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UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

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101–110 of 131 posts

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#101
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society picks up the bill when mom and dad bet the pension savings on crypto and they have to take public money into retirement. The banks are trying to essential provide a cooling off period so regular people don't get obliterated. The same people that complain about the impinging government are usually the first to ask for a handout the moment something goes wrong etc etc.

I recall society picking up a very large bill for said banks in 2008, when mom and dad bet everything on property prices rising indefinitely for reasons.

TARP recovered $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested

The "society" made a profit.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is value in being able to anonymously and stably transfer value uncensored. Let me know when this comes into existence, because it might be interesting.

It exists, Monero. But it isn't necessarily a stable value, though I think it will hit a stable value at some point. For some reason, I can't post so here is my reply to the guy below me: Current XMRUSD volatility is ~40% Current USDJPY volatility is ~38% I believe in due time, when the pump and dumpers are gone, it will become as stable as normal currency pairs.

Current

the volatility of XMR-USD is currently 38.70%

the volatility of USD-JPY is currently 11.99%

Max Drawdown - XMR-USD -92.96% USD-JPY -20.48%

https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/XMR-USD/JPY...

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one controls inflation, the only variable under control is the cost for a bank to receive money from a central bank (an interest rate). Any value of an interest rate is a political tradeoff: a low rate favours spending, a high rate favours saving. So a low rate promotes expansion and an excess of cash in the system; a high rate promotes contraction and a relative deficit of cash. No value for an interest rate is "…

I can see where you're going with this. An algorithmic approach without a political fallback can lead to feudalism because the people who control the algorithm, control everything. This is why I teeter on "end the fed". You need an independent body not influenced by the politics, yet accountable for their performance in the end. I'm not sure they're currently accountable in a manner that matters. Edit: when I say inf…

Any rate a central bank sets has winners and losers, with inflation at 10%, 90% of people are losing.

The fed is being the most "economically reasonable" of almost any central bank in the world right now. The UK central is afraid of matching the Fed because property owners would be screwed, and the UK economy is more dependent on real-estate. This is compounded by Brexit (a project of those property owners) which is driving import inflation that the central bank is also ignoring.

So I, as a pro-EU UK renter, am losing out for the benefit of UK property owners wealth and political projects. I'd still vastly prefer that over whatever you might imagine the alternative is.

A similar story can be told in the reverse direction: any rate is a political decision, and the losers have a story about how they're being oppressed.

The bank of england, fed, etc. are at least aware of the consequences of their decisions and have some level of accountability. Neither of which can be said for any automated system which acts completely ignorant of these matters.

This isnt feudalism, this is politics working the best it has in human history. If you imagine you could do better, I'd suggest that hell is much closer than heaven.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#104

> 47% of UK banks don’t allow customers to interact with crypto exchanges And yet the state asks you to pay your taxes when you make added-value on crypto. There are literally people who have taxes on added-value made on crypto due but are unable to pay them because their banks are refusing their money. Take 10 K EUR out: easy. Take 1 million+ EUR out: it's extremely difficult. The hypocrisy here is phenomenal: "cryp…

Actually, that is perfectly normal in many tax systems, e.g. in Germany. Afaik the tax law doesn't care where the money comes from – it could be from a completely illegal activity, and you still own taxes on gains.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#105
post #75
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm responsible for giving hiring input and I've talked to multiple people who are solely responsible, and working in crypto isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, but for me and those people you're definitely competing at a disadvantage from the outset.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#106
post #7

Looking at the actual report, only Monzo and Revolut (yes, I haven't heard of them either) are "crypto friendly". The others could best be described as wary and watchful.

While Monzo is cryptocurrency friendly [0] they don't allow payments to binance [1] however thats down to a Consumer warning on Binance from the FCA [2] so I think thats basically a industry wide thing not just a Monzo thing. Silly enough, if you have a paypal account and a PayPal debit card you can use that card on Binance.

[0]: https://monzo.com/help/payments-getting-started/monzo-crypto... (basically just says yes they are)

[1]: https://monzo.com/help/payments-getting-started/binance-bloc...

[2]: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/consumer-warning-bi...

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#107
post #105
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm responsible for giving hiring input and I've talked to multiple people who are solely responsible, and working in crypto isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, but for me and those people you're definitely competing at a disadvantage from the outset.

Fair enough. I believe that's commonly called discrimination.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one controls inflation, the only variable under control is the cost for a bank to receive money from a central bank (an interest rate). Any value of an interest rate is a political tradeoff: a low rate favours spending, a high rate favours saving. So a low rate promotes expansion and an excess of cash in the system; a high rate promotes contraction and a relative deficit of cash. No value for an interest rate is "…

I can see where you're going with this. An algorithmic approach without a political fallback can lead to feudalism because the people who control the algorithm, control everything. This is why I teeter on "end the fed". You need an independent body not influenced by the politics, yet accountable for their performance in the end. I'm not sure they're currently accountable in a manner that matters. Edit: when I say inf…

If you want to end fed controlled interest rates you would either need to abolish cash and replace it with cheques or introduce a demurrage currency as cash. Cash acts as a perpetual bond with a guaranteed 0% interest rate. If there is deflation then the nominal interest rate needs to be negative so that the real interest rate is correct again. If you can't express negative nominal interest you will have to run away from deflation aka permanently issue more money.

This is pretty much universal, even DAI (algorithmic stablecoin backed via deposited Ethereum, etc) has this problem. When DAI trades above the peg, the only answer is create more DAI and sell.

There is RAI where the answer to RAI being above the peg is to just lower the redemption rate.

The obvious answer then would be to introduce an optional dollar that has an interest rate built into it that can be negative. It doesn't have to replace every existing dollar bill, it just has to exist and in case of austerity or a recession the Fed will try to not increase the number of 0% dollars in circulation. This will make regular dollar bills trade above their face value meaning people are less likely to transact with 0% cash and instead electronic payments and the negative interest dollar will continue doing their job.

The money in Wörgl was named emergency money (Notgeld) for a reason. Fight the depression with a higher velocity of money, not more money.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#109
post #68

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…

Ok but money has two sides. There are those who have it and those who accept it. What Bitcoin does is effectively provide a very expensive paper ledger but money is a social relationship between humans. There aren't enough people negotiating contracts denominated in Bitcoin. It is a very loose relationship that can be ended at any time.

Re: UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

#110
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society picks up the bill when mom and dad bet the pension savings on crypto and they have to take public money into retirement. The banks are trying to essential provide a cooling off period so regular people don't get obliterated. The same people that complain about the impinging government are usually the first to ask for a handout the moment something goes wrong etc etc.

I recall society picking up a very large bill for said banks in 2008, when mom and dad bet everything on property prices rising indefinitely for reasons.

It is a reverse hostage situation. Banks enable the modern society to work but if they are gone so is our economy because of an insufficient "investment" in diversifying the money system. In theory we could do a multitude of alternative money approaches like barter clubs or local complementary currencies and then the risk of major banks failing wouldn't be the complete loss of the economy, only a big chunk.
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