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Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

wave.com

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Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#41

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

mkdirp wrote: post #31

Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. > We need to keep track of our customers’ account balances. Right. That's what the blockchain is able to do. It can assert that you, who says you have 1 bitcoin in your wallet, actually really have 1 bitcoin in your wallet (assuming no attack vectors such as 51% attack). > We need them…

Yes, but I think a lot of the meta narratives around crypto currency (used to draw in fresh liquidity) are based around financial "inclusion" - as in bank the unbanked, and own your own keys etc.

But of course anyone that has interacted with crypto currencies, or more importantly the exchanges knows that's not really true. Mostly it's a very efficient means of taking money from the poor and diverting it to the rich. I think jackson palmer of dogecoin called it hypercapitalistic.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#42

Post by Forgeties79 »

mkdirp wrote: post #31

Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. > We need to keep track of our customers’ account balances. Right. That's what the blockchain is able to do. It can assert that you, who says you have 1 bitcoin in your wallet, actually really have 1 bitcoin in your wallet (assuming no attack vectors such as 51% attack). > We need them…

>We need to comply with relevant regulations—know-your-customer laws, capitalization requirements, account limits, etc.

>>Not something cryptocurrencies have claimed they can solve.

I agree to an extent, but the problem is crypto has this massive culture of “we don’t need to solve it because no gods, no masters.” For them it’s a feature to protect, and they are far from a small minority in the crypto space.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#43

Post by _vvhw »

knorker wrote: post #35
_vvhw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why is this important?" Because without multi-region or multi-AZ durability, Wave could lose balances. For example, in the event of a DC fire. "Why can't they get by with a traditional main server plus some backups with a sync" Because without distributed strict serializability, Wave would also be risking the loss of data back to the last backup. However, I'm assuming here that Wave are running consensus around Post…

Not losing transactions with a database is not exactly terra incognita. > Because without distributed strict serializability Depends what you mean by "distributed". A simple 2-phase commit would do it. Or hell, just a write-ahead log on the application layer. > Postgres just doesn't seem like the best way to get distributed failover safely That may be so. But are you arguing in favour of blockchain? When was the last…

"But are you arguing in favour of blockchain?"

No, please see my original comment, where I made this clear: "I don't mean to advocate for cryptocurrency in any way."

By "modern distributed database", I don't mean blockchain. I just mean "modern distributed database", e.g. things like FoundationDB, Spanner, Aurora or CockroachDB.

"A simple 2-phase commit would do it. Or hell, just a write-ahead log on the application layer."

Of course, and that leads into my second question, also in my original comment:

How are storage faults in the middle of the committed WAL handled? Or is the rest of the committed WAL simply discarded, conflated with a torn write from a system crash?

These questions are important when it comes to storing balances safely. Banks can use all kinds of techniques for defense-in-depth (not to suggest they do), they're not limited to Postgres. But a distributed database is a good thing these days, no?

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#44

Post by verdverm »

anonporridge wrote: post #26
verdverm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another problem, which is the unit of account. What currency are prices posted in? It's going to be very hard to displace fait on this front. I don't think cryptos can become this until they are as stable as existing currency. They aren't even used as currency or behave like one. More like gold or stocks and present.

I think this is a problem until it isn't. The first country that starts pricing its oil exports in bitcoin will a) cause the price to initially skyrocket, and b) create a stabilizing force on the price that percolates to all other goods and services. And the interesting thing, is that because bitcoin is energy money, there is a very direct and explicit correlation to the amount of bitcoin you can earn from using your…

How does China largely banning crypto, promoting its own currency (particularly in trying to get it used as the oil pricing from Saudi Arabia), and being one of the biggest importers... play into this hypothetical future?

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#45

Post by rattlesnakedave »

smoe wrote: post #15
valcron1000 wrote: post #9

Yet another middle man stating that crypto is not the way to go. Of course they are going to say that, they lose their 1% transaction fee.

Things is, companies like this solve a real world problem for real people in developing countries now . At least where I am, Colombia, crypto has utterly failed to do this. The target audience of such products doesn't care much about some hypothetical ifs and whens of the future.

Seems a bit early to say it has “utterly failed.” Especially when Colombia is consistently the 2nd most active trading country in LatAm. And As Banco De Bogota is piloting crypto programs https://www.portafolio.co/economia/finanzas/banco-de-bogota-...

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#46

Post by ilammy »

Retric wrote: post #37
mkdirp wrote: post #31

Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. > We need to keep track of our customers’ account balances. Right. That's what the blockchain is able to do. It can assert that you, who says you have 1 bitcoin in your wallet, actually really have 1 bitcoin in your wallet (assuming no attack vectors such as 51% attack). > We need them…

Trust is the biggest issue with cryptocurrency. I can trust my bank + the government to keep my money safe. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, I can’t trust an exchange and keeping your own wallet is extremely risky.

> I can trust my bank + the government to keep my money safe.

Trust them to keep your money – yes, you can absolutely rely on that.

Trust them to have “your” money back – that’s a taller order. But it it will be safe, sure.

At least with cryptocurrency you don’t have to keep it at an exchange, while the governments are pushing for abolishing cash and keeping all the money in banks.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#47

Post by rattlesnakedave »

pavlov wrote: post #34
valcron1000 wrote: post #9

Yet another middle man stating that crypto is not the way to go. Of course they are going to say that, they lose their 1% transaction fee.

Because there are no fees or middlemen in crypto. Never mind that it costs $50 worth in fees to send a penny on Ethereum, and I need to convert my money to casino tokens on some scammy exchange first.

I regularly send Bitcoin txes for sub $1. I buy with 0 fees on strike. Strike supports lightning withdrawals, too so I can withdraw and spend with 0 in fees basically immediately.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#48

Post by mkdirp »

Retric wrote: post #37
mkdirp wrote: post #31

Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. > We need to keep track of our customers’ account balances. Right. That's what the blockchain is able to do. It can assert that you, who says you have 1 bitcoin in your wallet, actually really have 1 bitcoin in your wallet (assuming no attack vectors such as 51% attack). > We need them…

Trust is the biggest issue with cryptocurrency. I can trust my bank + the government to keep my money safe. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, I can’t trust an exchange and keeping your own wallet is extremely risky.

Right, I never said you can trust exchanges. You do not have to use an exchange. That's the whole point of the decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#49

Post by NhanH »

anonporridge wrote: post #26
verdverm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another problem, which is the unit of account. What currency are prices posted in? It's going to be very hard to displace fait on this front. I don't think cryptos can become this until they are as stable as existing currency. They aren't even used as currency or behave like one. More like gold or stocks and present.

I think this is a problem until it isn't. The first country that starts pricing its oil exports in bitcoin will a) cause the price to initially skyrocket, and b) create a stabilizing force on the price that percolates to all other goods and services. And the interesting thing, is that because bitcoin is energy money, there is a very direct and explicit correlation to the amount of bitcoin you can earn from using your…

Bitcoin mining is not elastic enough to do what you propose (also, what a terrifying thought), for the fact that a) you needs mining equipment, which becomes obsolete in relatively short amount of time and b) electricity transfer is not free, so large scale centralized bitcoin mining will require additional power generation facility

Your description of the petrodollar is borderline conspiratorial as well. And even within your reasoning, the US Navy will beat ASIC mining machines 100% of the time. How could it happen "peacefully" ?

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#50

Post by TekMol »

Retric wrote: post #37
mkdirp wrote: post #31

Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. > We need to keep track of our customers’ account balances. Right. That's what the blockchain is able to do. It can assert that you, who says you have 1 bitcoin in your wallet, actually really have 1 bitcoin in your wallet (assuming no attack vectors such as 51% attack). > We need them…

Trust is the biggest issue with cryptocurrency. I can trust my bank + the government to keep my money safe. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, I can’t trust an exchange and keeping your own wallet is extremely risky.

Which country do you live in? My Government abused my trust big time. Over the last 10 years, it doubled the amount of money. And thereby halved my stake in the countries buying power.

And regarding trusting a bank: In my country there was a bank with a $15B market cap that did not really posess the money they claimed they posses.

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