-currency-an-asset-class#:....
    - Kranar 5y ago
      One random person's blog post is not sufficient to disqualify centuries of economic and accounting literature that has classically defined cash to be a canonical asset class. Currencies are universally listed at the top of any balance sheet, small or large company alike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        That's fair, I was off base. Withdrawn, but I'll leave it up so folks understand what you're replying to. Thanks for the correction!
thr0wawayf00 5y ago
If you actually dig into all of the services that banking provides, grandiose statements like this fall apart pretty quickly. One of the biggest problems that crypto hasn't figured that banking is great at is transaction reversal and fraud-prevention. The banking system uses wire transfers that can be reversed if necessary, bitcoin has nothing like this. If an attacker gets your bitcoin wallet ID and key, say goodbye to your coin. That's it, you have no recourse, and frankly, placing all of the responsibility on consumers to safeguard their digital assets without any sort of recourse is pretty ridiculous. The crypto community loves to talk a bunch of trash about financial regulation, and some of it is true, but a fair amount of regulation actually benefits consumers in ways that crypto just isn't capable of at this time.
- trixie_ 5y ago
  That’s true, but I think people overall are pretty happy with crypto. You can move more money, faster, cheaper and with way less hassle than a wire transfer. In addition crypto exchanges and services have proven pretty reliable. It really is night and day vs traditional banking.
  - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
    > You can move more money, faster, cheaper and with way less hassle than a wire transfer. My point is that the speed and cheapness a crypto system comes at a pretty significant risk. Another major benefit to the banking system is that all solid banks are insured by the FDIC, meaning that if the bank fails, the FDIC guarantees all accounts held by the bank for up to $250k. In order to do this, banks have to meet capital liquidity requirements set out by auditors and meet certain benchmarks. Again, another thing that doesn't exist in crypto but should. When everything goes smoothly, crypto works great. But if the day ever comes that a big company like Coinbase gets hacked and crypto is exfiltrated, it'll be a real test for the community because these are problems that have been solved for decades. > In addition crypto exchanges and services have proven pretty reliable. Look at the mt gox hack, millions upon millions in crypto was stolen in that hack, and there was no recourse for any of those folks. Who knows what is going to happen with Tether? You don't have look that hard to find the kind of financial criminality banking is so often accused of persisting in the crypto community as well.

by r00fus 5y ago

arcticbull 5y ago

Whose exactly is "their" assets? Assets belong to people, and they're also not broadly stored at banks.

r00fus 5y ago
Financial instruments are assets as well. Banks handle those all the time.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Currencies aren't assets. [1] [1] https://www.commonfund.org/blog/is-currency-an-asset-class#:~:text=Currencies%20are%20not%20an%20asset,trade%20compared%20to%20another%20currency https://www.commonfund.org/blog/is-currency-an-asset-class#:....
  - Kranar 5y ago
    One random person's blog post is not sufficient to disqualify centuries of economic and accounting literature that has classically defined cash to be a canonical asset class. Currencies are universally listed at the top of any balance sheet, small or large company alike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_and_cash_equivalents
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      That's fair, I was off base. Withdrawn, but I'll leave it up so folks understand what you're replying to. Thanks for the correction!

thr0wawayf00 5y ago

If you actually dig into all of the services that banking provides, grandiose statements like this fall apart pretty quickly. One of the biggest problems that crypto hasn't figured that banking is great at is transaction reversal and fraud-prevention. The banking system uses wire transfers that can be reversed if necessary, bitcoin has nothing like this. If an attacker gets your bitcoin wallet ID and key, say goodbye to your coin. That's it, you have no recourse, and frankly, placing all of the responsibility on consumers to safeguard their digital assets without any sort of recourse is pretty ridiculous. The crypto community loves to talk a bunch of trash about financial regulation, and some of it is true, but a fair amount of regulation actually benefits consumers in ways that crypto just isn't capable of at this time.

trixie_ 5y ago
That’s true, but I think people overall are pretty happy with crypto. You can move more money, faster, cheaper and with way less hassle than a wire transfer. In addition crypto exchanges and services have proven pretty reliable. It really is night and day vs traditional banking.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  > You can move more money, faster, cheaper and with way less hassle than a wire transfer. My point is that the speed and cheapness a crypto system comes at a pretty significant risk. Another major benefit to the banking system is that all solid banks are insured by the FDIC, meaning that if the bank fails, the FDIC guarantees all accounts held by the bank for up to $250k. In order to do this, banks have to meet capital liquidity requirements set out by auditors and meet certain benchmarks. Again, another thing that doesn't exist in crypto but should. When everything goes smoothly, crypto works great. But if the day ever comes that a big company like Coinbase gets hacked and crypto is exfiltrated, it'll be a real test for the community because these are problems that have been solved for decades. > In addition crypto exchanges and services have proven pretty reliable. Look at the mt gox hack, millions upon millions in crypto was stolen in that hack, and there was no recourse for any of those folks. Who knows what is going to happen with Tether? You don't have look that hard to find the kind of financial criminality banking is so often accused of persisting in the crypto community as well.