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UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

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Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#71

Post by cuteboy19 »

pibechorro wrote: post #63

A friendly reminder that all the recent drama has zero to do with crypto, rather 100% to do with corruption at a human scale by 3rd party services which are not in any way crypto, they are traditional financial services peddling cryto wares. Get your keys off banks and 3rd parties, thats the whole point of why this started ... Exactly because of crooks like ftx and those peotecting them.

In other words, real crypto hasn't been tried yet. We dismiss communists when they make such statements, why should we make an exception for crypto?

Human factors are part and parcel of crypto. I don't think we can pretend that there exists a world where everyone just behaves properly despite every incentive to defraud people

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#73

Post by plopilop »

zarzavat wrote: post #8

> This crypto ban by Starling comes off the heels of Santander’s decision to limit customer deposits to crypto exchanges to £1,000 per transaction and a monthly limit of £3,000 This, ironically, validates the argument for crypto that banks cannot be trusted to let you do what you want with your own money.

Ah, yes, the freedom to invest all your life savings in obvious unregulated scams such as FTX.

Cryptocurrencies advocate for a very libertarian point of view: you are the only responsible of your money, and if you get scammed, sucks to be you. Banks on the other hand are much more "social": they are protecting you against scammers, and sometimes against yourself.

I know a case of a person falling to a "Hello we're the FBI we need to get your money for an undercover operation but we'll give it back", wiring tens of thousands to scammers. The bank did everything they could, including "losing" the wire order until that person family and friends managed to bring the victim back to their senses. The same story would have been very different with Bitcoin.

People here on HN are tech savvy, and smart enough to not fall into these scams. But advocating for a system that will leave all the most vulnerable members of our society penniless is quite astounding to me. "Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#74

Post by wil421 »

tempera wrote: post #68
mjburgess wrote: post #9

I first learned about blockchain years ago talking to some middle eastern clients who had implemented something with it. After looking at the technology from a data & software engineering pov, I thought it was basically useless and incredibly niche. I said as much, but they didnt believe me; they also thought ML was where you "fed data to a machine and it did everything" because that's what some lecturer had told the…

Bitcoin solves what is called the double spending problem without a central authority. Any other existing digital cash system, including the present-day fiat currencies and payment infrastructure relying on them as well as other digital currencies, require a central authority to maintain and dictate the true history of a monetary ledger, to make sure that the same units of money are not spent twice. Bitcoin instead d…

If someone steals from my bank account I’m getting that money back. Yes I’ve been scammed a couple times and had money withdrawn from an ATM in countries I’ve never been. Within 24 hours my money was back in my BoA checking. All my bank deposits are insured by the FDIC.

Not to mention my $dollars (or even €/£) have not lost a huge amount of value and fluctuated like a rabid dog.

Blockchain doesn’t help at all and most banks keep pretty good records.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#75

Post by rojeee »

pavlov wrote: post #60
htkibar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad take regarding black mark. Fintech and swinging for the fences is not a bad thing per se. As long as you aren’t an executive for a scam or something; I have never seen in my career experience being treated as a bad thing. Might perhaps get some added questions to get you, but it is also a unique selling point. Crypto essentially allows you to make trust less systems with tokens, what those tokens mean or not depe…

Black mark is exactly right. I wouldn’t hire someone who spent more than a couple of months at a crypto job — that’s enough time to realize what’s going on and get out. If they stayed longer, it invites the question of whether they’re gullible, incompetent, pathologically greedy, or too good at compartmentalizing. Do you think “I was an accountant at Enron” is considered positive career experience in that field? Cryp…

Are you actually responsible for hiring people? If so, it's quite a narrow-minded and borderline silly take on things. I've been hiring people for the last 8 or so years and if I come across a good engineer, I really don't care what industry they worked in, as long as they are capable, motived and a pleasure to work with.

I think crypto is mostly pointless but I've been working in and out of the sector for nearly 10 years. Why?

1. I have a family to look after and it pays quite well.

2. I get to work on technology which is very interesting and applicable to other domains - consensus alogirithms, security in a highly adversarial environment, peer to peer networking and associated networking alogirthms, the intersection of finance and technology, the intersection of economics and technology.

3. I get to use tools and langauges I enjoy working with.

4. I work with smart, interesting people from a variety of backgrounds.

5. The industry moves fast, so there's always something new to learn.

I get constant inbound from recruiters and no-one cares that I work in crpyto.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#77

Post by rvz »

varispeed wrote: post #37

This is a dangerous precedent of "legal, but harmful" creeping in, where you cannot spend _your own money_ on something authority thinks is not in your best interest.

It's like as if people commenting here want CBDCs and would love the banks to impose savings limits on their accounts and pretend that they know best what you should be spending your digital cash on. [0]

[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/digital-euro-spending-saving-limit...

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#78

Post by theCrowing »

isthisthingon99 wrote: post #28
mjburgess wrote: post #9

I first learned about blockchain years ago talking to some middle eastern clients who had implemented something with it. After looking at the technology from a data & software engineering pov, I thought it was basically useless and incredibly niche. I said as much, but they didnt believe me; they also thought ML was where you "fed data to a machine and it did everything" because that's what some lecturer had told the…

I'm a tech guy, also trade, also teeter on end the fed vibes There is value in being able to anonymously and stably transfer value uncensored. But which state will stand aside while you realize this dream? Not a one.

Crypto is a cruel joke played on the poor and middle class.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#79

Post by TheGhostOfBoris »

Gigachad wrote: post #21
amluto wrote: post #4

If this policy expanded to all UK banks, it could plausibly make the UK a less interesting target for ransomware and similar cryptocurrency-backed extortion schemes.

I believe Australia is moving towards making it illegal to pay crypto ransoms. Cybercrime has gone absolutely wild over the last few years and cutting off the money tap should do some good.

Here in Blighty, paying a ransom is legal per se.......

.....but making payments to a sanctioned country or a terrorist organisation is very illegal (as I suspect it is in most of the world).

For this reason, any organisation obeying the law will refuse to pay the ransom.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#80

Post by zarzavat »

plopilop wrote: post #73
zarzavat wrote: post #8

> This crypto ban by Starling comes off the heels of Santander’s decision to limit customer deposits to crypto exchanges to £1,000 per transaction and a monthly limit of £3,000 This, ironically, validates the argument for crypto that banks cannot be trusted to let you do what you want with your own money.

Ah, yes, the freedom to invest all your life savings in obvious unregulated scams such as FTX. Cryptocurrencies advocate for a very libertarian point of view: you are the only responsible of your money, and if you get scammed, sucks to be you. Banks on the other hand are much more "social": they are protecting you against scammers, and sometimes against yourself. I know a case of a person falling to a "Hello we're th…

And what is the name of an institution that allows you to deposit unlimited amounts of money, but when you try to withdraw it they don’t let you? FTX? Yes. A bank? Also yes.

In Lebanon people are holding up the banks at gunpoint to withdraw their own money.

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