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And yet, when I just went to close my Paypal account, I remembered my final use for it was helping out a friend in need who sometimes needed money to cover thei

And yet, when I just went to close my Paypal account, I remembered my final use for it was helping out a friend in need who sometimes needed money to cover their bills. They barely have a functioning bank in their town, they're definitely not gonna be able to pay their local bill with whatever fad blockchain currency for a while. So I do all the work to buy and transfer crypto and hope it doesn't lose 20% of its value while I'm doing that because Elon Musk had a bad day and shit-tweeted. They what? Drive a few hours to work out where to get cash from BTC to pay their real world bills?

throwaway81523 4y ago
> And yet, when I just went to close my Paypal account, I remembered my final use for it was helping out a friend in need who sometimes needed money to cover their bills. I had a friend in that situation once (sudden emergency), and I used snail mail to send one of those pictures of Benjamin Franklin that are printed by the US Treasury. It worked fine, no internet needed, no crypto, no blockchain, and no scam artist coin exchanges were needed to convert the Ben Franklin back into cash, since it was already cash. It beat Bitcoin in almost every regard, as far as I could tell.
- noirbot 4y ago
  That would be my fallback, yes, but that's also a pretty large risk of theft or loss if you get unlucky. Not to mention the added time involved in sending it thousands of miles by mail.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    It takes a couple days to cross the country, and snail mail is pretty safe. 1% loss rate on a Ben Franklin picture would equal a George Washington picture. The transaction fees for the 3 bitcoin transactions (cash to btc, btc transfer, and btc to cash) are probably way more than that. And you can always use money orders, registered mail, overnight express, or whatever.
- zeroclip 4y ago
  This is a pretty poor way of transferring value. High likelihood of theft or loss, long transfer time, low maximum legal limits. It may beat Bitcoin as a one-off workaround with no need to scale, but unlikely to beat L2 ERC20 crypto payments over the long term.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    The likelihood of theft is reasonably low, certainly less than 1%. I don't know what L2 ERC20 is but normally for larger amounts within the regulated system, you would send a check or money order, or ACH if you were doing this at volume. At higher amounts you'd send a wire transfer. I don't see a role for crypto here.
    - zeroclip 4y ago
      You’ve described a few mechanisms that are different than sending cash in an envelope: check, money order, ACH, wire transfer. I guess all of these too could theoretically be replaced with crypto depending on your need and situation. With something like a wire you are placing the transfer in the trust of your bank, which is secure but can take multiple days and can cost more than an ETH transaction. Most mail arrives fine but mail theft is still a massive problem and rising, it is one reason you are advised not to regularly send cash in the mail. https://safeatlast.co/blog/mail-theft-statistics/#gref https://safeatlast.co/blog/mail-theft-statistics/#gref
      - throwaway81523 4y ago
        That link is almost entirely about package theft, not ordinary letters. Even if I accept the figure of 3%, that's equivalent to a $3 insurance premium on sending $100 cash, not too bad. I'd put it at way under 1%. Lots of us still pay our rent and bills every month by mailing checks, same with annual tax returns etc., and losses in the mail are rare even though those sorts of mailings are identifiable as being likely to contain payments. A hand addressed envelope to a random person is less likely a priori. Domestic wire transfers are almost instant, while international ones can take overnight. Doing anonymous and untracked payments of significant amounts at scale is sure to tick off regulators. If your ETH transactions are non-anonymous and tracked, it's hard to see any superiority over ACH or wires. It's a solution looking for a problem. I don't regularly send cash in the mail but I've done it a number of times, with no losses that I know of. A typical reason is that I don't feel like going to the hassle of getting a money order. I feel like sending a personal check is riskier than sending cash, since a stolen check reveals my account number, leading to possibly unbounded loss. I generally do use money orders if I might need proof of payment afterwards, or if the amount is high enough to worry about. I've sent $100 cash on a couple of occasions but more typically it's $10 or $20. Even that is an occasional rather than a frequent thing.
madsbuch 4y ago
> hope it doesn't lose 20% Use DAI or any other stable coin. It is a good point about integration. In all fairness, the merchent in said city could be convinced to accept block chain currencies -- but that's another discussion. It really appears that a lot of people have strong opinions on something they know doorknob about?
rkho 4y ago
> and hope it doesn't lose 20% of its value while I'm doing that USDC. DAI. It seems like there is a lot of misunderstanding between what constitutes "a cryptocurrency mature enough to currently use on a regular basis" and "the speculative shitcoins/memecoins being propagated to the masses".

throwaway81523 4y ago

> And yet, when I just went to close my Paypal account, I remembered my final use for it was helping out a friend in need who sometimes needed money to cover their bills. I had a friend in that situation once (sudden emergency), and I used snail mail to send one of those pictures of Benjamin Franklin that are printed by the US Treasury. It worked fine, no internet needed, no crypto, no blockchain, and no scam artist coin exchanges were needed to convert the Ben Franklin back into cash, since it was already cash. It beat Bitcoin in almost every regard, as far as I could tell.

noirbot 4y ago
That would be my fallback, yes, but that's also a pretty large risk of theft or loss if you get unlucky. Not to mention the added time involved in sending it thousands of miles by mail.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  It takes a couple days to cross the country, and snail mail is pretty safe. 1% loss rate on a Ben Franklin picture would equal a George Washington picture. The transaction fees for the 3 bitcoin transactions (cash to btc, btc transfer, and btc to cash) are probably way more than that. And you can always use money orders, registered mail, overnight express, or whatever.
zeroclip 4y ago
This is a pretty poor way of transferring value. High likelihood of theft or loss, long transfer time, low maximum legal limits. It may beat Bitcoin as a one-off workaround with no need to scale, but unlikely to beat L2 ERC20 crypto payments over the long term.
- throwaway81523 4y ago
  The likelihood of theft is reasonably low, certainly less than 1%. I don't know what L2 ERC20 is but normally for larger amounts within the regulated system, you would send a check or money order, or ACH if you were doing this at volume. At higher amounts you'd send a wire transfer. I don't see a role for crypto here.
  - zeroclip 4y ago
    You’ve described a few mechanisms that are different than sending cash in an envelope: check, money order, ACH, wire transfer. I guess all of these too could theoretically be replaced with crypto depending on your need and situation. With something like a wire you are placing the transfer in the trust of your bank, which is secure but can take multiple days and can cost more than an ETH transaction. Most mail arrives fine but mail theft is still a massive problem and rising, it is one reason you are advised not to regularly send cash in the mail. https://safeatlast.co/blog/mail-theft-statistics/#gref https://safeatlast.co/blog/mail-theft-statistics/#gref
    - throwaway81523 4y ago
      That link is almost entirely about package theft, not ordinary letters. Even if I accept the figure of 3%, that's equivalent to a $3 insurance premium on sending $100 cash, not too bad. I'd put it at way under 1%. Lots of us still pay our rent and bills every month by mailing checks, same with annual tax returns etc., and losses in the mail are rare even though those sorts of mailings are identifiable as being likely to contain payments. A hand addressed envelope to a random person is less likely a priori. Domestic wire transfers are almost instant, while international ones can take overnight. Doing anonymous and untracked payments of significant amounts at scale is sure to tick off regulators. If your ETH transactions are non-anonymous and tracked, it's hard to see any superiority over ACH or wires. It's a solution looking for a problem. I don't regularly send cash in the mail but I've done it a number of times, with no losses that I know of. A typical reason is that I don't feel like going to the hassle of getting a money order. I feel like sending a personal check is riskier than sending cash, since a stolen check reveals my account number, leading to possibly unbounded loss. I generally do use money orders if I might need proof of payment afterwards, or if the amount is high enough to worry about. I've sent $100 cash on a couple of occasions but more typically it's $10 or $20. Even that is an occasional rather than a frequent thing.

madsbuch 4y ago

> hope it doesn't lose 20% Use DAI or any other stable coin. It is a good point about integration. In all fairness, the merchent in said city could be convinced to accept block chain currencies -- but that's another discussion. It really appears that a lot of people have strong opinions on something they know doorknob about?

rkho 4y ago

> and hope it doesn't lose 20% of its value while I'm doing that USDC. DAI. It seems like there is a lot of misunderstanding between what constitutes "a cryptocurrency mature enough to currently use on a regular basis" and "the speculative shitcoins/memecoins being propagated to the masses".