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The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

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Re: The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

#241
post #110

So many HODLers in this thread. For the normal person on the street, Bitcoin or Crypto never mattered. The endlessly breathless PR was irritating. Whatever happens, this wont be missed.

It never mattered if you live in a country with a stable currency and access to modern financial services. If that is you, you are in a very small minority of the world population. For the rest of the world, there seems to be some value... https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adop...

The meme that cryptocurrency is good for people in countries without modern banking is long-dead at this point. First, and most importantly, many supposed not-modern countries actually have more robust banking than America: mobile money is more popular and has far greater penetration in large parts of Africa than it does America, for example. Secondly, for every cryptocurrency project that has provided value to places without modern banking, there’s a cryptocurrency project that has more effectively exploited people.

The fundamental problem with your position is that cryptocurrency does not offer a stable store of value and so while there may be short term examples where people have found value by using a non-government currency, these examples are often short lived. Just look at platforms like the YC-backed Stablegains, which are a great alternative to government-backed currencies… until they blow up and financially-insecure people are thrown into a dire situation.

Re: The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

#242
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never mattered if you live in a country with a stable currency and access to modern financial services. If that is you, you are in a very small minority of the world population. For the rest of the world, there seems to be some value... https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adop...

People keep harping about that. Let's say I'm some sort of Ion Trașcă from Moldova. My country's in shambles, I need to buy and pay for stuff using crypto. How can I do that? Are there simple to use apps to set things up from the start and then use crypto? UI/fully visual, I don't want to touch ANY scary command line. How do I or who manages my keys?

Use euros

Re: The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

#245
post #110

So many HODLers in this thread. For the normal person on the street, Bitcoin or Crypto never mattered. The endlessly breathless PR was irritating. Whatever happens, this wont be missed.

It never mattered if you live in a country with a stable currency and access to modern financial services. If that is you, you are in a very small minority of the world population. For the rest of the world, there seems to be some value... https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adop...

This is a complete BS, currently I'm in a country with very unstable currency that lost so much value during the last 2 crypto booms(2017, 2021) and I know what actually happened on the ground.

Crypto adoption is indeed high, much more than the western world but people are not in it to protect themselves from a volatile exchange rates but because they are desperate for a side hustle to make the ends meet. Those who are interested in preserving value simply buy USD, EUR or gold.

The "unbanked" concept is also complete BS, in those 3.rd world countries the banking systems and the fintech infrastructure is much more advanced than the ones in the west. There are indeed millions of "unbanked" people but they are unbanked due to political reasons and as a result they use alternatives payment processors which are not banks(or just use cash). When Europe was introduced to easy to use mobile banking with things like Monzo or Revolut and USA was adopting contactless payments or Chip&Pin these were already the norm. Before the iPhone&Android proliferation, people were able to do much of this stuff through the ATMs and payments systems integrated with the SIM cards. People from 3rd world visiting EU or the USA are often shocked when see how primitive retail banking and payment systems are.

I guess the rhetoric of "banking the unbanked in the poor countries" comes from the idea that "if we the rich have so many troubles with payments, surely it must be much worse in the poor countries". I assure you, this is not the case, the west is the one with primitive fintech.

The value of crypto came from the ability to speculate. Everyone younger than 30 was in it and some people made good money. These days everyone is in the stock market, anyone can buy and sell stocks from their banking app and all taxes and fees are handled so its easy as buying and selling candies.

Re: The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

#246
post #58

3 years ago ETH was $100, today it's $1300, maybe we should all just wait and see before writing the obituary

And that is why I don't go near any crypto. Don't get me wrong I love the idea but I don't like volatility. I can't wait until a stable DeFi is established. for international transactions this will be a dream. If it's up over 10 fold in 3 years then I don't see why it couldn't drop 3 fold in the next 3. I like simple investments where the value is obvious and a simpleton like me can guess if the price matches the und…

Can you give an example of what you’d consider “simple investments where the value is obvious” and where “a simpleton like all of us can guess if the price matches the underlying value”?

I’m genuinely curious.

Re: The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

#247
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep harping about that. Let's say I'm some sort of Ion Trașcă from Moldova. My country's in shambles, I need to buy and pay for stuff using crypto. How can I do that? Are there simple to use apps to set things up from the start and then use crypto? UI/fully visual, I don't want to touch ANY scary command line. How do I or who manages my keys?

I'm not sure if you are being intentionally condescending but you are coming across that way. I am going to assume good intention here. I am not that familiar with the 'end use ' of paying for stuff directly, maybe you can't in Moldova. Even if you can't pay for things directly, there are plenty of relevant uses. Simply using USDC can be a great store of value for people if their currency is collapsing. See lebanon,…

Every bad thing has positive aspects just as every good thing also has negative ones.

For now I'm against cryptocurrencies because every plus I've seen is outweighed by the con (pun intended).

And this is actually the second time in a cryptocurrency topic that I ask this and nobody answers.

Let's say I'm in Extremistan or Extremistia. How do I use cryptocurrency? Is it just a store of value? Can I use it for payments?

I want a guide, I'm new to this. How do I use it?

Re: The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never mattered if you live in a country with a stable currency and access to modern financial services. If that is you, you are in a very small minority of the world population. For the rest of the world, there seems to be some value... https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adop...

>> you are in a very small minority of the world population Really? So EU, UK, USA, China, Australia, with stable currencies, are a small minority..? Sorry but countries with wild instability are the minority and frankly gold would seem to be a better store of value if that's anyone's concern. Crypto remains speculation i.e. a gamble not a store of value.

> EU

In 2013 the government of Cyprus decided to seize money directly from people's bank accounts. I would not call that stable.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/everyth...

> China

In 2022, when some Chinese banks decided to freeze depositors accounts for shady reasons and debitors planned to protest the issue, authorities used Covid codes to block them from accessing the banks. That also does not seem stable to me.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bank-protest-stopp...

Re: The number of banks willing to do business with the crypto industry is shrinking

#250

3 years ago ETH was $100, today it's $1300, maybe we should all just wait and see before writing the obituary

Isn't that actually a bad thing? Wouldn't I want the currency I use for finance and so on to be relatively stable? And money come from these activities and not the currency changing in value.
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