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Maybe your money is pretty safe in your bank. My dad worked for 40+ years and paid every month his pension fund dues. When his company (a very big and old compa

Maybe your money is pretty safe in your bank. My dad worked for 40+ years and paid every month his pension fund dues. When his company (a very big and old company in our country) went bankrupt, it was found that the pension fund was broke. They had been using money from the pension fund to cover whatever they had to cover due to corruption, bad administration, etc (it was illegally done so, by the way). Not only that, but the government knew about this, since it was a really, really big pension fund, and had stepped in as pension administrator for the past six or seven years. Didn't matter. The pension broke, the company broke, my dad and thousands of others were left without their retirement pay. This is not some outrageous story over here. It was so normal that it didn't make any headlines. Two years ago postal workers have started to take a pay cut to cover a hole in their pension fund. The mail here is state owned, by the way, and it didn't matter. The directors took their money, the workers had to pay up. I did my research, I wouldn't put money in Beanstalk Farms, or 99% of cryptocurrencies, but there are couple, two or three, crypto projects that I know are legitimate and secure, and I trust them more than the banks I have access to.

verall 4y ago
There is an interesting false equivalence here between pension funds and banks. But it's a personal annecdote, so really it's up to you what made you lose faith in "the system".
- EL_Loco 4y ago
  I know they're not equivalent. But banks have broken here too, and people lost a lot of their money. By the way, credit card interest here is over 300% annually. Can get up to 800 depending on the bank.
- x-complexity 4y ago
  > There is an interesting false equivalence here between pension funds and banks. The dissimilarity of pension funds & banks is present, and so there's no opposition to that objection. > But it's a personal annecdote, so really it's up to you what made you lose faith in "the system". I'll admit my pro-crypto stances upfront, but the anti-crypto stance of "Oh it's just your opinion that 'the system' messed up" is highly non-conducive when it comes to getting people out of crypto & trusting the current financial system once again. To those people, their rightfully legitimate concerns of corruption, non-transparency, & failure to even partially repay the funds lost are dismissed as 'anecdotal', much like the concerns of every privacy-concerned individual before Snowden's leaks were made public. To that end, verall, your dismissal of the parent's experiences as anecdotal will sour the opinions of the concerned & cause them to dig in their heels even further. It does not help alleviate their concerns, nor does it help in re-establishing trust. With regards to the actual improvements that I would like to see implemented in the current financial system, the creation of a triple-ledger accounting system [1] where transactions are anonymized-but-traceable would help a long way in re-establishing trust in the current financial system. The 3rd party in this picture wouldn't even need to be a blockchain: It would just need to be a neutral 3rd party that would make transactions on the aforementioned ledger transparent to the general public. [1] https://www.simpleaccounts.io/tag/tripleentrysystem/ https://www.simpleaccounts.io/tag/tripleentrysystem/
matheusmoreira 4y ago
In the 90s my country was plagued by out of control inflation. In a desperate attempt to control it, the government just froze everybody's bank accounts. Nearly everyone was left without money. Imagine logging into the bank and discovering that all your money had been confiscated. Some people saw it coming and cashed out beforehand, and suddenly became wealthy after everyone else's money was wiped out. I don't trust governments and I don't trust banks. I want an economy that's completely independent of them.
- latchkey 4y ago
  Agreed. Many of the people posting on HN have a very western view of mind and haven't experienced the difficulties of finance and banking in other countries.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    Crypto doesn't seem to be poised to solve any of the issues faced in these non-Western countries.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      It solves a problem I have as a westerner who likes to live in non-western countries. Simply put, moving, storing and accessing my money anywhere in the world is hard. Crypto makes it a trivial non-issue.
- Affric 4y ago
  Argentina? Brasil actually fixed their inflation problem with Plano Real (Cardozo was finance minister at the time) which is one of the all time great stories of government intervention in an economy.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Brazil. I'm not impressed by their plan. They simply created yet another currency and duped the population into believing it was going to be different this time. The inevitable fate of all inflationary currencies is irrelevance. Its value will drop to zero and it will be replaced by a new currency in order to restart the cycle. It's only a matter of time.
emerged 4y ago
What’s hilarious is to take your side, you have to imagine somebody saving into crypto for 40+ years and then cashing out. The odds of any crypto lasting that long, and that money having even remotely a predictable long term value, is pretty plainly absurd.
- latchkey 4y ago
  We are over 1/4th of the way into the 40 years with Bitcoin. Today, is worth 40,000x more than when it started. It is absurd to you, but not to many other people. Personally, I'd rather trust a system which can't be controlled by any one individual (or even a small group of individuals), over a corporate pension fund.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  We still use http, ipv4...it seems clear to me that ETH and BTC aren't going anywhere this decade or next.
leonhard 4y ago
Out of interest, which crypto projects are the ones you describe as legitimate and trustworthy?
- EL_Loco 4y ago
  I won't cite them here because it will automatically be seen as trying to promote a crypto project for my personal gain.

verall 4y ago

There is an interesting false equivalence here between pension funds and banks. But it's a personal annecdote, so really it's up to you what made you lose faith in "the system".

EL_Loco 4y ago
I know they're not equivalent. But banks have broken here too, and people lost a lot of their money. By the way, credit card interest here is over 300% annually. Can get up to 800 depending on the bank.
x-complexity 4y ago
> There is an interesting false equivalence here between pension funds and banks. The dissimilarity of pension funds & banks is present, and so there's no opposition to that objection. > But it's a personal annecdote, so really it's up to you what made you lose faith in "the system". I'll admit my pro-crypto stances upfront, but the anti-crypto stance of "Oh it's just your opinion that 'the system' messed up" is highly non-conducive when it comes to getting people out of crypto & trusting the current financial system once again. To those people, their rightfully legitimate concerns of corruption, non-transparency, & failure to even partially repay the funds lost are dismissed as 'anecdotal', much like the concerns of every privacy-concerned individual before Snowden's leaks were made public. To that end, verall, your dismissal of the parent's experiences as anecdotal will sour the opinions of the concerned & cause them to dig in their heels even further. It does not help alleviate their concerns, nor does it help in re-establishing trust. With regards to the actual improvements that I would like to see implemented in the current financial system, the creation of a triple-ledger accounting system [1] where transactions are anonymized-but-traceable would help a long way in re-establishing trust in the current financial system. The 3rd party in this picture wouldn't even need to be a blockchain: It would just need to be a neutral 3rd party that would make transactions on the aforementioned ledger transparent to the general public. [1] https://www.simpleaccounts.io/tag/tripleentrysystem/ https://www.simpleaccounts.io/tag/tripleentrysystem/

matheusmoreira 4y ago

In the 90s my country was plagued by out of control inflation. In a desperate attempt to control it, the government just froze everybody's bank accounts. Nearly everyone was left without money. Imagine logging into the bank and discovering that all your money had been confiscated. Some people saw it coming and cashed out beforehand, and suddenly became wealthy after everyone else's money was wiped out. I don't trust governments and I don't trust banks. I want an economy that's completely independent of them.

latchkey 4y ago
Agreed. Many of the people posting on HN have a very western view of mind and haven't experienced the difficulties of finance and banking in other countries.
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  Crypto doesn't seem to be poised to solve any of the issues faced in these non-Western countries.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    It solves a problem I have as a westerner who likes to live in non-western countries. Simply put, moving, storing and accessing my money anywhere in the world is hard. Crypto makes it a trivial non-issue.
Affric 4y ago
Argentina? Brasil actually fixed their inflation problem with Plano Real (Cardozo was finance minister at the time) which is one of the all time great stories of government intervention in an economy.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Brazil. I'm not impressed by their plan. They simply created yet another currency and duped the population into believing it was going to be different this time. The inevitable fate of all inflationary currencies is irrelevance. Its value will drop to zero and it will be replaced by a new currency in order to restart the cycle. It's only a matter of time.

emerged 4y ago

What’s hilarious is to take your side, you have to imagine somebody saving into crypto for 40+ years and then cashing out. The odds of any crypto lasting that long, and that money having even remotely a predictable long term value, is pretty plainly absurd.

latchkey 4y ago
We are over 1/4th of the way into the 40 years with Bitcoin. Today, is worth 40,000x more than when it started. It is absurd to you, but not to many other people. Personally, I'd rather trust a system which can't be controlled by any one individual (or even a small group of individuals), over a corporate pension fund.
aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
We still use http, ipv4...it seems clear to me that ETH and BTC aren't going anywhere this decade or next.

leonhard 4y ago

Out of interest, which crypto projects are the ones you describe as legitimate and trustworthy?

EL_Loco 4y ago
I won't cite them here because it will automatically be seen as trying to promote a crypto project for my personal gain.