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Why can't both exist though? Each with their own advantage/disadvantages, and you get to choose which one to use after considering the tradeoffs. Things I wou

Why can't both exist though? Each with their own advantage/disadvantages, and you get to choose which one to use after considering the tradeoffs. Things I would use crypto for: * Money transfers, particularly cross border payments. Low fees, quick confirmation from all parties. * Any transaction that I would like to keep my privacy on (and this does not mean illegal things, btw). Things I would never use crypto for: * Storing wealth. For me personally it's too much of a bet, we're always one right (or wrong) math proof away from all of this becoming dust. * Smart contracts. Anything that requires a contract between me and someone else, I'll keep using the tried and tested way of common law. I'd rather have my business backed by the Delaware Chancery Court (which has proven to be quite effective these past weeks) than by the code wrote by some random upwork contractor.

mountainofdeath 4y ago
This already exists though and is a technical solution to an economic problem. The reason the money transfer fees exist, slow confirmation, etc is there is no incentive to do so otherwise. Crypto transfers for say USD->EUR via USD->BTC->EUR are just adding extra foreign exchange legs in the hope that the BTC holders on either end will give you a better deal.
- moralestapia 4y ago
  >This already exists though and is a technical solution to an economic problem. Immediately followed by: >The reason the money transfer fees exist, slow confirmation, etc is there is no incentive to do so otherwise. Huh? Is it solved or not? It's unclear to me where do you stand. de facto, moving ETH->ETH is faster and cheaper than using the standard forex infrastructure.
dale_glass 4y ago
Crypto is bad at money transfers. It's low capacity. That's why nobody is using BTC to pay for pizza anymore. It's also bad at privacy, since the architecture for most crypto systems relies on storing a permanent, non-modifiable public ledger. Your usage case doesn't really work because almost nobody cares about that. You'll find a few idealists interested in that, and a very few people that need to transact with some random person in Bangladesh. Pretty much everyone will just do a regular bank transfer or use Paypal. What got crypto to become popular is the "get rich quick" schemes, which not only don't require stability, but rely on instability and people attracted to the idea of exploiting it for profit.
- dougk16 4y ago
  Monero and other less well-known currencies solve all of that. You can say it's bad or useless for other reasons. But my direct experience with dozens of P2P transfers, outside exchanges, both paying people for products and services and being paid myself, is enough for me to know that the future involves private cryptocurrencies one way or another. It may be akin to the taboo nature of torrenting movies at some point, but it's not going anywhere. CBDCs, traditional fiat, crypto, and even precious metals (yea we used to use those too!) will all have their use cases over the next decade. Paying people (and being paid) with precious metals and private crypto feels so amazing, so freeing, I recommend everyone give it a try.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    Yeah, and pretty much nobody cares: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html#alltime https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.htm... 20K transactions per day currently? A single city would have more transactions than that just from people having breakfast in the morning. And these are world-wide stats.
    - dougk16 4y ago
      Ah c'mon gimme something better to chew on, this argument is cake to dismantle. (1) You don't use Monero to buy breakfast. It's for large money transfers so at least compare it to bank wires. (2) Very few people know about Monero yet. Credit cards were at 20K transactions per day at some point. If you know how to look at the chart you linked, you can see the TX count growing sustainably over several years. This is healthy growth, not some SV venture-capital juiced unicorn. (3) There will be very few ultimate winners in the crypto game as far as fungible currencies. It's a more honest comparison to include transaction counts of non-fungible cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH that people are unfortunately using as a currency for now. (4) Monero is just one of a few other legitimate private cryptocurrencies, so include those transaction counts too. Well I could go on laughing at the "nobody cares" take, but you don't care so I'll leave it there. Enjoy your CBDCs in the metaverse.
e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
> Money transfers, particularly cross border payments. Low fees, quick confirmation from all parties. Let me tell you my experience with trying to remit money to my family with crypto. I really tried to give it a fair shot, because finding a cheaper way to shift money around would be really nice. I wanted to do it via stablecoins, because I have no interest in playing the speculation game with BTC/ETH prices. So the path should be: * I transfer money to Coinbase, and buy some USDC * I transfer said USDC from my coinbase wallet to another exchange's wallet * I sell USDC on said exchange for MYR * I transfer said MYR to my bank account * Money goes from my MYR account to my family's Simple enough, in theory. But, the Malaysian government has granted four institutions a license to trade cryptocurrency, and three of them only trade BTC and ETH, and the last ist BTC/ETH plus litecoin, bitcoin cash, and a bunch of other ones I've never heard of. So here I'm stuck. It sure looks like the primary audience is speculators and not people like me who actually do want to transfer money cross-border. But is it actually cheaper though, if I chose to use ETH/BTC? Well, the target to beat is transferwise's 61 basis points (used to be 45) (I'm also a liquidity taker, since I'm not interested in playing with price movements): first is 200 bps, second is 50+10bps, third is a startup that doesn't even list fees on their website, fourth is 50 bps. But wait, since I'm not using stablecoins anymore I have to also pay liquidity fees on the USD side. Coinbase charges 60bps, bringing the total up to 110 bps, 50 more transferwise. I'm assuming the other exchanges are around that price, but unless they're under 10bps it's not cheaper than using transferwise. So it's really not looking so good. It's not cheaper, it's not simpler, and it involves just as many KYC checks (required in both countries, and very strict ones on the Malaysian side).
- ETH_start 4y ago
  Can't you just use Uniswap to swap the USDC for ETH, before transferring the ETH to your exchange account in Malaysia? The Uniswap fee is only 0.05% ($0.50 on a $1,000 swap). The transfer and conversion of ETH to MYR should take 5 minutes, so you wouldn't be speculating on ETH's price for long.

mountainofdeath 4y ago

This already exists though and is a technical solution to an economic problem. The reason the money transfer fees exist, slow confirmation, etc is there is no incentive to do so otherwise. Crypto transfers for say USD->EUR via USD->BTC->EUR are just adding extra foreign exchange legs in the hope that the BTC holders on either end will give you a better deal.

moralestapia 4y ago
>This already exists though and is a technical solution to an economic problem. Immediately followed by: >The reason the money transfer fees exist, slow confirmation, etc is there is no incentive to do so otherwise. Huh? Is it solved or not? It's unclear to me where do you stand. de facto, moving ETH->ETH is faster and cheaper than using the standard forex infrastructure.

dale_glass 4y ago

Crypto is bad at money transfers. It's low capacity. That's why nobody is using BTC to pay for pizza anymore. It's also bad at privacy, since the architecture for most crypto systems relies on storing a permanent, non-modifiable public ledger. Your usage case doesn't really work because almost nobody cares about that. You'll find a few idealists interested in that, and a very few people that need to transact with some random person in Bangladesh. Pretty much everyone will just do a regular bank transfer or use Paypal. What got crypto to become popular is the "get rich quick" schemes, which not only don't require stability, but rely on instability and people attracted to the idea of exploiting it for profit.

dougk16 4y ago
Monero and other less well-known currencies solve all of that. You can say it's bad or useless for other reasons. But my direct experience with dozens of P2P transfers, outside exchanges, both paying people for products and services and being paid myself, is enough for me to know that the future involves private cryptocurrencies one way or another. It may be akin to the taboo nature of torrenting movies at some point, but it's not going anywhere. CBDCs, traditional fiat, crypto, and even precious metals (yea we used to use those too!) will all have their use cases over the next decade. Paying people (and being paid) with precious metals and private crypto feels so amazing, so freeing, I recommend everyone give it a try.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  Yeah, and pretty much nobody cares: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html#alltime https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.htm... 20K transactions per day currently? A single city would have more transactions than that just from people having breakfast in the morning. And these are world-wide stats.
  - dougk16 4y ago
    Ah c'mon gimme something better to chew on, this argument is cake to dismantle. (1) You don't use Monero to buy breakfast. It's for large money transfers so at least compare it to bank wires. (2) Very few people know about Monero yet. Credit cards were at 20K transactions per day at some point. If you know how to look at the chart you linked, you can see the TX count growing sustainably over several years. This is healthy growth, not some SV venture-capital juiced unicorn. (3) There will be very few ultimate winners in the crypto game as far as fungible currencies. It's a more honest comparison to include transaction counts of non-fungible cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH that people are unfortunately using as a currency for now. (4) Monero is just one of a few other legitimate private cryptocurrencies, so include those transaction counts too. Well I could go on laughing at the "nobody cares" take, but you don't care so I'll leave it there. Enjoy your CBDCs in the metaverse.

e63f67dd-065b 4y ago

> Money transfers, particularly cross border payments. Low fees, quick confirmation from all parties. Let me tell you my experience with trying to remit money to my family with crypto. I really tried to give it a fair shot, because finding a cheaper way to shift money around would be really nice. I wanted to do it via stablecoins, because I have no interest in playing the speculation game with BTC/ETH prices. So the path should be: * I transfer money to Coinbase, and buy some USDC * I transfer said USDC from my coinbase wallet to another exchange's wallet * I sell USDC on said exchange for MYR * I transfer said MYR to my bank account * Money goes from my MYR account to my family's Simple enough, in theory. But, the Malaysian government has granted four institutions a license to trade cryptocurrency, and three of them only trade BTC and ETH, and the last ist BTC/ETH plus litecoin, bitcoin cash, and a bunch of other ones I've never heard of. So here I'm stuck. It sure looks like the primary audience is speculators and not people like me who actually do want to transfer money cross-border. But is it actually cheaper though, if I chose to use ETH/BTC? Well, the target to beat is transferwise's 61 basis points (used to be 45) (I'm also a liquidity taker, since I'm not interested in playing with price movements): first is 200 bps, second is 50+10bps, third is a startup that doesn't even list fees on their website, fourth is 50 bps. But wait, since I'm not using stablecoins anymore I have to also pay liquidity fees on the USD side. Coinbase charges 60bps, bringing the total up to 110 bps, 50 more transferwise. I'm assuming the other exchanges are around that price, but unless they're under 10bps it's not cheaper than using transferwise. So it's really not looking so good. It's not cheaper, it's not simpler, and it involves just as many KYC checks (required in both countries, and very strict ones on the Malaysian side).

ETH_start 4y ago
Can't you just use Uniswap to swap the USDC for ETH, before transferring the ETH to your exchange account in Malaysia? The Uniswap fee is only 0.05% ($0.50 on a $1,000 swap). The transfer and conversion of ETH to MYR should take 5 minutes, so you wouldn't be speculating on ETH's price for long.