Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by ebiester » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

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…

The article is saying "this is why we aren't doing it for our startup," not "this is why you shouldn't do it for your personal life or startup."

It is fair to say that for building a startup, crypto adds additional risk due to the issues they say. It isn't about if those can be overcome, but rather if it is wise for that group of people to approach it for the problem they are solving.

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

#102

Post by valcron1000 » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

smoe wrote: post #79

valcron1000 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Argentina and crypto is the best solution available today. I've tried multiple services like Paypal, Payoneer, Wise, Bankera, Paysera, Wester Union, etc. They all have the same issues.

Given some of the services you mentioned, are you talking about transferring money in and out of the country? In that case I might agree. It is a huge pain in Colombia as well. I was referring to alternatives to small cash transactions between people in the country. For which there is for example Nequi. Easy onboarding, no service or transaction fees, no minimum amounts, free cash withdrawals, instant transfers. Yes…

Indeed, I guess we were not talking about the same issue. For local transfers, sure, use whatever floats your boat: cash, digital wallets, bank transfers (I would not advise this, but whatever). Here we have several options for that, like Mercadopago, Burbank, Uala, Reba, Naranja X, etc. These are really good for day to day purchases, and you usually don't keep a lot of money on these accounts, so if you happen to have any issue is not the end of the world.

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

#103

Post by lkrubner » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

_vvhw wrote: post #21

lkrubner wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> multi-region durability Why is this important? Why can't they get by with a traditional main server plus some backups with a sync, plus failover when the main server goes down? It seems to me that all of your questions are issues that have been often discussed over the last 20 years, and they all have well known answers, except perhaps "multi-region durability". Leave that out, and you've well known answers for you…

"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…

> Because without multi-region or multi-AZ durability, Wave could lose balances. For example, in the event of a DC fire.

I think you are making a bunch of assumptions that you haven't written down, so it is hard for me to guess what your assumptions are. In the boring, normal, standard setup that people have been using Postgres for in the last 20 years, data does not get lost so long as you have a main server and a sufficient number of backups running in sync, possibly at some distance. A question like "How not to lose data when your main server is destroyed by a fire" is an old question that database engineers have been working on for 40 years, and for which there are many good answers.

But I think you're imagining some kind of automatic link between the distributed nature of the blockchain leading to a distributed Postgres. But you would need to write out what your assumptions actually are before I could respond to them.

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

#104

Post by lottin » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #94

lottin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bitcoin is energy money Bitcoin isn't energy anything. The energy required to print bitcoins has been expended in the process of printing the bitcoins.

No. The energy is expended to create the strongest immutability guarantee and DDOS resistance of any distributed system ever created by humanity. Distribution of new coins and transactions fees are simply the reward for that service.

> The energy is expended

It certainly is.

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

#105

Post by bb88 » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

randomhodler84 wrote: post #85

bb88 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further you need to trust the devs writing the algorithms as well. BTC forked shifting much of the value of BTC onto another blockchain. If it happens again, you have to remain vigilant to recoup your value.

Give it up. Bcash is worthless. The value is absolutely in the real Bitcoin, BTC. Bcash is and always a scam that only fools fell for.

That wasn't the argument. Self governance of the project was the argument. If it happened once, it can surely happen again.

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

#106

Post by diputsmonro » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #97

tablespoon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. Uh, what now? They actually do a worse job than traditional finance. What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? Why I dispute the transaction and get my money back. It's less important that I have absolute trust in the vendor, because I ha…

> What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? You are paying 2% - 5% premium on the price for this insurance that a credit card company providers. This is what the merchant gets charged in transaction fees and flat fees to get access to Visa/Mastercard network. There are many cases when you do not want to have insurance benefits of credit cardand you would simply take 2% ch…

With crypto you pay the additional overhead of gas fees, which are often unpredictable and may cost more than the item itself.

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

#107

Post by valcron1000 » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #93

valcron1000 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use any other blockchain. Why pick Ethereum?

It doesn't matter, all blockchains work the same way. They all depend on middlemen to process transactions.

Not in the same sense. If I use Paypal for example, I can only spend my funds in whatever they decide I should be able to spend it on. They can freeze my account at any point in time, no questions asked.

With crypto, the blockchain is just the infrastructure and no one can stop me from using my money.

Sometimes I wonder if people defending this kind of financial services are actually users. Doesn't seem so.

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

#108

Post by Forgeties79 » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #97

tablespoon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. Uh, what now? They actually do a worse job than traditional finance. What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? Why I dispute the transaction and get my money back. It's less important that I have absolute trust in the vendor, because I ha…

> What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? You are paying 2% - 5% premium on the price for this insurance that a credit card company providers. This is what the merchant gets charged in transaction fees and flat fees to get access to Visa/Mastercard network. There are many cases when you do not want to have insurance benefits of credit cardand you would simply take 2% ch…

> I think it is ok to let the free market to pick the winner.

Seems to me the market is calling for regulation, because it’s a huge barrier to adoption. Ask any skeptic (who doesn’t have a moral issue with it such as environmental impact) and 9 times out of 10 they go “it feels like a scam” or “I don’t want someone to hack my money.”

People like to gripe about regulation, but we also find a little security in it. It often makes us feel safe at the end of the day - and when it comes money, that’s a cornerstone feature that needs be present.

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

#109

Post by anonporridge » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86

anonporridge wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining energy use and the price of bitcoin are co-integrated. They play off each other. An increase in price incentivizes more mining and more mining increases the security of the system, which incentivizes more money to flow into and stay in bitcoin. Also, as miners become a larger industrial complex and tightly coupled to electricity producers, they become a tightly integrated piece of civilization that has funds l…

> where in order to buy energy you need to have bitcoin, there is no "buying" bitcoin So when you say "bitcoin is energy money," that's a tautology. It's energy money if oil is priced in bitcoin. > that doesn't depend on the enforcement of the monopoly on violence Violence relieves someone of their Bitcoin keys just as easily as it does their dollars or gold. (At the very least, you can permanently sequester them.)

> Violence relieves someone of their Bitcoin keys just as easily as it does their dollars or gold.

Wrong. It is significantly more complicated to use violence to steal bitcoin from people than it is to use violence to steal dollars or gold. With bitcoin, I need to coerce you to give it to me. That could mean torture, sure, but do exist multisig key structures that make it impossible to steal bitcoin by coercing a single person.

On the other hand, if I want your gold, I just shoot you in the head and spend however long it takes to rummage through you house to find where you stashed it. I don't need to coerce your mind to give it to me.

This might seem like a small difference, but it's a hugely important one. It completely changes the economic calculation for the use of violence. Violence is a risky endeavor for any perpetrator and only continues if the economic rewards of engaging in violence outweigh the risks. Bitcoin increases the cost, which necessarily should decrease the incidence.

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

#110

Post by bb88 » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #97

tablespoon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. Uh, what now? They actually do a worse job than traditional finance. What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? Why I dispute the transaction and get my money back. It's less important that I have absolute trust in the vendor, because I ha…

> What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? You are paying 2% - 5% premium on the price for this insurance that a credit card company providers. This is what the merchant gets charged in transaction fees and flat fees to get access to Visa/Mastercard network. There are many cases when you do not want to have insurance benefits of credit cardand you would simply take 2% ch…

> I think it is ok to let the free market to pick the winner.

You mean:

"I think it is ok for a _regulated_ free market to pick the winner."

An unregulated free market has scams we're seeing today.