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Idk. I get my direct deposit into my account from my employer for free. I can transfer funds to pay bills for free. And I can go anywhere in the world and withd

Idk. I get my direct deposit into my account from my employer for free. I can transfer funds to pay bills for free. And I can go anywhere in the world and withdraw money for less than a 5$ fee in less than a minute. Try doing that with crypto.

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
I don't think that the convenience of moving money around has much to do with what the article's talking about. It's more about flexibility when there're more than just one party involved--the kind of stuff that with fiat you'd have to hire lawyers for.
GVRV 5y ago
You must live in a developed nation. I'm from one of the tier-2 cities in India. I cannot hold stable, diversified collection of global currencies in my bank account and cannot invest in global markets without going to a branch in a bigger town and without significant paperwork. I cannot legally accept money from around the world for my software development skills without being a part of the existing banking system. My relatives in my native village just 100 KMs away don't even have a bank they can walk into (they have mobile phones with data though). Do we just have to wait for regulated, for-profit entities to calculate when it will be profitable for them to provide us with services? What benefit did maintaining the status quo provide for people in countries where inflation wiped out savings overnight? If we have the skills and the opportunity to participate in an alternative, mostly open system, how long should we need to wait for permission?
- infinityplus1 5y ago
  You can invest in mutual funds which invest in foreign companies. Creating online accounts for direct mutual funds investments is fully digital using Video KYC.
  - GVRV 5y ago
    Yes, I'm aware of that. However, I need to go through a mutual fund and rely on their stock picking strategy and fees (we've had mutual funds default very recently). I want to enter into a position in a specific stock according to my strategy at a price I'm comfortable at. This again leads to the same point: why are we so _comfortable_ with the status quo? I want to think about what could be possible, not what sub-par alternative is available today.
    - soco 5y ago
      Just for the sake of argument, the same can be said about dark web: it offers freedom to do whatever business one pleases, with minor government interference. Is that a great alternative? For some, yes. Could it sell also cancer treatments for people unable to obtain them otherwise? Yes it could, but that doesn't make the dark web a good thing. My point is that what "could be" is very different from what "is". And from what I can see nowadays with crypto we find the positives only in the "could be". I beg the crypto advocates to make those possibilities reality, then I guarantee everybody will jump ship, or at least I definitely will.
      - nonima 5y ago
        >I beg the crypto advocates to make those possibilities reality It's up to people to start utilizing the technology. But some need it more than others, for you it might not be necessary but millions of people are already using cryptocurrencies in countries where government caused hyperinflation of their currencies.
      - GVRV 5y ago
        The dark web is a good thing – it's a good utility. Whether someone uses it for a good thing or a bad thing, it's up to the individual, but I'm glad that an investment was made to come up with a more secure, privacy-focused protocols was made (and continuing work is being done to improve it). I'm also glad other protocols exist and the market will ultimately determine adoption based on utility. We mostly used HTTP until FireSheep happened and now use HTTPS very widely and someday, if governments and organisations continue to pry on online activity, we might move to the protocols powering the dark web. It's the same with crypto. I, too, feel a lot of the use cases being talked about right now are just words – but at the same time, I'm glad that people with the skills and the resources are making investments into coming up with these experiments and the experiments that will offer the most utility might get widely adopted in the future.
- pkd 5y ago
  India Post offers savings accounts services through its post offices. Non-profit public enterprise and a post office is available in every PIN code. There is probably one within walking distance of your relatives in your native village. Cross border transactions are heavily regulated precisely because they cross jurisdictional boundaries - without regulation it becomes trivially easy to commit fraud and make the money effectively disappear. Does the current regulation come in the way of the average person trying to accept Paypal money? Sure. But that is not a technological problem - its a regulation problem, which is ultimately a social problem.
  - GVRV 5y ago
    I know options exist, but better, more inclusive options can be possible. Take for example messaging – Jeff Bezos uses (used?) WhatsApp, I use it, you probably use it and my relatives use it as well. No matter what the geography or your social/financial standing, you probably have access to a world-class messaging product easily. The same is true for a lot of things: Wikipedia, Linux, Bicycles. Why should the same not be true for wealth protection and growth? If it is possible to come up with a such a system, shouldn't we at least give it a shot?
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
"I can get my favorite articles delivered to my door, I can watch my sports games live, I can talk to my parent's across country instantly and cheaply over the phone. Try doing any of that with 'the internet.'" Sometimes you're just early, bud.
- majewsky 5y ago
  How many more decades until we're there? Scale comparison: Cryptocurrency-based technology has been publicly available for at least 12 years now. If I place initial public availability of the web at about 1992, we're currently in the equivalent of 2004, when two of the three described usecases were already widely available in developed nations. Amazon was maybe not a household name yet, but e-commerce was already an accepted purchasing model for several product categories, and Skype gave the world very cheap international phone calls. Only the video usecase was still terrible because of the available bandwidth.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bidder33 5y ago
    DEXs(uniswap), Auction Houses(zora), Community Voting Systems(snapshot), Reputation and trust networks(circles), public goods funding(clr.fund), self publishing and fundraising(mirror, and now kickstarter), e2ee messaging and chat rooms(status/whisper), ubi and sybil resistance(proofofhumanity). These are all things I and lots of others are interacting with pretty much daily, it doesnt get so much coverage because its not all speculation and imo what people are actually angry about with crypto is more exposure to abusive capitalism games, money is a painful trauma so more of it in new forms is hard to imagine as positive. But there is plenty of useful stuff being built and I think it is progressing pretty well. 5 years ago the ideas of rights management combined with open distribution (rather than DRM that locks down distribution) was a strange idea we didnt know how to make work, now NFTs are mainstream. In 2004 i was downloading textures and skins for the sims and xplane, and joining forums to chat and share music. Then there was a while imo where the internet felt dominated by facebook/google/youtube, but the past couple of years ive sunk into smaller communities making things in crypto/web3 and its fun and exciting. I spend most of my online time in that space. It feels more like being in a WoW guild than using twitter. There is profit/loss and speculation that excites/angers the masses, but theres also the best online communities ive ever been a part of, doing things like making games and custom skins and sharing music. Some things change and some things stay the same. Im pretty positive on the idea that making new tools, providing permissionless access, and building it with free open source software, people can do neat and surprising things. Till then people will see what they want to see, because its all there. Sturgeons law etc

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago

I don't think that the convenience of moving money around has much to do with what the article's talking about. It's more about flexibility when there're more than just one party involved--the kind of stuff that with fiat you'd have to hire lawyers for.

GVRV 5y ago

You must live in a developed nation. I'm from one of the tier-2 cities in India. I cannot hold stable, diversified collection of global currencies in my bank account and cannot invest in global markets without going to a branch in a bigger town and without significant paperwork. I cannot legally accept money from around the world for my software development skills without being a part of the existing banking system. My relatives in my native village just 100 KMs away don't even have a bank they can walk into (they have mobile phones with data though). Do we just have to wait for regulated, for-profit entities to calculate when it will be profitable for them to provide us with services? What benefit did maintaining the status quo provide for people in countries where inflation wiped out savings overnight? If we have the skills and the opportunity to participate in an alternative, mostly open system, how long should we need to wait for permission?

infinityplus1 5y ago
You can invest in mutual funds which invest in foreign companies. Creating online accounts for direct mutual funds investments is fully digital using Video KYC.
- GVRV 5y ago
  Yes, I'm aware of that. However, I need to go through a mutual fund and rely on their stock picking strategy and fees (we've had mutual funds default very recently). I want to enter into a position in a specific stock according to my strategy at a price I'm comfortable at. This again leads to the same point: why are we so _comfortable_ with the status quo? I want to think about what could be possible, not what sub-par alternative is available today.
  - soco 5y ago
    Just for the sake of argument, the same can be said about dark web: it offers freedom to do whatever business one pleases, with minor government interference. Is that a great alternative? For some, yes. Could it sell also cancer treatments for people unable to obtain them otherwise? Yes it could, but that doesn't make the dark web a good thing. My point is that what "could be" is very different from what "is". And from what I can see nowadays with crypto we find the positives only in the "could be". I beg the crypto advocates to make those possibilities reality, then I guarantee everybody will jump ship, or at least I definitely will.
    - nonima 5y ago
      >I beg the crypto advocates to make those possibilities reality It's up to people to start utilizing the technology. But some need it more than others, for you it might not be necessary but millions of people are already using cryptocurrencies in countries where government caused hyperinflation of their currencies.
    - GVRV 5y ago
      The dark web is a good thing – it's a good utility. Whether someone uses it for a good thing or a bad thing, it's up to the individual, but I'm glad that an investment was made to come up with a more secure, privacy-focused protocols was made (and continuing work is being done to improve it). I'm also glad other protocols exist and the market will ultimately determine adoption based on utility. We mostly used HTTP until FireSheep happened and now use HTTPS very widely and someday, if governments and organisations continue to pry on online activity, we might move to the protocols powering the dark web. It's the same with crypto. I, too, feel a lot of the use cases being talked about right now are just words – but at the same time, I'm glad that people with the skills and the resources are making investments into coming up with these experiments and the experiments that will offer the most utility might get widely adopted in the future.
pkd 5y ago
India Post offers savings accounts services through its post offices. Non-profit public enterprise and a post office is available in every PIN code. There is probably one within walking distance of your relatives in your native village. Cross border transactions are heavily regulated precisely because they cross jurisdictional boundaries - without regulation it becomes trivially easy to commit fraud and make the money effectively disappear. Does the current regulation come in the way of the average person trying to accept Paypal money? Sure. But that is not a technological problem - its a regulation problem, which is ultimately a social problem.
- GVRV 5y ago
  I know options exist, but better, more inclusive options can be possible. Take for example messaging – Jeff Bezos uses (used?) WhatsApp, I use it, you probably use it and my relatives use it as well. No matter what the geography or your social/financial standing, you probably have access to a world-class messaging product easily. The same is true for a lot of things: Wikipedia, Linux, Bicycles. Why should the same not be true for wealth protection and growth? If it is possible to come up with a such a system, shouldn't we at least give it a shot?

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

"I can get my favorite articles delivered to my door, I can watch my sports games live, I can talk to my parent's across country instantly and cheaply over the phone. Try doing any of that with 'the internet.'" Sometimes you're just early, bud.

majewsky 5y ago
How many more decades until we're there? Scale comparison: Cryptocurrency-based technology has been publicly available for at least 12 years now. If I place initial public availability of the web at about 1992, we're currently in the equivalent of 2004, when two of the three described usecases were already widely available in developed nations. Amazon was maybe not a household name yet, but e-commerce was already an accepted purchasing model for several product categories, and Skype gave the world very cheap international phone calls. Only the video usecase was still terrible because of the available bandwidth.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bidder33 5y ago
  DEXs(uniswap), Auction Houses(zora), Community Voting Systems(snapshot), Reputation and trust networks(circles), public goods funding(clr.fund), self publishing and fundraising(mirror, and now kickstarter), e2ee messaging and chat rooms(status/whisper), ubi and sybil resistance(proofofhumanity). These are all things I and lots of others are interacting with pretty much daily, it doesnt get so much coverage because its not all speculation and imo what people are actually angry about with crypto is more exposure to abusive capitalism games, money is a painful trauma so more of it in new forms is hard to imagine as positive. But there is plenty of useful stuff being built and I think it is progressing pretty well. 5 years ago the ideas of rights management combined with open distribution (rather than DRM that locks down distribution) was a strange idea we didnt know how to make work, now NFTs are mainstream. In 2004 i was downloading textures and skins for the sims and xplane, and joining forums to chat and share music. Then there was a while imo where the internet felt dominated by facebook/google/youtube, but the past couple of years ive sunk into smaller communities making things in crypto/web3 and its fun and exciting. I spend most of my online time in that space. It feels more like being in a WoW guild than using twitter. There is profit/loss and speculation that excites/angers the masses, but theres also the best online communities ive ever been a part of, doing things like making games and custom skins and sharing music. Some things change and some things stay the same. Im pretty positive on the idea that making new tools, providing permissionless access, and building it with free open source software, people can do neat and surprising things. Till then people will see what they want to see, because its all there. Sturgeons law etc