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> Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil - it's not even used in other Mercosur countries, what's the chance of having th

> Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance. Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil - it's not even used in other Mercosur countries, what's the chance of having that adopted in other countries... And, that's problem #1. How much do you trust your government with your money? A system like Pix don't stand a chance to get a worldwide adoption - maybe people are naive but governments won't unify to adopt a common system controlled by just a single entity / country. What we may however end up with, are dozens of systems like Pix, one for each country, union, etc. Still cryptocurrencies as-is remain relevant (see point 1)

dakial1 2y ago
Pix proposition is very valuable for governments, as it is the best way of controlling transactions, inside the country and cross-border. To you second point, I think the pix penetration/popularity proves that the majority of the people trust the government for that. There are 2 key reasons for its success: It was mandatory for Banks to adhere to the system and there are no fees for using it. Once multiple countries have their own PIX, they just need to build a federation structure to connect them and allow cross-border transactions. Crypto-currencies have their place with people who don't trust the government, want to speculate and/or simply want to do tax evasion, but they are not and probably never will be mainstream as a transaction medium.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  iTunes / Steam vs piracy is relevant here. Most people want something that works well in the ways they care about. People turned to piracy because it was a superior experience to the then-distribution-models. Then, the majority of people didn't care that iTunes / Steam cost money and had DRM, because it provided a superior experience to piracy. People want an outcome, easily, reliably: they don't care about the method of getting that outcome.
- rat87 2y ago
  Cash is arguably more secure and likely less traceable and easier to use if you don't trust governments. I don't see much use case for crypto other then illegal activities (although possibly not always immoral)
  - dakial1 2y ago
    That’s right crypto is also very traceable by the very public nature of the ledger
    - lillecarl 2y ago
      Somehow Monero (XMR) gets around this, used in the biggest European underground pharmacy Archetyp. Each transaction is somehow only known by sender and receiver
- fakedang 2y ago
  > Once multiple countries have their own PIX, they just need to build a federation structure to connect them and allow cross-border transactions. To add to this, this is already happening. For example, you can already pay in the Middle East with India's UPI at quite a lot of places, or with China's Alipay or Unionpay.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  For federation, the hard part isn't building the system but building the required trust between the different states and getting it all set up legally somehow.
reaperducer 2y ago
try to use Pix outside of Brazil Try to use cryptocurrency for anything other than a few very specific transactions at a number of places in the world so small that it's a rounding error. Still cryptocurrencies as-is remain relevant And somehow less relevant than cash. I can take cash from any country in the world to my local bank, and deposit it into my account. I can get a dozen different foreign currencies at my local branch in minutes, and almost any other currency in the world can be delivered to me by FedEx the next morning for a flat $10 fee. I can take cash to any other country in the world and get it converted into the local currency, whether that's paper or digital in almost any city. Crypto is great if you do a very few, very specific things in a vanishingly small number of places. But if I'd tied my finances to crypto instead of cash, I'd have been stuck many times in foreign lands.
- WinstonSmith84 2y ago
  > I can take cash from any country in the world to my local bank, and deposit it into my account. If you are at a institution bank, probably but that's a non-existent use case - I never had Argentinian Pesos, Turkish Lira or Bulgarian Lev I suddenly needed to deposit into my bank account !.. > Try to use cryptocurrency for anything other than a few very specific transactions at a number of places in the world so small that it's a rounding error. I'm not sure whether you travel much, but I always travel as a digital nomad. I pay small transactions with local cash or mostly bank cards as everybody does. But big amounts? That's where crypto comes into play. I've paid in crypto transactions worth a few thousands dollars because that's the only way to do it without incurring huge transaction fees and / or long processing time.
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    The huge transaction fees come from the occasional, but surprisingly regular, crashes in value.
  - tekla 2y ago
    You don't have a no international transaction fee card? They're trivial to get
  - 2y ago
dkkergoog 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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toomuchtodo 2y ago
80 countries have instant/real time payment systems today [1], and the Bank for International Settlements is working on cross border interoperability [2]. Cryptocurrencies will likely never go away, and will remain in use for certain use cases from a cross border value transfer perspective, similar to gold; either the token moves or the ownership is updated. More interesting is offering digital wallets for a single or basket of currencies to anyone you can remotely identity proof in the world (similar to nsave [3]). [1] https://www.volt.io/real-time-payments-world-map/ https://www.volt.io/real-time-payments-world-map/ [2] https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm [3] https://www.nsave.com/ https://www.nsave.com/ | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nsave https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nsave
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  On top of that, the BIS isnt even needed for global real time payments. A company like Wise (formerly transferwise) or any similar entity can just hold accounts in each country and if the local settlement is real time they can also do real time global settlement by just updating their db and sending the money real time in the receiving location.
  - irjustin 2y ago
    This is how they all work including western union. It's not a secret but it's not really talked about either. No one pays FX fees on each transfer. Single large rebalancing transfers allows them to actually move money at optimal times and rates with bulk discounts. Then they can currency hedge and get larger spreads on the actual fx rate.
    - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
      Yup, the point was, local real time = global real time. Local real time has been the actual thing required.
    - xeromal 2y ago
      Kind of a tangent but I have some friends that are kurdish and that's how they transfer money to and fro the US and skirting whatever limits/regulations exist. They just give money to a money family in kurdistan and the money family here in the US hands it to them out of a restaurant or whatever. I've been fascinated with it since I knew it existed. It's all the same stuff with various coats of lipstick.
singleshot_ 2y ago
Cryptocurrencies will always be relevant for people show any to exploit others by moving money across borders in ways that governments can’t control (e.g., organized transnational cyber criminal gangs).
holografix 2y ago
Can we just agree that a system where every user/member needs to keep a large if not the entirety of the history of transactions is never going to work well? Fine keep using crypto as a store of “value” but as a way to handle day to day transactions it has failed.
chupchap 2y ago
How are you paying for a cab with crypto while travelling? For international payments, cards like Wise is simple and it works. You raised question about currency and the govt that manages it. The same question is true for most crypto as well; extreme volatility is not good for a currency.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
> Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil Most people in Brazil won't do this so who gives a shit? You may as well say, "now try to use Pix on the moon!"
neves 2y ago
I trust Visa and Mastercard with my money! A government is a lot safer!
leonidasv 2y ago
> How much do you trust your government with your money? When you use Pix, your money is not in custody of the government. The money goes to/comes from a standard commercial bank, just like a wire transfer. What the government (Central Bank) does is just the infrastructure for moving money between bank accounts. The point about not being a global standard is valid, though. Although there are initiatives in progress to connect similar instant payment systems from different countries as other users have noted.
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  That doesn't particularly address the point. Say the government decides that they don't like the political party you're supporting, or maybe you've been doing something they consider morally unclean like gambling or consuming pg-13 media. Let's say the government decides that your payments can no longer use the payment infrastructure. Now imagine it's effectively the only practical payment method. It's a permissioned system. Crypto is intended to be fundamentally different. Good crypto is permissionless. If you own it, you can spend it, regardless of what anyone thinks.
  - vasco 2y ago
    How do you propose to get money into and out of crypto in this world where your government doesn't want you to pay for anything? Or we just assume everyone starts as a crypto millionaire in this example?
    - idiotsecant 2y ago
      The same way we get value into fiat currency. By exchanging it for goods and services?
      - vasco 2y ago
        So you will find employment with someone who also has trouble with the government? Why would they pay you in crypto? In this hypothetical world where the government doesn't want you to pay for things, and crypto exists, why aren't they also going after your crypto and employment?
caruizdiaz 2y ago
> it's not even used in other Mercosur countries. You can pay with Pix in Paraguay since the largest privately owned payment processor implemented it and it's available within all payment terminals (POS) across the country. The government of Paraguay also runs a similarly good system called SIPAP, that is replacing card payments because it's faster and free to use.
uuddlrlrbaba 2y ago
Good? Dozens of fee free instant digital payment options sounds like a huge improvement over the outrageous network of credit/debit fees
happosai 2y ago
> How much do you trust your government with your money? Eh, the money was printed by government and any value it has is based on how much people trust their government. Using government payment processor is small potato compared to those...
- hgomersall 2y ago
  More than that, any value it has is based on the fact you have to pay taxes in it, by threat of violence.
  - hnbad 2y ago
    To be fair, that threat of violence is also the only thing enforcing your claims of property ownership. In its absence you'd have to rely on your community's consent. I guess that alternative scenario sounds more dystopian the more wealth you have - but with enough wealth you can also imagine having a private security force providing that threat of violence to keep the community in check.
ilirium 2y ago
You have bizarre logic here. For example, in a topic discussed about GPUs, someone would say that it's not possible to run databases on GPUs, so GPUs don't have any chance of succeeding. > How much do you trust your government with your money? Do you trust crypto companies? Mt. Gox, FTX, Bybit… Do you know that crypto companies must follow government rules, regulations, and laws? Russians were banned from using many crypto exchange platforms. China has strict rules for its citizens. You can buy and sell crypto in Brazil, but you must use only Brazilian reals. Pix isn't global, but no one government person outside of Brazil can block this system. MasterCard, Visa, Amex, and UnionPay work worldwide, but only a few countries regulate them, can block their usage, and can use data for tracking and statistics. Pix is free to use, so no one needs to pay an additional "tax" to MasterCard and Visa (it's about 3%). Google and Apple cannot say that if you want to pay, you must use only our devices. > Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil Now, try to buy ice cream from street vendors using any crypto coins.
- pembrook 2y ago
  I would say your post has the logical flaws, not confronting any of the core criticism and instead misdirecting to other topics. Creating efficient payment rails for its own currency is one of the most obvious roles for government imo. If the government provisions the currency, why would they not also provision the infrastructure (like the printing of the paper money). That said, you’ve not offered a good rebuttal to any of OPs concerns, just repeated how good pix is within Brazil…right now with their current government. Digital payments does present a uniquely frictionless route for tyrannical governments to assert power should they ever decide to weaponize it…unlike paper money which is harder to control. Also, international payments is absolutely an issue with these systems. So you hate crypto due to its 2010s association with annoying Twitter bros. I get it. But what are you offering instead as a solution to global money? Paying Wise stupid currency movement fees and waiting for them to close your account because you tried to buy a house for your family in the country you moved to?
  - ilirium 2y ago
    I don't offer any solution for the problems you mentioned, and I don't think it is possible. If we want to have global money and a global payment system, they would be controlled by governments, international organizations, God, Devil, Cthulhu, Spaghetti Monster... There is no magical solution. We, as a society, need to establish competing social institutions, and try to control them, and try to force them to compete. There is no solver bullet. Don’t lie to yourself, bro.
scott_w 2y ago
> How much do you trust your government with your money? If you’re not able to trust the government to not steal your money then I suspect you have bigger problems and should look to claim asylum elsewhere.
- johngladtj 2y ago
  So every Canadian?
  - sanswork 2y ago
    Canadian here, I trust my government with my money because I don't run or fund any criminal enterprises.
  - bregma 2y ago
    I have never had any reason to believe my government is stealing my money, or even has any interest in stealing my money. It's not some centralized criminal organization like it is becoming in the United States or maybe in other third-world countries. I do pay my share of taxes (for which I receive excellent value), and some of that goes to consumer protection including banking and financial institution regulations. Who I don't trust completely with my money is banks and financial institutions. That's why I have a government who regulates them. And hey, it has worked where elsewhere it has failed (see 2008 global financial crisis).
CraigJPerry 2y ago
> How much do you trust your government with your money? The money that they issue? Your question is radically flawed. That aside your main point is that crypto continues to be as relevant in cross jurisdiction payments even after the introduction of a pix like system of payments in each country. Crypto transaction volumes across all crypto currencies are so low compared to FOREX in any of the worlds currencies (even relatively unused ones - currency speculators still drive transactions even there) that it’s basically irrelevant today in this use case. So your argument becomes it’s irrelevant today and will continue to be tomorrow. If you’re to express the volume of all crypto transactions, not just those for the purpose of international transaction, just everything in all crypto currencies. The daily volume compared to transactions in all the other non crypto currencies ends up looking like a homeopathic dilution ratio, 0.00000000000000…%
asdfadf12 2y ago
>What we may however end up with, are dozens of systems like Pix, Lol It's not that we may ended up like that, systems like Pix are built for the sole purpose of domestic transaction. Globally, Visa / Mastercard trumps crypto.
KingInTheFnord 2y ago
> How much do you trust your government with your money? Money is (for the purposes of this conversation) created and guaranteed by the government, and regulated by law, so I think it’s a little weird to not trust the government with my money.
hnbad 2y ago
> How much do you trust your government with your money? I cannot fathom the reasoning that would lead you to believe this question is a big gotcha. The value of any currency comes from the trust in the economy and military of the governments that stand behind it. The USD's value is backed by the economy and military of the United States. The Euro's value is backed by the economy and military of the Eurozone countries. If you live in the US and the economy collapses to the point the USD loses its value, the value of the USD will be your least concern - same if the US were invaded by a hostile military force and unable to defend itself. Your currency is literally backed by your country. Your country issues the currency and your country sets the rules for how much additional currency banks can conjure into existence. Whether you use that currency in cash, bank transactions or payment systems doesn't affect that point. Cash is the only one of the three that's meaningfully different in that it allows the physical transfer of money without a "paper trail" because you can exchange it for goods and services directly (which doesn't apply to e.g. handing over keys to crypto wallets as part of a transaction because you can't move the balance off the wallet without leaving a digital trail). There is no inherent value in cryptocurrencies just as there is no inherent value in state-backed currencies. The value of cryptocurrencies primarily hinges on their use as a speculative investment - even stocks or futures have a more concrete value basis (representing ownership of parts of a company and future ownership of trade goods respectively). This means its value is not tied to the performance or power of any one state but it also makes the value much more volatile and unreliable and much easier to manipulate. Cryptocurrencies also stil rely on trust: for most cryptocurrencies you have to trust the people who issued it (and in some cases the underlying code), given how many have suffered from "rug pulls" and pump-and-dump schemes before. For currencies like BTC you also have to trust that no single actor can be able to perform a 51% attack. For currencies like ETH, you have to trust the smart contracts that might be involved (and have been exploited/abused before). Most people also rely on third party services to actually trade crypto currencies, so they need to trust those as well and there have been plenty of scams involving them even where they didn't turn out to be unreliable outright. All currency is vulnerable to manipulation by agents with control over disproportionate amounts of it - billionaires, megacorps, banks, states using it as a reserve currency, etc. But non-cypto currencies suppress some of that control with their own and they have a symbiotic relationship with their currencies (i.e. if the USD does badly, that affects the US economy, which affects the US government budget, which affects its ability to maintain its institutitions including the military). So the question then is not how much do you trust your government but do you trust your government more than the wealthiest other actors (domestic and foreign) that would exercise influence over the currency in its absence. Given that the state is not only the only thing enforcing the idea of property rights but also able to take everything away (including your physical freedom and life) from anyone who lives in its sphere of direct influence, even if you distrust your government more it's a moot point unless you also have the ability to flee it at a moment's notice if necessary - and I'd wager that's not the case for the overwhelming majority of people. You say we may end up with systems like Pix for each country/union - sure but there's no reason there can't be interoperability between them the way there is with SWIFT transactions. At the moment Brazil seems to offer Pix International and Pix Roaming to open the system up to tourists and Brazilians travelling abroad but there's no reason similar systems can't develop a standard for direct compatibility without having to require support by each foreign bank or POS system.
tim333 2y ago
Cryptocurrencies seem to have settled into a different use case. No good for paying for coffee, but good for gambling. Like if you want to bet on "Elon out of Trump administration before July?" you kind of have to go to polymarket or similar. (current price 41c)
627467 2y ago
Actually, you can find "pix accepted here" in shops/exchanges in neighboring countries. It's probably more wide spread near the border. Similar to east Asia, were alipat/wechat is widely accepted in areas flooded with Chinese tourists
enaaem 2y ago
If you don't trust your government then you don't own anything, since it's the government that enforces and arbiters property rights. The fact that you own a home is only written on some piece of paper and you trust the government to enforce it. Crypto is only worth something because you can convert it to fiat and with that fiat can sign fiat denominated contracts that are enforced by the government.
hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
Canada has etransfer/interact which works well. >How much do you trust your government with your money? Well I'm in Canada, I would trust the govt and the banks with my money before I trust anyone else (yes yes, trucker protest bullshit still didn't shake my confidence) Which is ultimately the problem. The govt and well regulated banks are the only ones you should be able to trust, but in many case you can't trust governments or their ability to regulate things.
scrubs 2y ago
>How much do you trust your government with your money? Sowing or stirring up doubt or implicitly initiating a conspiracy means you don't have an argument for crypto. Bitcoin can never be a Pix replacement. It's too damn slow, and others have pointed out, having to manage the entire transaction history is just stupid. (A end customer might not have to do serious book keeping on transaction history, but companies would.) Pix works great for Brazil. That's what it was intended to do. And that's what it does. Case-closed.

dakial1 2y ago

Pix proposition is very valuable for governments, as it is the best way of controlling transactions, inside the country and cross-border. To you second point, I think the pix penetration/popularity proves that the majority of the people trust the government for that. There are 2 key reasons for its success: It was mandatory for Banks to adhere to the system and there are no fees for using it. Once multiple countries have their own PIX, they just need to build a federation structure to connect them and allow cross-border transactions. Crypto-currencies have their place with people who don't trust the government, want to speculate and/or simply want to do tax evasion, but they are not and probably never will be mainstream as a transaction medium.

ethbr1 2y ago
iTunes / Steam vs piracy is relevant here. Most people want something that works well in the ways they care about. People turned to piracy because it was a superior experience to the then-distribution-models. Then, the majority of people didn't care that iTunes / Steam cost money and had DRM, because it provided a superior experience to piracy. People want an outcome, easily, reliably: they don't care about the method of getting that outcome.
rat87 2y ago
Cash is arguably more secure and likely less traceable and easier to use if you don't trust governments. I don't see much use case for crypto other then illegal activities (although possibly not always immoral)
- dakial1 2y ago
  That’s right crypto is also very traceable by the very public nature of the ledger
  - lillecarl 2y ago
    Somehow Monero (XMR) gets around this, used in the biggest European underground pharmacy Archetyp. Each transaction is somehow only known by sender and receiver
fakedang 2y ago
> Once multiple countries have their own PIX, they just need to build a federation structure to connect them and allow cross-border transactions. To add to this, this is already happening. For example, you can already pay in the Middle East with India's UPI at quite a lot of places, or with China's Alipay or Unionpay.
HPsquared 2y ago
For federation, the hard part isn't building the system but building the required trust between the different states and getting it all set up legally somehow.

reaperducer 2y ago

try to use Pix outside of Brazil Try to use cryptocurrency for anything other than a few very specific transactions at a number of places in the world so small that it's a rounding error. Still cryptocurrencies as-is remain relevant And somehow less relevant than cash. I can take cash from any country in the world to my local bank, and deposit it into my account. I can get a dozen different foreign currencies at my local branch in minutes, and almost any other currency in the world can be delivered to me by FedEx the next morning for a flat $10 fee. I can take cash to any other country in the world and get it converted into the local currency, whether that's paper or digital in almost any city. Crypto is great if you do a very few, very specific things in a vanishingly small number of places. But if I'd tied my finances to crypto instead of cash, I'd have been stuck many times in foreign lands.

WinstonSmith84 2y ago
> I can take cash from any country in the world to my local bank, and deposit it into my account. If you are at a institution bank, probably but that's a non-existent use case - I never had Argentinian Pesos, Turkish Lira or Bulgarian Lev I suddenly needed to deposit into my bank account !.. > Try to use cryptocurrency for anything other than a few very specific transactions at a number of places in the world so small that it's a rounding error. I'm not sure whether you travel much, but I always travel as a digital nomad. I pay small transactions with local cash or mostly bank cards as everybody does. But big amounts? That's where crypto comes into play. I've paid in crypto transactions worth a few thousands dollars because that's the only way to do it without incurring huge transaction fees and / or long processing time.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
  The huge transaction fees come from the occasional, but surprisingly regular, crashes in value.
- tekla 2y ago
  You don't have a no international transaction fee card? They're trivial to get
- 2y ago

dkkergoog 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago

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toomuchtodo 2y ago

80 countries have instant/real time payment systems today [1], and the Bank for International Settlements is working on cross border interoperability [2]. Cryptocurrencies will likely never go away, and will remain in use for certain use cases from a cross border value transfer perspective, similar to gold; either the token moves or the ownership is updated. More interesting is offering digital wallets for a single or basket of currencies to anyone you can remotely identity proof in the world (similar to nsave [3]). [1] https://www.volt.io/real-time-payments-world-map/ https://www.volt.io/real-time-payments-world-map/ [2] https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm [3] https://www.nsave.com/ https://www.nsave.com/ | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nsave https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nsave

danielmarkbruce 2y ago
On top of that, the BIS isnt even needed for global real time payments. A company like Wise (formerly transferwise) or any similar entity can just hold accounts in each country and if the local settlement is real time they can also do real time global settlement by just updating their db and sending the money real time in the receiving location.
- irjustin 2y ago
  This is how they all work including western union. It's not a secret but it's not really talked about either. No one pays FX fees on each transfer. Single large rebalancing transfers allows them to actually move money at optimal times and rates with bulk discounts. Then they can currency hedge and get larger spreads on the actual fx rate.
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    Yup, the point was, local real time = global real time. Local real time has been the actual thing required.
  - xeromal 2y ago
    Kind of a tangent but I have some friends that are kurdish and that's how they transfer money to and fro the US and skirting whatever limits/regulations exist. They just give money to a money family in kurdistan and the money family here in the US hands it to them out of a restaurant or whatever. I've been fascinated with it since I knew it existed. It's all the same stuff with various coats of lipstick.

singleshot_ 2y ago

Cryptocurrencies will always be relevant for people show any to exploit others by moving money across borders in ways that governments can’t control (e.g., organized transnational cyber criminal gangs).

holografix 2y ago

Can we just agree that a system where every user/member needs to keep a large if not the entirety of the history of transactions is never going to work well? Fine keep using crypto as a store of “value” but as a way to handle day to day transactions it has failed.

chupchap 2y ago

How are you paying for a cab with crypto while travelling? For international payments, cards like Wise is simple and it works. You raised question about currency and the govt that manages it. The same question is true for most crypto as well; extreme volatility is not good for a currency.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

> Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil Most people in Brazil won't do this so who gives a shit? You may as well say, "now try to use Pix on the moon!"

neves 2y ago

I trust Visa and Mastercard with my money! A government is a lot safer!

leonidasv 2y ago

> How much do you trust your government with your money? When you use Pix, your money is not in custody of the government. The money goes to/comes from a standard commercial bank, just like a wire transfer. What the government (Central Bank) does is just the infrastructure for moving money between bank accounts. The point about not being a global standard is valid, though. Although there are initiatives in progress to connect similar instant payment systems from different countries as other users have noted.

idiotsecant 2y ago
That doesn't particularly address the point. Say the government decides that they don't like the political party you're supporting, or maybe you've been doing something they consider morally unclean like gambling or consuming pg-13 media. Let's say the government decides that your payments can no longer use the payment infrastructure. Now imagine it's effectively the only practical payment method. It's a permissioned system. Crypto is intended to be fundamentally different. Good crypto is permissionless. If you own it, you can spend it, regardless of what anyone thinks.
- vasco 2y ago
  How do you propose to get money into and out of crypto in this world where your government doesn't want you to pay for anything? Or we just assume everyone starts as a crypto millionaire in this example?
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    The same way we get value into fiat currency. By exchanging it for goods and services?
    - vasco 2y ago
      So you will find employment with someone who also has trouble with the government? Why would they pay you in crypto? In this hypothetical world where the government doesn't want you to pay for things, and crypto exists, why aren't they also going after your crypto and employment?

caruizdiaz 2y ago

> it's not even used in other Mercosur countries. You can pay with Pix in Paraguay since the largest privately owned payment processor implemented it and it's available within all payment terminals (POS) across the country. The government of Paraguay also runs a similarly good system called SIPAP, that is replacing card payments because it's faster and free to use.

uuddlrlrbaba 2y ago

Good? Dozens of fee free instant digital payment options sounds like a huge improvement over the outrageous network of credit/debit fees

happosai 2y ago

> How much do you trust your government with your money? Eh, the money was printed by government and any value it has is based on how much people trust their government. Using government payment processor is small potato compared to those...

hgomersall 2y ago
More than that, any value it has is based on the fact you have to pay taxes in it, by threat of violence.
- hnbad 2y ago
  To be fair, that threat of violence is also the only thing enforcing your claims of property ownership. In its absence you'd have to rely on your community's consent. I guess that alternative scenario sounds more dystopian the more wealth you have - but with enough wealth you can also imagine having a private security force providing that threat of violence to keep the community in check.

ilirium 2y ago

You have bizarre logic here. For example, in a topic discussed about GPUs, someone would say that it's not possible to run databases on GPUs, so GPUs don't have any chance of succeeding. > How much do you trust your government with your money? Do you trust crypto companies? Mt. Gox, FTX, Bybit… Do you know that crypto companies must follow government rules, regulations, and laws? Russians were banned from using many crypto exchange platforms. China has strict rules for its citizens. You can buy and sell crypto in Brazil, but you must use only Brazilian reals. Pix isn't global, but no one government person outside of Brazil can block this system. MasterCard, Visa, Amex, and UnionPay work worldwide, but only a few countries regulate them, can block their usage, and can use data for tracking and statistics. Pix is free to use, so no one needs to pay an additional "tax" to MasterCard and Visa (it's about 3%). Google and Apple cannot say that if you want to pay, you must use only our devices. > Now, try to use Pix outside of Brazil Now, try to buy ice cream from street vendors using any crypto coins.

pembrook 2y ago
I would say your post has the logical flaws, not confronting any of the core criticism and instead misdirecting to other topics. Creating efficient payment rails for its own currency is one of the most obvious roles for government imo. If the government provisions the currency, why would they not also provision the infrastructure (like the printing of the paper money). That said, you’ve not offered a good rebuttal to any of OPs concerns, just repeated how good pix is within Brazil…right now with their current government. Digital payments does present a uniquely frictionless route for tyrannical governments to assert power should they ever decide to weaponize it…unlike paper money which is harder to control. Also, international payments is absolutely an issue with these systems. So you hate crypto due to its 2010s association with annoying Twitter bros. I get it. But what are you offering instead as a solution to global money? Paying Wise stupid currency movement fees and waiting for them to close your account because you tried to buy a house for your family in the country you moved to?
- ilirium 2y ago
  I don't offer any solution for the problems you mentioned, and I don't think it is possible. If we want to have global money and a global payment system, they would be controlled by governments, international organizations, God, Devil, Cthulhu, Spaghetti Monster... There is no magical solution. We, as a society, need to establish competing social institutions, and try to control them, and try to force them to compete. There is no solver bullet. Don’t lie to yourself, bro.

scott_w 2y ago

> How much do you trust your government with your money? If you’re not able to trust the government to not steal your money then I suspect you have bigger problems and should look to claim asylum elsewhere.

johngladtj 2y ago
So every Canadian?
- sanswork 2y ago
  Canadian here, I trust my government with my money because I don't run or fund any criminal enterprises.
- bregma 2y ago
  I have never had any reason to believe my government is stealing my money, or even has any interest in stealing my money. It's not some centralized criminal organization like it is becoming in the United States or maybe in other third-world countries. I do pay my share of taxes (for which I receive excellent value), and some of that goes to consumer protection including banking and financial institution regulations. Who I don't trust completely with my money is banks and financial institutions. That's why I have a government who regulates them. And hey, it has worked where elsewhere it has failed (see 2008 global financial crisis).

CraigJPerry 2y ago

> How much do you trust your government with your money? The money that they issue? Your question is radically flawed. That aside your main point is that crypto continues to be as relevant in cross jurisdiction payments even after the introduction of a pix like system of payments in each country. Crypto transaction volumes across all crypto currencies are so low compared to FOREX in any of the worlds currencies (even relatively unused ones - currency speculators still drive transactions even there) that it’s basically irrelevant today in this use case. So your argument becomes it’s irrelevant today and will continue to be tomorrow. If you’re to express the volume of all crypto transactions, not just those for the purpose of international transaction, just everything in all crypto currencies. The daily volume compared to transactions in all the other non crypto currencies ends up looking like a homeopathic dilution ratio, 0.00000000000000…%

asdfadf12 2y ago

>What we may however end up with, are dozens of systems like Pix, Lol It's not that we may ended up like that, systems like Pix are built for the sole purpose of domestic transaction. Globally, Visa / Mastercard trumps crypto.

KingInTheFnord 2y ago

> How much do you trust your government with your money? Money is (for the purposes of this conversation) created and guaranteed by the government, and regulated by law, so I think it’s a little weird to not trust the government with my money.

hnbad 2y ago

> How much do you trust your government with your money? I cannot fathom the reasoning that would lead you to believe this question is a big gotcha. The value of any currency comes from the trust in the economy and military of the governments that stand behind it. The USD's value is backed by the economy and military of the United States. The Euro's value is backed by the economy and military of the Eurozone countries. If you live in the US and the economy collapses to the point the USD loses its value, the value of the USD will be your least concern - same if the US were invaded by a hostile military force and unable to defend itself. Your currency is literally backed by your country. Your country issues the currency and your country sets the rules for how much additional currency banks can conjure into existence. Whether you use that currency in cash, bank transactions or payment systems doesn't affect that point. Cash is the only one of the three that's meaningfully different in that it allows the physical transfer of money without a "paper trail" because you can exchange it for goods and services directly (which doesn't apply to e.g. handing over keys to crypto wallets as part of a transaction because you can't move the balance off the wallet without leaving a digital trail). There is no inherent value in cryptocurrencies just as there is no inherent value in state-backed currencies. The value of cryptocurrencies primarily hinges on their use as a speculative investment - even stocks or futures have a more concrete value basis (representing ownership of parts of a company and future ownership of trade goods respectively). This means its value is not tied to the performance or power of any one state but it also makes the value much more volatile and unreliable and much easier to manipulate. Cryptocurrencies also stil rely on trust: for most cryptocurrencies you have to trust the people who issued it (and in some cases the underlying code), given how many have suffered from "rug pulls" and pump-and-dump schemes before. For currencies like BTC you also have to trust that no single actor can be able to perform a 51% attack. For currencies like ETH, you have to trust the smart contracts that might be involved (and have been exploited/abused before). Most people also rely on third party services to actually trade crypto currencies, so they need to trust those as well and there have been plenty of scams involving them even where they didn't turn out to be unreliable outright. All currency is vulnerable to manipulation by agents with control over disproportionate amounts of it - billionaires, megacorps, banks, states using it as a reserve currency, etc. But non-cypto currencies suppress some of that control with their own and they have a symbiotic relationship with their currencies (i.e. if the USD does badly, that affects the US economy, which affects the US government budget, which affects its ability to maintain its institutitions including the military). So the question then is not how much do you trust your government but do you trust your government more than the wealthiest other actors (domestic and foreign) that would exercise influence over the currency in its absence. Given that the state is not only the only thing enforcing the idea of property rights but also able to take everything away (including your physical freedom and life) from anyone who lives in its sphere of direct influence, even if you distrust your government more it's a moot point unless you also have the ability to flee it at a moment's notice if necessary - and I'd wager that's not the case for the overwhelming majority of people. You say we may end up with systems like Pix for each country/union - sure but there's no reason there can't be interoperability between them the way there is with SWIFT transactions. At the moment Brazil seems to offer Pix International and Pix Roaming to open the system up to tourists and Brazilians travelling abroad but there's no reason similar systems can't develop a standard for direct compatibility without having to require support by each foreign bank or POS system.

tim333 2y ago

Cryptocurrencies seem to have settled into a different use case. No good for paying for coffee, but good for gambling. Like if you want to bet on "Elon out of Trump administration before July?" you kind of have to go to polymarket or similar. (current price 41c)

627467 2y ago

Actually, you can find "pix accepted here" in shops/exchanges in neighboring countries. It's probably more wide spread near the border. Similar to east Asia, were alipat/wechat is widely accepted in areas flooded with Chinese tourists

enaaem 2y ago

If you don't trust your government then you don't own anything, since it's the government that enforces and arbiters property rights. The fact that you own a home is only written on some piece of paper and you trust the government to enforce it. Crypto is only worth something because you can convert it to fiat and with that fiat can sign fiat denominated contracts that are enforced by the government.

hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago

Canada has etransfer/interact which works well. >How much do you trust your government with your money? Well I'm in Canada, I would trust the govt and the banks with my money before I trust anyone else (yes yes, trucker protest bullshit still didn't shake my confidence) Which is ultimately the problem. The govt and well regulated banks are the only ones you should be able to trust, but in many case you can't trust governments or their ability to regulate things.

scrubs 2y ago

>How much do you trust your government with your money? Sowing or stirring up doubt or implicitly initiating a conspiracy means you don't have an argument for crypto. Bitcoin can never be a Pix replacement. It's too damn slow, and others have pointed out, having to manage the entire transaction history is just stupid. (A end customer might not have to do serious book keeping on transaction history, but companies would.) Pix works great for Brazil. That's what it was intended to do. And that's what it does. Case-closed.